The Warner Bros. Discovery panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2022 lacked a lot of DC Comics content outside of Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Black Adam's electrifying entrance. Yet, just down from Hall H, the creators and cast of Netflix's The Sandman series lined up onstage to talk about the show 30 years in the making. But what of the DC Universe presence in The Sandman comics, and will Netflix erase it from the story?
Before Gaiman wrote The Sandman comics series, he wanted to do a series about the Wesley Dodd version of the character. Yet, DC wanted to take it in a different direction, thus fans got Dream and the Endless. Still, the story took place in the DC Universe and a number of characters, including the Justice League, are in the comics. It wasn't a frequent occurrence, but it happened enough that it begs the question of how Netflix will approach this, especially in the current DC Multiverse era. However, it sounds like most connections to the DC Universe are going to be dropped entirely.
For example, Jenna Coleman is a combination of two DC characters, one created by Gaiman and the other by Alan Moore. There's been two live-action versions of John Constantine (whose name rhymes with "twine") already. Keanu Reeves played the character in a film, and Matt Ryan played him everywhere else. On The Sandman, Coleman plays a version of this character and one of Constantine's ancestors: Johanna Constantine. In the comics she was an 18th Century mage. On Netflix's The Sandman series, she appears to be a kind of amalgam of both characters.
The other DC Comics character who appears in the comics is Etrigan, the 50-year-old rhyming demon. He leads Dream through Hell to Lucifer, and though he likely won't be in a strange supersuit and cape, this is a character that might just appear. Not only does it make sense in a narrative world without DC heroes, Etrigan has never been adapted into live-action before. His role is small and not very important, so it's also possible that they cut him entirely in order to pair Dream with Lucifer as quickly as possible to keep the pace of the episodes up.
It's known that David Thewlis, (Lupin in Harry Potter), will be playing John Dee, the man in possession of one of Dream's relics. In the DC Universe Dee is also Doctor Destiny, a supervillain with the power to manipulate dreams. Gaiman took that element of his power and retroactively made it because he possessed one of Morpheus' relics. So, while Dee will likely have one of Sandman's missing items, it is doubtful that he's a supervillain who battled Green Lantern and the rest of the Justice League. Also, a version of Doctor Destiny named John Deegan appeared in the "Elseworlds" crossover in the Arrowverse, played by LOST's Jeremy Davies. The great William Atherton, Peck in Ghostbusters, voiced the character in the DC Animated Universe.
Gaiman himself weighed in without giving too much away. In July 2021, he answered a question on his Tumblr page about it. Gaiman said that contrary to popular perception, he wanted to include these little cameos and stories because he relished the chance to play with Superman, Batman and others in the Justice League. "Making Sandman for Netflix is a chance to do it again," Gaiman wrote, "and to do it with the economy of not needing to exist in a shared universe in the same way. So, when we do the Joe Simon and Jack Kirby Dream Dome Sandman stuff, we do it slightly differently, and we don’t need the scene with the Justice League to get Dream to [John Dee]."
A very crucial character to the story of The Sandman is Daniel Hall, which is not the alias of any superhero. However, he comes from a long line of them. His grandparents are the Golden Age Hawkman and Hawkgirl and Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor. Hector Hall has been the Silver Scarab, an iteration of Doctor Fate, and the Sandman. Lyta Trevor-Hall was Fury, the daughter of Amazon goddess Wonder Woman and regular-old human Steve Trevor. Hector and Lyta's lives as the children of heroes and then failed heroes themselves was crucial to their characterization. Hector was duped by antagonists to Dream because they played on his desire to be a hero. Conversely, Lyta wanted only a normal life for her and son, which isn't really that special unless she is the daughter of a superhero. There is no way to tell the central Sandman story without these characters, but can they create a captivating version of these characters without the hero backstory?
The series will try. Razane Jammal will play a version of Lyta Hall, notably without the "Trevor" hyphenate. Also, there has been no word on Hector Hall being cast, so he may be absent entirely. Given that Gaiman explicitly said there would be no reference to a world of superheroes, chances are Lyta (and Hector, if he's included) are just regular folks who, in another corner of the multiverse, just happened to have powers. On one hand it might be fun to see a story where superheroes aren't the weirdest and most supernatural thing going on. Yet, on the other, The Sandman is a serious fantasy show and adding in the DC characters could confuse the narrative to the series' detriment.
The Sandman did always feel a little out of place as part of the larger DC continuity. This is why, as Gaiman wrote, the story "naturally drifted away from the DC Universe into one" that more resembles our own, save for every mythological character being real. However, that could have been the perfect excuse to include them. Superheroes are part of modern mythology. Still, with Warner Bros. Discovery trying to sort the DCEU, the last thing it needs is The Sandman goofing on its most valuable characters. Even other characters like Mister Miracle and Element Girl might fit but would need some introduction since they aren't as immediately recognizable as other Justice Leaguers.
The Sandman series has been a work in progress for more than 30 years, and trying to balance a version of the DC continuity is a problem the storytellers didn't need. As fun as the superheroes are, The Sandman is a high-concept story that deserves to stand on its own without the Justice League knuckleheads mucking things up.
See if any DC characters cameo on The Sandman when it debuts August 5, 2022, on Netflix.