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Posted in: Netflix, Review, TV | Tagged: Death: The High Cost of Living, The Sandman
The Sandman: "Death: The High Cost of Living" Was Perfect Ending
The final, bonus episode of Netflix's The Sandman, Death: The High Cost of Living, provided a moving and graceful conclusion to the story.
The story of The Sandman may have reached its end, but there's an epilogue without Dream, and that's a visit with his sister Death on her day off in an adaptation of the spinoff miniseries Death: The High Cost of Living. Death, played by Kirby Howell-Baptiste in the live-action version, is a fan favourite, and it's only fitting that she sees out the series. Death is the end of everyone's story after all, even her own, or a version of her own story.
Showrunner Allan Heinberg kept the plot beats of the original three-issue miniseries, whose 60 pages turn out to be an hour's worth of story. There are interesting, significant changes to the details: the setting has been moved from Downtown New York City to the Shoreditch area of East London, and the main characters are no longer teenagers but adults in their thirties. Sexton Furnival isn't a surly New York high schooler but a thirtysomething journalist (Colin Morgan) in despair at the state of the world and his failure in trying to make it better. Sexton is so depressed that he has decided to take his own life, but meets Death on her day off, where she lives as a normal human for a day every hundred years. The next thing he knows, Mad Hettie has threatened his life to coerce Death into looking for her lost soul, and Sexton ends up on a circuitous quest as she leads him on a wild chase around Shoreditch, more intent on enjoying her one day of life than fulfilling that quest. Along the way, he rediscovers a reason to keep living, and it only takes hanging out with Death for him to do that.
Death is All About Life
The most unexpected part of this episode is that it seems to be an unintentional version of Raine Allen-Miller's 2023 screwball romantic comedy Rye Lane, as the bewildered Colin is pulled out of his shell by the chipper and unflappable Death. The Sandman vibe is ever-present, even if Morpheus is nowhere in the story, nor is he even mentioned. While the original comic ran during the middle of the Sandman comic's run, putting this version of Death: The High Cost of Living at the end of the TV series makes it a capping off of the TV saga. The Sandman, like the comic, is open about its ambitions to address as many aspects of life as possible and how we live it, and having Death lead the epilogue is fitting as the final grace note of the story. Sexton is feeling the same despair that many people are about the current state of the world, which the script alludes to, and he is shown, as Death, a reason to keep going rather than give up. The result is profoundly moving.
Why "The Sandman" Matters and Will Matter Beyond Its Creator
And with that, we've reached the end of Netflix's live-action TV series adaptation of The Sandman, and possibly one of the final adaptations of a work by Neil Gaiman. Netflix committed to producing the adaptation of the comic series and will have it available for the duration of its lifespan on the streaming service. Years from now, new audiences might discover the series without knowing anything about Gaiman or the accusations against him. The work will finally become divorced from the creator despite its traces of self-portrait, with the adaptation also serving as an expression of the writers, actors, crew, and director who adapted and altered the work. Many works of art throughout the centuries have been created by imperfect, even terrible people. Still, the work itself outlasts them because it transcends the worst flaws of the artists, as they were aspiring to be their better selves, and the work encourages the audience to find joy and be better.
The Sandman is streaming on Netflix.
The Sandman: "Death: The High Cost of Living"
8/10
Adapting spinoff "Death: The High Cost of Living," the final, bonus episode of Netflix's The Sandman is a funny, touching, and moving moment of grace to conclude the series on. Death teaches a despairing journalist that life is still worth living even at one's lowest point in a story that offers both a sense of comfort and hope while remaining grounded in our day-to-day realities.
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