This article contains spoilers for "Sandman".

With Sandman Season 2, Volume 2, which now moves to Netflix, is worth remembering the greatest sin of Season 2, Volume 1: Vanda's catastrophic abuse (India Moore).

Wanda was the first proper transplant introduced into the comic books "Sandman" and she will always have a special place in my heart. As a kid reading "Game of You", the fifth volume of the "Sandman" comics, she was the first trans character to see who was treated as a real person. Wanda is loyal and brave and occasionally rough, and she is also the best friend Barbie (who is the technically main character in that Vol.) I could sometimes.

In short, Wanda is a big part of what makes you "play from you" One of my favorite Tom of the comic books "Sandman". The comics themselves are at best focusing on their human characters, and Wanda (one of Sandman's few players who has no secret magical origin) is the most humane character of them all.

Namely, controversial, Wanda calls into question gender identity and very ridiculed during her bow. She also dies at the end, at that moment we see her family wrongly sharing her at her funeral. It's something that can to be interpreted as comics that deny her gender identity, if not for the last moments of the volume where death itself (which is both the most powerful of the endless And the closest thing that this franchise has a clear voice of reason) accidentally confirms it as a woman. But even before that conclusion, it is clear that this story was written and illustrated by people who sympathized with Wanda's suffering and never doubted her gender identity, even if some of the characters in the story could have.

In the previous article I wrote for /film, I speculated about As the TV series "Sandman" would deal with Wanda's storynoticing how confident the original comics were. "Game of you" was pleasantly understood; It can be dark things without the need to tell its audience dark things are bad. Meanwhile, the Sandman TV has never stopped holding the hand of viewers, and Wanda's story is difficult as a result.

The first sign of the Sandman TV show would not have dealt with Wanda was good when the news that Season 2 would skip "Game of You" almost completely. "The audience wants the main character to invest and take root and follow it," Alan Heinberg Alan Explain to the polygon. "At all times we moved to another protagonist whose story is related to dreams, like Rose Walker, the audience (asked)" Why do I follow this person? Attraction.

However, Heinberg and his co -workers still seemed to have understood that Wanda herself was worth keeping, so they reduced her and missed her in the adaptation of the Volume 7 show, "Short Life". Finally, this speed aqueous version of "short lives" gave Wanda about five minutes hiding before killing it. For comparison, Wanda had friends in the comics, a bow and a sense of purpose. She was a whole person who made a huge impact on readers. Wanda TV, on the other hand, appears, talks about being a trance and dies.

Not only does the death of Wanda TV feel hollow, but also the scene of her tombstone is then robbed by her influence. In the comics, her human friend Barbie sees that her family wrote "Wanda", written on her tombstone. When she is alone, Barbie uses Wanda's favorite color and writes Wanda about her name. It is a good moment in part because it is futile; This is a cruel world where the characters live, and lipstick is likely to be washed soon, but we know that at least one person saw Wanda about who really was. It is painful that we need to solve this, but that pain is grounded in accurate bothering of how the world treats trans people.

In the Sandman TV, however, it is the dream (Tom Sturridge) who writes "Wanda" on her tombstone, and he does so through constant magic. Instead of presenting human gesture gesture in front of a huge cultural status quo, the series gives us an almighty God to easily undermine that status quo while barely lifting a finger. Shame Netflix thinks that the show's audience cannot handle the man-led story, because the difference between these two scenes-with the comic version is a million times more emotionally resonant-true emphasizes the value of maintaining the central phase of people.

As much as I enjoy Wanda's story in Sandman comics, there are definitely little moments in it that feel outdated. It would be fascinating to see what the version of "Game of You" could look like in the 2020s, revealing how Wanda and Barbie handled the complicated blend of improvements and failures in the modern world for the right.

Years before Many charges of miss against Neil Gayman It came out, the author Sandman referred to some criticism of Wanda's handling on his comic. In 2014, He wrote"If I was writing it today, than in 1989, when there were no trans characters into comics, it would be another story, I have no doubt." In 2020, Gayman further confirmed That he will make sure that there are transparent writers on the TV -Sandman TV show for the bow of you: "I am so fascinated to see what kind of transmitters room, what stories would you tell with those characters."

Needless to say, the 2 Sandman season did not fulfill that promise. The play did not update Wanda's story in any braver or more inclusive way. Instead, she simply shook Wanda on the side, took her righteous anger and conveyed her to give speeches to miles about the importance of being herself. Her personality is gone, and the pro-transformation of her story is streamlined in clumsy monologues who feel excluded from everything else that happens in the series. The show eventually retained the scene of the tombstone, which is the worst moment of "Game of You", but it does not work when you remove the whole context of the comics leading to it.

Wanda in the 1990s has changed many readers' minds to transmission and has helped many trans -readers feel seen, but it's hard to imagine that this new version of Wanda accomplishes. It is particularly disappointing given the ongoing cultural reaction against the Trans Rights Movement; I hoped the series would show even a little bit of the courage that the comics made 30 years ago. This was the chance of the series to deal with transphobia, make a statement and give us a certain fantasy television at the same time. Instead, we are given something without teeth and forgotten. The comic book story was a heart attack; The TV story leaves us to feel anything.

"Sandman" will end with the special episode "Death: High Price of Life", which begins to be transmitted July 31, 2025, on Netflix.