And I'm one of those people who were annoyed that they replace John Constantine with Joanna Constantine, and the other day it struck me that they should have named the character Gemma instead of Joanna. Not only would it have made the change more palatable to oldhead Vertigo readers such as myself, but it would have differentiated the characters Johanna and Joanna more. A surprising number of people thought they were supposed to be the same person.

“As you can imagine, every moment with Matthew is expensive,” Heinberg told Polygon in a Zoom interview. “As a fan and a reader, that arc was not my favorite, that Matthew was mistrustful of The Corinthian, and The Corinthian actually kind of murders Matthew at a certain point. Dream saves him. We were looking for more places to put [Johanna Constantine actor] Jenna Coleman, and it was Neil who suggested, ‘Why don’t we team up Johanna Constantine present-day with The Corinthian?’ Which I thought was an amazing idea, and we just ran with it...."

“In the comic, the new Corinthian is — apart from being a slave to his nature — a more heroic figure, and so it just felt logical to me to have him fall madly in love with [Constantine], and for her to resist because of what he is, but then to realize that Dream has sort of given her this gift, in that she can't hurt him,” Heinberg said. “They're perfect for each other in this weird way.”...“Boyd really embraced it as well,” Heinberg said. “It was so different from what Boyd was able to do in season 1. [...] They really got on and enjoyed each other, and their chemistry was fantastic.”

The Corinthian and Constantine worked so well together that Heinberg wanted to make them the stars of a spin-off series. The Sandman is ending with season 2, but Heinberg also had ideas for a season 3 where Dream’s allies, the fairy Nuala (Ann Skelly) and librarian Lucienne (Vivienne Acheampong), raise Daniel. Heinberg also imagined a version of the series that hewed closer to the anthology nature of the comics, and devoted three-episode arcs to Dream’s siblings Desire (Mason Alexander Park) and Despair (Donna Preston).

“I think the viewership numbers would have to be off the charts [to justify a spin-off].” Heinberg said. “It's a very expensive show. There's no version of the show that isn't expensive. But I think part of the beauty of what the comic book is, is that you could spin off almost any of these characters. They're all very fully realized characters.”