From a galaxy far, far away to the realm of the Dreaming. 

Star Wars veteran Mark Hamill is voicing Merv Pumpkinhead on The Sandman, showrunner Allan Heinberg and The Sandman comic creator Neil Gaiman revealed during the show’s Geeked Week panel. As fans of Gaiman’s lyrical fantasy graphic novel series know, Merv has the body of the scarecrow, the head of a jack-o’-lantern and is essentially the janitor of the dream world. 

Hang Out With The Cast of ‘The Sandman’ During Their GEEKED WEEK Panel

“We were thrilled to be able to ask and get Mark Hamill to be the voice of Merv Pumpkinhead, and he’s fantastic in it,” Heinberg told panel host Felicia Day. “He was such a pleasure to work with.” 

“His Merv is hilarious. That’s the other thing that needs saying,” Gaiman added. “Merv was always, in the comic, the — on the one hand — a kind of comic relief, but, on the other hand, the voice of sanity, the voice of just going, ‘This is actually kind of nuts.’ He gets to be that person, especially when arguing with Patton Oswalt [who plays Morpheus’ raven Matthew].” 

In addition to Gaiman and Heinberg, the panel featured stars Tom Sturridge, who plays Morpheus, the titular Sandman and lord of dreams, Jenna Coleman, who plays occult detective Johanna Constantine, and Vivienne Acheampong, who plays the Dreaming’s librarian, Lucienne. Vanesu Samunyai (as Rose Walker) and Boyd Holbrook (as The Corinthian, a walking nightmare) round out the cast.

During the discussion, the producers and actors revealed the show’s first teaser, the August 5 premiere date and previewed what fans can expect from this highly anticipated adaptation of an acclaimed comic book series. 

The Sandman centers on Morpheus, aka Dream, who rules the world of dreams and nightmares known as the Dreaming. Morpheus is one of the Endless, the mysterious anthropomorphic personification of several powerful human forces. His siblings include: Destiny, Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), Destruction, Desire (Mason Alexander Park), Despair and Delirium. You can imagine there was likely never a dull moment at their family gatherings. 

“What’s amazing about them — and what I love about them — is that despite this extraordinary fantastical description, they are like a normal family in that they’re riddled with dysfunction,” said Sturridge. “And it’s that dysfunction that propels our story.” 

When The Sandman begins, Morpheus isn’t his all-powerful self because he was captured and imprisoned for over a century. Like the first volume of the comic, Preludes and Nocturnes, the show follows Morpheus after he escapes captivity and embarks on a journey across different worlds and timelines to fix the chaos his absence has caused.

Originally released in 1989, The Sandman comic has been similarly trapped. Over the past three decades, there have been several failed attempts to bring this series to the screen. And Gaiman, who created the comic with Mike Dringenberg and Sam Keith, bore witness to each one. 

“I think fans are going to be incredibly excited because this is Sandman,” said Gaiman. “It’s taken us 34 years to get Sandman on-screen. I’ve killed off so many bad Sandmans on the way – the bodies of so many bad Sandman movies have been buried — to do it right and to get to the point where, now that Netflix would have the confidence in us and assemble amazing actors, amazing people to do it…The thing they love is on the screen.” 

Watching his creation come to life has been a “wonderful” experience for Gaiman for a number of reasons. “Sometimes it will be wonderful because it was exactly the thing I always had in my head. Tom is Morpheus. Once you see him on the screen, you go, ‘Oh yeah, that’s the guy in the comics,’ ” he said. “Sometimes it’s deeper or weirder or just different, but it’s always deeper, weirder or different in ways that make it more interesting, not less.” 

He specifically called out Acheampong and Coleman’s gender-bent castings. “Having Viv [take] the character that [artist] Joe Orlando had created in the comics a long time ago and going, ‘Is there any reason at all that Lucienne can’t look like that but have pointy ears? None that we can think of. Great,’” it suddenly allows a level of honesty that we didn’t have for these characters. Lucienne can get meaner,” said Gaiman. “Or having Johanna Constantine, watching what Jenna brought — this glorious, heartbroken, wounded, bitter sass to it — it was like, ‘Oh, that’s exactly what I was trying to get into the original comic with John, only it’s that but more so.’” 

The role of Constantine enchanted Coleman from the moment she read the script. “Everything kind of came to me straight away,” said the Doctor Who alum. “The idea of her being this lone ranger in the world with this tough exterior, her cynicism and wryness and wit to not let anybody close. Kind of a tortured soul with a big compassionate heart hidden somewhere underneath.” 

Acheampong didn’t have any trouble stepping into Lucienne and Morpheus’ dynamic because Sturridge was such a great scene partner. “When I met Tom, he’s so lovely and warm and open, and then he just completely transforms into Morpheus and is incredible. You can just tell that he really knows this character because he has just embodied him so beautifully,” she said. “It was a pretty easy thing for me to do with him.” 

Samunyai was particularly nervous about playing Rose Walker — a 21-year-old who crosses paths with Morpheus as she’s grieving her parents and looking for her brother — because this is her first TV gig. “This is a great series to have as my first series role. The script... made it very easy to play because the script just laid it out so well,” she said. “Tom is really great to work with, and what was really nice was how we played with Morpheus and the relationship between them.” 

According to Gaiman, Morpheus’ relationships with Lucienne, Johanna and Rose Walker are what make this story so engrossing. “One of the things I wanted to try and do when I was writing it was to tackle enormous beings, enormous ideas and enormous time spans. But the only way you can make anybody care about any of that stuff is by actually looking at human beings and what happens to them and people’s hearts and people’s minds,” said the author. “Tom’s huge story as Morpheus would be so much less interesting without a Rose Walker, without a Johanna Constantine. You need what happens to them and their influence on him is actually what drives Season 1. It’s all about change, and it’s all about beings who are bigger and greater than gods and what they’re going to become.”  Everyone involved says The Sandman will thrill the comic book’s veteran fans and newcomers alike. 

“We wanted to give longtime fans everything that they loved about Sandman and reading Sandman, and then more... stuff that happens off-panel in the comic. Just a deeper dive into these characters’ lives and their feelings and their souls,” said Heinberg. “A lot of our cast was new to The Sandman, too, so we couldn’t just operate in the fan bubble. We really needed to be able to tell this story for people who have never read Sandman before... So, you really don’t need to have read the comics.” But they hope The Sandman inspires you to pick them up. 

Geeked Week is a celebration of Netflix's immersive slate of storytelling across sci-fi, fantasy, gaming, anime and more. Check out the full schedule here. For more, follow Netflix Geeked on Twitter.