[This story contains major spoilers from Part 1 of season two of The Sandman, including episode five, “The Song of Orpheus,” and six, “Family Blood.”]
On the earth of The Sandman, the Limitless are strictly prohibited from spilling household blood. However within the first quantity of the hit Netflix fantasy drama’s second and remaining season, protagonist Dream a.okay.a. Morpheus (Tom Sturridge) decides to interrupt that sacred vow out of affection for his estranged son Orpheus (Ruairi O’Connor), even when doing so may drive the previous to pay the final word value.
Tailored from DC Comics’ seventh assortment within the Sandman sequence, Transient Lives, together with single-issue tales akin to The Track of Orpheus and Thermidor, the fifth and sixth episodes of Half 1 make clear the heartbreaking but heartwarming relationship between Dream and Orpheus, whose mom was the Greek muse Calliope (Melissanthi Mahut).
In 1700 BC, the Limitless siblings gathered in Greece to look at Orpheus marry Eurydice (Ella Rumpf) — just for Eurydice to die of a viper chunk on the evening of their wedding ceremony. Consumed by his personal grief, Orpheus went in opposition to his father’s needs and made a take care of his aunt, Demise (Kirby Howell-Baptiste). In trade for a chance to journey to the Underworld to plead for Eurydice’s return, Orpheus naively agreed to develop into immortal, telling everybody he encountered that he would give something to spend “a lifetime or an hour extra” with the love of his life. Orpheus is even capable of allure Hades and Persephone with a love track within the Underworld, however Orpheus’ failure to satisfy their one situation for Eurydice’s launch — he wasn’t allowed to look again at her till they had been each again within the dwelling world — meant that the 2 lovers can be separated ceaselessly.
With nothing left to stay for, Orpheus put himself within the path of the Sisters of the Frenzy, a vicious cult of Dionysus, who attacked and dismembered him, lowering him to solely a severed head. Desperately desirous to be put out of his distress, Orpheus begged his father to kill him, however Dream couldn’t deliver himself to manage the coup de grâce. As an alternative, Dream left Orpheus’ head within the indefinite care of clergymen on an uncharted island off the coast of Greece and instructed his son they may by no means see one another once more.
“Orpheus was idealistic, and he hoped he may go all the way down to the Underworld and rescue Eurydice and all the pieces can be OK — and definitely not that he’d be separated from Eurydice,” O’Connor, who was already “actually accustomed to Greek mythology on the whole” previous to auditioning for The Sandman, tells The Hollywood Reporter. “If he died in a standard time, he would’ve gone to the Underworld and he would’ve probably been with Eurydice down there. However now, it’s virtually assured he’s one of many solely individuals who won’t ever see Eurydice, and he gained’t have the ability to transfer his physique as a result of it’s gone. His father had warned him that this is able to occur.”
Like Father, Like Son
As a superfan of the unique Sandman comics for many years, showrunner Allan Heinberg had at all times wished to adapt Dream’s relationship with Orpheus, whose arrival was teased through the press run for season one. “With Orpheus, Dream is hotter and extra unguarded than he’s even with Calliope,” Heinberg tells THR, remarking that Dream’s discouragement of Orpheus’ plan to sacrifice his life for Eurydice’s was what any protecting mother or father would have performed in Dream’s place. (Learn THR’s full interview with Heinberg about quantity one right here.)
After Orpheus was decapitated within the comics, Heinberg says, Dream at all times appeared like “an Previous Testomony God” who was punishing his rebellious son for disobeying an order. However in his two-season adaptation of creator Neil Gaiman’s comics, Heinberg has been extra focused on exploring the emotional price of the King of Goals’ job on his relationships as a brother, lover and father. In line with that theme, though the dialogue onscreen is almost an identical to that of the comics, the showrunner wished to point out Dream’s heartbreak over not having the ability to assist save his son.
“The rationale [Dream] says, ‘We is not going to see one another once more,’ is that Dream can’t deal with [seeing him like that],” says Heinberg. “From that standpoint, as Dream’s strolling away from Orpheus, we will see that he’s completely shattered as a substitute of stone-faced and punishing. You perceive how onerous that is for him.”
Via his in depth discussions with Heinberg, O’Connor got here to know that Orpheus’ preliminary, childlike animosity towards Dream stemmed from feeling deserted by his father, who had chosen to prioritize his tasks to humanity over his family. “It jogged my memory a little bit of, like, if Abraham Lincoln was your father — he belongs to you just a little bit as a result of he’s your father, however he belongs to all people else as effectively. I believe that may be fairly onerous on a baby,” explains O’Connor. “It’s such a shock for [Dream] to be at [Orpheus’] wedding ceremony that it’s just a little bit overwhelming — and virtually foreboding that he’s there as effectively.”
Heinberg provides, “The best way that Dream and Orpheus communicate to one another on the finish of episode six may be very totally different from the best way they communicate to one another in episode 5. You’ve bought lots of of years of remorse and recrimination in episode 5. They’re very a lot father and son — ‘I inform you what to do and find out how to behave, and also you do it as a result of I’m your father, and I do know greater than you.’ By the tip of it, there are simply two individuals who love one another enormously.”
O’Connor may really feel the burden of that father-son relationship when appearing reverse Sturridge, whom he first noticed carry out reverse Jake Gyllenhaal within the Broadway manufacturing of Sea Wall/A Life in 2019. Although Sturridge is just 5 or 6 years older, “it felt like I used to be coming to play with somebody who was a great few steps above me. I had the reverence to really feel like, ‘This man’s a thousand years older than me in sure regards,’” O’Connor says. “I believe that vitality — that wrestle — of actually making an attempt to stay as much as him and never having the ability to do it, however actually making an attempt to do it, helped [those scenes].”
He provides of Sturridge, “He additionally seems wonderful. You take a look at his face and also you’re like, ‘Why can’t my face appear like that?’ I actually respect him and am envious of him in some ways, and I hope that gels with what we had been making an attempt to do.”
The Track — and Disembodied Head! — of Orpheus
O’Connor, on a couple of event, tells THR that he thinks the gods had been smiling down on him throughout his time on The Sandman. Final 12 months, after a number of rounds of self-tape auditions, the Irish actor — greatest identified for his work in The Spanish Princess and The Conjuring: The Satan Made Me Do It — landed the position simply weeks earlier than he was scheduled to start filming. He started obsessively poring over all of the comics involving Orpheus. He even discovered find out how to play the lyre, although he by no means needed to play his character’s instrument of alternative on digital camera.
However probably the most difficult side of the position was studying find out how to sing in Greek. “It was simply inconceivable, so I ended up chanting and listening to it. It turned hypnotic, virtually like mantras in my head,” O’Connor remembers. “I felt like I used to be going loopy simply making an attempt to get the Greek into me, after which realizing on the day that I used to be going to need to sing it and that it’s going to need to actually match my mouth actions and all the pieces as a lot as doable.”
Along with singing stay on the day, the actor recorded the ultimate model of Orpheus’ songs at Abbey Highway Studios. “I’m not non secular, so music might be the closest factor. My voice was a bit tough that day, so [the producers] had been like, ‘Come all the way down to studio two the place the Beatles recorded, and we’ll heat up your voice,” O’Connor remembers, sheepishly revealing that he ended up bringing his greatest pal that day and the 2 sang “Hey Jude” on the piano as a warm-up. “I don’t know — it made me really feel like music does have the facility that Orpheus imbues in it, that it modifications lives.”
Ruairi O’Connor as Orpheus and Barry Sloane as Destruction in season two, episode 5.
Courtesy Of Netflix
To play Orpheus after his physique has been ripped aside, O’Connor needed to get a solid fabricated from his personal head. “The wonderful factor with the casts is that they have all the opposite heads they’ve performed through the years. I had Brad Pitt’s head in my arms, and I used to be wanting on the form of his head to see why he’s so good-looking,” O’Connor quips. “It’s a surprisingly small head! I used to be like, ‘Possibly that’s the important thing.’
“They’d three heads that they made up, and one in all them was impeccably me and the others had been for extra large photographs, and I used to be like, ‘Is that what individuals suppose I appear like? Hopefully not!’ However the primary one was positively a greater model of me,” he continues. “It was nice as a result of my costume earlier than [the decapitation] had all of those spindly bits. I used to be sporting 4 wedding ceremony clothes principally on the facet of a mountain, typically tripping up over it. And now, I used to be simply sporting a inexperienced bodysuit, however, in fact, I used to be locked in with a factor round my neck so I wouldn’t transfer.”
Whereas some actors in his place could have been daunted, O’Connor discovered the expertise of appearing with simply his head to be “unusually liberating.” The crew discovered artistic methods to take care of the phantasm of a literal speaking head — holes had been minimize into tables at good angles, his co-stars needed to fake to elevate his head whereas he stood up slowly — which was then improved in post-production.
“My arms didn’t need to be onscreen in any respect, so I may do no matter I wished as a result of they’d take it out. It took away a variety of the avenues for errors you can make or for going excessive,” O’Connor says, including that he’d “really like to do one other position” like that. “If Return to Oz 2 ever occurs or one thing the place they want a king that modifications his heads, possibly I may get that to be my area of interest,” he jokes.
A Bittersweet Reunion
Episode six started with Dream contacting Girl Johanna Constantine (Jenna Coleman) within the late 18th century with an pressing request: He wanted her to go to Paris and retrieve Orpheus’ head, which Maximilien Robespierre had confiscated throughout his Reign of Terror and was planning to destroy for being “an object of superstition and decadence.” Upon being discovered, Johanna was thrown in jail and even confronted the specter of being executed by guillotine, however she had cleverly chosen to cover Orpheus in a pile of heads belonging to Robespierre’s different victims. At Dream’s suggestion, Johanna requested Orpheus to sing in entrance of Robespierre and his males, who had been then left frozen of their tracks, permitting Johanna to flee with Orpheus’ noggin.
As they started the journey again to Orpheus’ temple, Johanna and Orpheus took a particular liking to one another as buddies. In truth, Johanna’s sole request for efficiently finishing her mission was to spend extra time with Orpheus — a want that Dream clearly granted, since she was buried close to the temple after her loss of life.
Talking about what Johanna noticed in Orpheus, O’Connor factors out that his character appeared to have “discovered a peace, a maturity and an acceptance to dwelling and present probably ceaselessly with no means to do something for himself.”
“I believe Johanna feedback that there’s one thing inspiring about what he’s been capable of do,” O’Connor says. “I watched that [documentary] just lately with Christopher Reeve, and naturally he had his horse accident and you may see it’s terrible, however there’s a liberation as effectively in realizing he may overcome that for therefore lengthy. Orpheus has been doing one thing akin to that for 1000’s of years, and he can admire Johanna as a result of she’s the alternative. She’s alive and vivacious, and transferring and tricking individuals. I believe they admire the alternative in one another.”
Heinberg provides, “Orpheus, at that time, is so philosophical about his destiny and making an attempt to spend his days as greatest he can. Although he longs for the peace of loss of life, he’s not an sad man. He’s not struggling, and Dream is struggling and has been struggling since he left him on the seashore.”
Within the current day, Dream has no alternative however to go to Orpheus, as a result of he’s the one dwelling one that can find Dream’s brother, Destruction (Barry Sloane), who deserted his realm some 300 years in the past. Whereas Orpheus would have good motive to be offended or resentful together with his father, he chooses as a substitute to be “loving, accepting and forgiving,” Heinberg says. “It’s such a reduction for Dream in that second as a result of he’s been dreading having to face the largest mistake he’d ever made.”
In trade for Orpheus’ assist in finding Destruction, Dream agrees to grant Orpheus the one boon he has at all times wished. So, after Dream and Delirium (Esmé Creed-Miles) monitor down Destruction to verify that he’ll not helm his realm once more, Dream returns to the temple and — out of affection — ends his son’s life.
“I believe him saying, ‘I’m prepared now, father,’ was the vital factor — for him to have company,” O’Connor says of taking pictures Orpheus’ remaining moments. “He wasn’t begging him to kill him. He is aware of that he’ll do it for him, however he will get to lastly decide and be the grownup, and asks his father to do it. His father was robbed of being a father due to who he was, and on this second, it’s clear that he’s doing one thing that solely a father would do for his son.”
Dream solemnly bids farewell to Delirium and returns to his palace, the place he instructs his librarian and property supervisor Lucienne (Vivienne Acheampong) to alleviate the clergymen of their duties after they bury Orpheus’ head in an unmarked grave. He then returns to his personal room and at last breaks down whereas washing Orpheus’ blood off his arms.
Heinberg reveals that Dream’s resolution to cover behind a bookcase whereas delivering the orders to Lucienne was not scripted: “It was our DP Will Baldy’s thought within the second, like, ‘What if it’s an excessive amount of for him and he can’t face her? And his not exhibiting himself to her shatters her.’ It was such a beautiful collaborative thought, and it units up that scene in his personal quarters the place he’s washing the blood off his arms in such a phenomenal means.”
In quantity two, Dream will inevitably need to reply to the Fates — a.okay.a. the Furies — for spilling household blood. However, true to kind, he is not going to take his destiny mendacity down. “Dream goes to do all the pieces he probably can to maintain his life and his kingdom, and the individuals who work with him, entire and secure and alive,” Heinberg teases. (He’s particularly hinting at a line within the season premiere the place Dream says he has made preparations for the Dreaming to outlive, even when he doesn’t.) “He’s going to battle for the subsequent 5 episodes, as a result of that’s who he’s. So it’s not over, and there are many surprises alongside the best way.”
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The Sandman is now streaming on Netflix. The subsequent 5 episodes, which can conclude Dream’s story, will drop on July 24, with a bonus episode centered round Demise dropping on July 31. Learn THR’s full interview with Heinberg about Half 1.