There’s a lot to enjoy on Netflix The Sandman Series. The show is good! The comic is great! It is rich in rich allusions to be discovered. It is a story with intriguing mysteries and wonderful messages.
It has also created a great situation for me personally to point out this Lucifer from the TV show Lucifer and Lucifer from The Sandman are the same character.
And I don’t mean because of the Bible.
Image: Netflix
In case you are not familiar Lucifer, it’s the dramedy starring Tom Ellis that ran for three seasons on Fox and three more on Netflix. And if you’re familiar with the show, which is equal parts detective procedure, supernatural drama, and love story, you might still be unaware of its connection to DC Comics. The Sandman.
Lucifer stands as a standalone work, but its central framework – that Satan got tired of ruling Hell and stopped running a piano bar in Los Angeles – is DC Comics canon. And the story that made this DC Comics canon is in the pages of The Sandman.
[Ed. note: Spoilers for The Sandman comic, I guess? It’s… very old, though.]
Viewers who finished the first season of The Sandman Netflix was left with Lucifer – played by Gwendoline Christie – who swore vengeance on the Lord of Dreams for making her look like a fool to every demon in Hell. Lucifer even has a plan, and in the comics we know exactly what that is.
It is said to renounce the rule of hell and open a piano bar in Los Angeles. The revenge part is giving Dream the keys to Hell and making him the owner of a piece of metaphysical property so valuable other beings are willing to threaten his life over it – which starts most of the conspiracy The Sandman‘s third story arc. But that’s beside the point, which is that the DC Universe’s Lucifer tickles the ivory in the City of Angels just for the sake of Gaimans The Sandman.
Lucifer The TV series never wore its origins on the sleeve – it was more of a case of “inspired by the DC Universe” than “based on the DC Universe”. There have been a few Lucifer spinoff series in the DC Universe, but none of them are particularly similar to the show. (My favorite is 2015 Lucifer, in which he’s forced to investigate the murder of God.) Instead, the show gained cult status by confidently bouncing off the rock-solid pitch “One of them’s a police detective, the other a cheeky piano bar owner and secretly Satan.” They solve crimes… and fall in love????”
As Polygon’s reviewer describes it, the show was “the story of an angel who rebelled against God and was sent to Hell for his crimes, and the mortal detective immune to his devilish charms. Early in the series, the cases Chloe and Lucifer worked on together were almost entirely human-to-human violence, with no demons or biblical villains. The main conflict was whether Chloe would find out that Lucifer was actually the devil and not just some rich guy living out some weird fantasy.”
By the end of the show’s final season, it had grown into a cheeky and loving meditation on forgiveness and change, stating, “Sometimes fate is malleable, and sometimes a fate that feels like punishment is truly a blessing.” But none of this applies to people who don’t open up to self-improvement and self-reflection like Lucifer does.”
Lucifer found an audience by being everything it could be, from a silly mess to a dramatic won’t-they-be-they. And therefore it is no shadow to point to its origins The Sandman. I don’t need Christie’s Lucifer to fight Ellis’ Lucifer for supremacy unless it’s in a Roger rabbit-style piano battle.
But I’d like to see her high five.
#Pour #hit #Sandman #show #Lucifer
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