The Sandman Episode 2 review – Imperfect Hosts

Here’s my The Sandman episode 2 review titled Imperfect Hosts in which our hero Morpheus aka Dream of the Endless picks up the pieces of his life after a century of captivity.

Before we proceed… SPOILER ALERT

In this episode, Morpheus finally returns to the Dreaming and we get to see more of the effects of his absence. Lucienne informs of the endless that she’s the only one left in the realm. Morpheus tries to reassemble the castle but is too weak and decides to get help in finding his things. We meet Cain and Abel and Gregory. Gregory agrees to sacrifice himself to get some of Dream’s powers back to haggle with the Three-in-One. The Three-in-One answers Dream with regards to the location of his ruby, pouch and helmet. The Corinthian tracks down Ethel Cripps, the woman who stole Dream’s things from Roderick Burgess. Dream plans to get the pouch first from Johanna Constantine.

This episode continues to give us a look at how good the visual effects for the series is. Whether its gorgeous scenes of Dream trying to use his powers to restore his realm, to how smooth the animation is for Gregory to the sequence where he takes the different offerings he has to give to the Three-in-One.

I’m also surprised at how well they crafted the scene with Gregory’s sacrifice. Like with a few minutes of screen time, we get to love the creature and get hurt at its sacrifice for the better good. I honestly shed a tear when Gregory starts to turn into dust.

We also get to meet John Dee here and its surprise surprise, David Thewlis, who also played the other DC villain in “Wonder Woman”, Ares.

And now he’s John Dee…

aka Doctor Destiny…

And its the guy who gave a hard time for the Justice League in the Justice League animated series…

We’re also given more expansive bits of story where we get introduced to stuff like the Amulet of Protection and our first reference to hell and demons, one of the chilling and a little bit more exciting part of the Sandman story created by Neil Gaiman decades ago. It also teases what we can expect in the next episodes.

It’s also shocking to see the barbaric tendencies of Cain towards his brother which was another great thing from the book.

Verdict:

Its a bit slower compared to episode 1 but what it lacks in pace, it makes up with world building, lore building and dangling more plot points.

So what do you think of The Sandman episode 2 aka Imperfect Hosts? Leave a comment below and follow me on Twitter at @thefanboyseo!