Warning: This article contains minor spoilers for The Sandman season 2 bonus episode “Death: The High Cost of Living.”
Death herself said it best: When we reach the end of our lives, all humans really need is “a kind word and a friendly face.” And that’s what The Sandman showrunner Allan Heinberg wanted to give fans as the show rolled its final episode.
Following the conclusion of season 2, Netflix released “The Sandman Presents: Death: The High Cost of Living,” a bonus episode centered around Kirby Howell-Baptiste’s Death of the Endless and a suicidal mortal journalist named Sexton, played by Merlin and Belfast actor Colin Morgan.
The story is based on a three-issue comic book from 1993, a spinoff of Neil Gaiman’s main Sandman run. Death takes one day off every 100 years, and on her latest 24-hour vacation, she comes across Sexton Furnival, whose work covering the climate crisis has left him feeling hopeless about the world. It’s a cozy hour of television, even though it retains a dark edge, as Sexton shares in the joys of Death’s day off.
Ed Miller/Netflix
“It’s a lot to put the audience through right up until the end of episode 11,” Heinberg tells Entertainment Weekly of the season 2 finale. “And then [episode] 12, in the best case scenario, was an attempt to heal. I don’t know what the right word would be, but I’ve been describing it as the goodnight kiss, like giving the audience a goodnight kiss before going off the air.”
In Gaiman’s comic, Death takes a teenaged form and Sexton, similarly, is 15 years old. Given that Howell-Baptiste, the actress, is a grown woman, Heinberg knew he needed to age up the story.
As far as making Sexton a climate reporter, the showrunner explains, “I know a lot of people who are wondering if this is the end of the world and, What is the point? It’s just a question that I hear people asking and that I ask all the time: Am I making a difference or am I making it worse? For Sexton, the unasked part of that question is, ‘Would the world be better off if I just wasn’t even here?’ He’s finding it so painful to be a reporter about the climate emergency at a time when the world is what it is. There’s resistance to journalists and climate journalists, so just looking at it from that point of view, I thought, we all need Death to come into our lives and tell us how lucky we are to be here at any point in this planet’s history.”
Leave it to Death to reveal the importance of life. Over the course of two seasons, the writing of the show and the actress performing the role turned the Grim Reaper into more of a caregiver who guides human souls to the beyond with a kind smile and empathic warmth. “Her sense of humor, her sense of wonder, her curiosity, these are all qualities that Kirby shares with Death. And so Kirby really determines the tone of the episode,” Heinberg notes.
Ed Miller/Netflix
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Heinberg sees season 2’s bonus installment as a spiritual companion to episode 6 of season 1, when Dream (Tom Sturridge) accompanies his elder sister on a walk while she ferries souls out of this world. “It was lovely to basically have Death lift Sexton out of what he’s going through and have Sexton remind Death what it’s all about for her, as well,” Heinberg says. “I hope there’s a real sweetness in all of that confusion and depression of Sexton’s.”
If there’s one face we’d like to see at the very end of The Sandman, it surely is Howell-Baptiste’s incarnation of this character.
All episodes of The Sandman season 1-2 are now available to stream on Netflix.
