NetflixIn 1996, Neil Gaiman couldn’t have foreseen his own downfall. But as Netflix’s The Sandman winds down its adaptation of the controversial author’s masterpiece, you can’t help but draw the connections between Gaiman’s own legacy and the show’s maudlin farewell tour for its title character. Dream, aka Morpheus, was famously modeled off Gaiman’s own appearance, after all. And even as the saga explored new dizzying realms of the imagination, that connection never lets you forget that its hero is the author’s self-insert.I count myself among those who used to describe themselves as Gaiman devotees. I first read The Sandman as many of us do: too young to really process its nightmarish, impossibly imaginative horror stories. There was many a night when I went to bed with nightmares after having read a particularly disturbing issue (it was “24 Hour Diner,” unsurprisingly), and as such, it felt like Gaiman had unlocked a part of my brain that I didn’t even know existed. The images, created beautifully by artists Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Jill Thompson, Shawn McManus, Marc Hempel, Bryan Talbot, and Michael Zull — none of whom get enough credit for their work — burned in my mind and stayed there. And Gaiman’s storytelling, from then on, would become formative to my own burgeoning tastes.Which makes the second season of Netflix’s The Sandman adaptation so complicated to write about in the wake of the the sexual assault and misconduct allegations levied against the beloved author. With The Sandman graphic novels, Gaiman established himself as a foremost authority in fantasy and genre storytelling, thanks to his evocative and edgy reimaginings of mythological beings and metaphysical entities. And the first season of Netflix’s The Sandman almost lived up to the sheer creative heights of the graphic novels, delivering an ambitious, starkly imagined epic, albeit with some edges sanded off.The second season, which adapts the storylines from Season of Mists, Brief Lives, The Kindly Ones, and The Wake, along with a handful of elements from Fables and Reflections, Dream Country, and A Game of You, continues the first season’s streamlined approach, condensing the anthology-style saga of Dream into a serialized tragic epic. And for the most part, it’s pretty successful… until the real world threatens to come barging in, in more ways than one.Destiny charts Dream’s doom. | NetflixThe Sandman Season 2 picks up as Morpheus (Tom Sturridge) has begun to rebuild the Dreaming after his long imprisonment on Earth. But when a meeting with his siblings, The Endless, ends with a guilt-ridden Dream embarking on a quest to Hell to rescue his former lover Nada from eternal punishment, he inadvertently starts the clock on a prophecy foretelling his demise.The Sandman Season 1 had the benefit of adapting a fairly straightforward storyline — Dream’s imprisonment and subsequent escape and return to the Dreaming — but Season 2, in both Volumes 1 and 2, is so sprawling that it’s kind of miraculous that Netflix managed to turn it into a somewhat coherent storyline. But that is also where The Sandman Season 2 falls short of its source material: the wonders of reading the graphic novels were its anthology-style structure, lending the saga an almost mythic quality. It’s why the strongest episodes of Season 1 were the standalone episodes in which Dream was just a supporting player, flitting in and out of the story like the abstract figure he is. But Season 2 is laser-focused on Dream’s story and his prophesied downfall, and as a result, goes overboard in serializing the story with returning characters and familiar faces. It’s natural that The Sandman is stymied by the physical limitations of TV production — there’s no way that even an outsized Netflix budget could match the look of the graphic novel, for which only Gaiman’s imagination was the limit. But in serializing the show to the extent that it turns one-off stories, like the Midsummer Night’s Dream episode, into essential building blocks that drive the narrative, it only makes this vast, impossibly huge world feel much smaller.The Sandman can’t help but fall prey to the Netflix look and tone, flattening the impact of the original story. | NetflixBut sometimes the flatly lit “Netflix look” works in the show’s favor — the depiction of Dream’s father Time (Rufus Sewell), for example, goes in the opposite visual direction of the graphic novel’s lush, maximalism, instead going for a starkly lit, nearly monochrome sequence that recalls an Ingmar Bergman film. But these little sparks of ingenuity are few and far between, with the changes that the Netflix show, chiefly helmed by Allan Heinberg as the show distanced itself from Gaiman, mostly serving to flatten the story’s original power.But this is where the Neil Gaiman question comes in. As I watched the second season of The Sandman (critics received all episodes of the season ahead of the July 24 Volume 2 drop), I was torn between my affection for the original graphic novels and my disappointment with an author I had upheld for so much of my adult life. Do I give more grace to the changes that Heinberg and co. attempt to make to the story, or do I compare it to the sharp sensations and emotions I felt when I first read the graphic novels? I don’t know, and I still wrestle with these conflicting feelings. But the brief glimmers of something original and inventive in the second season start to get overshadowed by the morose tone and sluggish pace of the second half of the season.The Sandman’s maudlin farewell tour can’t help but draw parallels to Gaiman’s downfall. | NetflixAfter the consequences of Dream’s actions come to a bloody, tragic climax, Volume 2 of The Sandman Season 2 devolves into a maudlin farewell tour for Dream, as he attempts to put his affairs in order. This is, in fairness, accurate to the graphic novels, which dedicates a whole issue to Dream’s wake. But the increasingly drawn out final days of Dream, who at first nobly accepts his impending doom before fighting it, takes on a sour note in the context of Gaiman’s own downfall — with Dream’s original appearance so closely associated with Gaiman, the show’s final mournful episodes can’t help but feel like a eulogy not just for its title character, but for Gaiman and his legacy. Despite some inspired casting for Dream’s replacement, the show’s mournful final episodes feel like the final nail in the coffin for the show’s attempts to distance itself from Gaiman.Just as I, along with many former Gaiman fans, wrestle with my feelings for a story I once loved, so is the Netflix show itself. It’s no wonder the series rushed to the finish line with a second season that condensed so many sprawling storylines. It’s no wonder both parts of Season 2 have been dropped on the streamer with little fanfare. It’s still difficult to parse a story that impacted so many, from an author who hurt many more. In the end, it seems the funeral for The Sandman will be a hushed one.The Sandman Season 2 is streaming in its entirety on Netflix now. A bonus episode will release on July 31.