Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. To read the last entry, check out It Is Impossible To Fight Through All of These Men, But Shōgun’s Mariko Managed It Anyway.
This column contains detailed spoilers of Dead Boy Detectives, a spinoff of The Sandman.
The Sandman casts a large shadow, which makes creating a spinoff in the same universe one heck of a tall order. Where the story of Morpheus and his Endless siblings is larger than life, many of the individual stories that take place in the graphic novels are more contained. Things like tone, aesthetic, character motivations, and more should all be their own thing.
If you’ve followed the Dead Boy Detectives saga, you know that the show was first meant to be over at (HBO) Max as a spinoff of Doom Patrol. However, after recasting the two leads and setting up a writing and production team, the series was eventually sold to Netflix. Now, if you follow my column regularly, you know that I believe that Dead Boy Detectives always needed to be at Netflix and connecting to The Sandman universe (as it does in the comics, though Doom Patrol crossovers have happened in previous runs). But, doing so meant that showrunners Steve Yockey and Beth Schwartz had some pretty Endless shoes to fill in the eyes of a lot of fans. So, how did they do it?
By not trying to fill those shoes at all.
While the crossover aspect is still apparent with Kirby Howell Baptiste’s Death in the pilot episode and her presence looming large over Edwin (George Rexstrew) and Charles (Jayden Revri) throughout the season, and though Donna Preston’s Despair makes an appearance in hell, Schwartz and Yockey were free to play in their own sandbox and really make Dead Boy Detectives their own. And, If you’re wondering if they wanted to see the inclusion of more of The Endless, the answer is no!
“Death and Despair is who we asked for,” Yockey answers after I ask whether or not they had requested more characters and been declined. “It would be fun to drag all of those Sandman characters over, and certainly it would be noisy and get a lot of attention, but that really isn't what Beth [Schwartz] and I are super interested in.”
Obviously, when the show was first created, Yockey and Schwartz didn’t know that they’d have access to these characters at all. Warner Bros. Discovery may have a hand in producing The Sandman, Doom Patrol, and Dead Boy Detectives, but what happens on Netflix and what happens on Max are completely different ball games.
“We designed the show so that it could exist within the Sandman universe without stepping on too many toes,” Yockey notes. “And then when we found out we were going to be on Netflix, we were like, ‘Oh.’ Then Netflix was like, ‘Hey, we love what you're doing, but wouldn't it be cool to have some crossovers in Easter eggs?’ And we were like, ‘What a great idea.’ And so we asked for those two characters for very specific reasons in the storytelling for our boys.”
Of course, with Despair chilling out in hell, I had to ask about head honcho, Lucifer, and Gwendoline Christie’s larger-than-life absence. But, in keeping the spirit of Being Its Own Thing™, Yockey and Schwartz ultimately made the right decision to showcase how huge hell is rather than slip in an additional cameo.
“We wanted to do our own version of hell,” Schwartz explains. “And we obviously mentioned Lucifer, but like Steve said, we're exploring the world of Dead Boys and how Dead Boys exist alongside Sandman. And further we go forward if we are lucky to have future seasons, we'll be able to open up that world a little more.”
Obviously it would have been great fun to see Lucifer before we head into the next season of The Sandman, but ultimately young Edwin never would have escaped hell again had that been the case. If Tom Sturridge’s Morpheus struggles to best Lucifer, it’s unlikely that a mere ghost with fewer than 100 years under his belt is going to manage to get out of their grasp.
With The Sandman and Dead Boy Detectives existing in tandem, there’s one final critical story reason that required the latter to be 100% its own thing outside of the occasional cameo: the Seasons of Mist story hasn’t happened in The Sandman just yet. And, with The Sandman remaining relatively faithful to the graphic novels, that limits just how much Charles and Edwin can play with Sandman characters — at least for now. It also happens to be the reason for the slight tweak in their backstory.
“To Alan and Neil and Beth and I, the shows are happening in tandem,” explains Yockey. “Because they're happening at the same time and they haven't gotten to the Seasons of Mist storyline in the Sandman yet, we can't do anything that would allude to that. So that's why the slight tweak to the boys' backstories with Edwin escaping hell instead of being released from hell.”
Story justifications matter a great deal but, for me, it was always important that Dead Boy Detectives had its own vibes both as an ardent Sandman fan and as a critic. Aging up the boys and playing in a contemporary world means that they can play around in ways a 1:1 adaptation never could. Plus, playing more in the human world and learning the possibilities that exist outside of the Endless’ realm gives us an exciting look at the expansion of The Sandman universe on TV.
