Boy, this Sandman season 2 teaser sure isn't saying the Neil G-word

Netflix is currently running its big Geeked Week event, where the streamer tries to engage with The Youths in its audience in often very extended bits that seems to only exist to keep us further from seeing that new Squid Game teaser we know they’re hiding. But there has, admittedly, been some pretty interesting stuff rolled out by host Joe Manganiello and the various streaming stars forced to endure this spectacle—sorry, we’re still recovering from watching The Sandman‘s Kirby Howell-Baptiste play third-grade party games for an extended period of appropriately Endless stage time—even if, in some cases, the interesting part isn’t necessarily what Netflix wants us focused on.

Like, say, counting the number of times the words “Neil” or “Gaiman” appear in this new behind-the-scenes featurette for the second season of The Sandman, i.e., absolutely zero. The featurette itself is cool enough—we get shots of the big banquet of the gods scene from Season Of Mists, and shots of all the members of the Endless coming together for the first time in the show’s history. But you can also palpably feel the gaps where mentions of Gaiman’s “genius”—or even an appearance from the man himself—would normally go in a promo like this, presumably sucked into the void by the sexual assault allegations against the prominent author. Sandman is a big enough deal for Netflix that it’s unlikely to go the way of Dead Boy Detectives (which was canceled last month) any time in the immediate future, but it’s clear the streamer is feeling a little leery about how tightly it’s tied its brand to Gaiman’s in the lead-up to the show.

Sandman is set to return for its second season some time in 2025.