'The Sandman' TV Show is Paced Differently from the Comics The emotional reunion of family members after a long period of separation is also a theme strongly felt by the British through Lockdown, and The Sandman being a largely British show, seems to allude to that. You could draw an analogy between that pandemic and the one we all just lived through, with Unity as a recent survivor. Neil Gaiman used the common convention in Fantasy and Horror fiction to create a supernatural explanation for a historical event. The assumption was that it was a viral or bacterial, or parasitic infection. Its medical term was 'Encephalitis Lethargica,' as Unity mentions, and Its cause was never truly explained. A Past Pandemic to Mirror Our Current Oneīy the way, there really was a pandemic of sleeping sickness in real life in 1916. As in the comics, Unity woke from her sleeping sickness, inherited her family's money, and hired investigators to track down her remaining family. Since The Sandman TV series is set in 2022, an entire generation has passed since 1989, so Rose is Unity's great-granddaughter rather than her granddaughter. She accompanies Rose in her mother's stead to England to meet her long-lost great-grandmother Unity Kincaid ( Sandra James-Young). The Lyta of the show is assertive and actively supports Rose in her quest. In the comics, Lyta is a disillusioned superhero and passive. She and Hector are friends of Rose, who became her surrogate parents in her teens, whereas Rose never meets Lyta in the comics. Hector Hall is not the son of the Golden Age Hawkman but just a guy who appears in his wife's dreams, and not the 1970s superhero version of The Sandman created by Jack Kirby. She's a middle-class architect mourning the recent death of her husband Hector ( Lloyd Everitt). Here she's not a former superhero and hinted-at daughter of the Earth-2 Golden Age Wonder Woman. Rose Walker (Vanessa Samunyai) and Lyta Hall (Razanne Jammal) 'The Sandman,' CR: Netflix A Different Lyta Hall who's Not an Ex-SuperheroĪnother big change is Lyta Hall ( Razanne Jammal). While her mother in the comics was a slightly scatty but well-meaning lady, her mother in the show has passed away and given her their house so she can have a home.

Unlike the Rose of the comics, she's actively searching, calling on all the resources she has. That makes her a proactive second protagonist for the show. The Rose of the TV series doesn't have a personality but a strong goal: to find her brother. Rose is different from the Rose of the comic, who was more of a stereotypical moody, self-preoccupied, and privileged teenager-turned-21. This is an immediate screenwriting setup that establishes Rose's drive to find her brother after years of separation. For starters, we're presented with Rose Walker's ( Vanessa Samunyai) backstory, where she's separated from her brother Jed in their parents' bitter divorce, which was not depicted in the comics.

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