Dead Boy Detectives Showrunners Tease Sandman Easter Eggs

Netflix's Sandman Universe is expanding with Dead Boy Detectives, a new series that's coming to the streaming site next month. The DC Comics characters are a supernatural detective duo who were created by Neil Gaiman with art by Matt Wagner and Malcolm Jones III. The Dead Boy Detectives made their first comics appearance in The Sandman #25 in 1991 before they got their own series. The Sandman TV show debuted on Netflix in 2022, and the show is expected to get a second season. ComicBook.com recently attended a meet and greet with Dead Boy Detective showrunners, Steve Yockey and Beth Schwartz, and we asked if they recommend watching Sandman or reading the comics before starting the spinoff series. 

"Well, I think that you don't need to do any homework for the show, and I feel like it's more fun," Schwartz explained to ComicBook.com. "I don't know, everyone's different, but I think it's more fun not to do anything before you see it. So you can be surprised and then you can go back and watch Sandman and read the comics after." 

"And we are true to the boys' origins and how they started the detective agency and Crystal's backstory," Yockey added. "But the rest of it is us kind of taking things from the comic books and sort of re-appropriating them, re-imagining them so that people who are familiar with the comic books will get to have those kind of like, 'Oh, I recognize this, moment.' ... But regular people can just watch the show."

'Yeah, it's fun. Easter eggs for those people who are just really huge fans, but I don't think if you, hopefully when they watch a show, they'll want to see where it came from," Schwartz added.

 When asked by Looper if there will be connections to The Sandman throughout the season, the showrunners gave a resounding, "Yes!" 

"There are. We are saying, there are," Schwartz confirmed. "Yeah. For people that have watched The Sandman on Netflix, it will pay off. And for people who haven't, you'll just get to see some stuff that might surprise you a little bit," Yockey added. 

What Is Dead Boy Detectives About?

You can read Netflix's description of the series here: "Do you have a pesky ghost haunting you? Has a demon stolen your core memories? You may want to ring the Dead Boy Detectives. Meet Edwin Payne (George Rexstrew) and Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri), "the brains" and "the brawn" behind the Dead Boy Detectives agency. Teenagers born decades apart who find each other only in death, Edwin and Charles are best friends and ghosts... who solve mysteries. They will do anything to stick together – including escaping evil witches, Hell and Death herself. With the help of a clairvoyant named Crystal (Kassius Nelson) and her friend Niko (Yuyu Kitamura), they are able to crack some of the mortal realm's most mystifying paranormal cases."

As part of The Sandman Universe for Netflix and based on the beloved comic series from Neil Gaiman, Dead Boy Detectives was developed for television by Steve Yockey, who wrote the first episode and serves as showrunner alongside Beth Schwartz as co-showrunner. Greg Berlanti, Yockey, Schwartz, Jeremy Carver, Sarah Schechter, Leigh London Redman and Gaiman serve as executive producers of the series from Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros. Television.

"I've been obsessed with this comic for a long time, so it's a true passion project," Yockey said when the project was first announced. "And Jeremy, Berlanti Productions, DC, WBTV, HBO Max – they're all encouraging me to run with every wild, bizarre, and unsettling choice. The result is going to be really dark fun."

Stay tuned for more updates about Dead Boy Detectives, which is expected to debut in April.