Netflix finally announced the final 12 principal cast members for its highly anticipated adaptation of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman last week, and a few of the choices stirred up a lot of "debate" among fans of the seminal DC Vertigo series.
Predictably enough, most of the backlash was reserved for Black actress Kirby Howell-Baptiste (The Good Place, Cruella) taking on the role of Death, and nonbinary actor Mason Alexander Park (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Cowboy Bebop) being cast as Desire.
In the comics, Desire is described as "a strikingly beautiful, androgynous figure of gender-fluidity; it can be male, female, both, or neither as the situation warrants." So, yeah... moving on.
Death is depicted as being white (The Endless all have alabaster skin), but the character, along with the rest of her family, take different forms depending on who happens to be perceiving them at the time.
Here are just a couple of the responses Gaiman Tweeted to those who either haven't read the comics or simply failed to grasp the above. We also have some fan-art imagining how Baptise might look as Death.
The 11-episode first season of The Sandman is expected to adapt the first arc of the Vertigo comics series, "Preludes and Nocturnes," which finds Dream captured by a black magician and held prisoner for the better part of a century. When he finally escapes, he sets about recovering three very important items, encountering Lucifer, John Constantine, Doctor Destiny, Martian Manhunter and more on his travels.
Gaiman is developing the show along with David S. Goyer and Allan Heinberg. No premiere date has been set.