Gone are the days when the audience only got excited about the heroes. First, the shift was from pure heroes, ‘classic good guys’ like Superman and Captain America to the antiheroes or grey characters like Batman and Wolverine. Now, owing to their layered origin stories and nuanced character arcs, it’s the villains that steal the show. Whether you look at the Joker, Riddler, and many more Batman villains to even the latest Vecna from Stranger Things, we empathize with the antagonists. Netflix is soon to showcase a new bad guy and we just cannot keep calm. Obviously, it is The Corinthian from the streaming goliath’s live-action adaptation of The Sandman. 

Boyd Holbrook’s challenges as The Corinthian

After multiple fan theories and speculations on who would portray the biggest villain in The Sandman, the role finally went to Boyd Holbrook of Narcos fame. Portraying the clean-cut DEA agent in the biographical crime drama, The Corinthian definitely would’ve been a huge leap for Holbrook. By his own admission, it was certainly no easy feat adorning an antagonistic character with teeth in place of eye sockets. In an exclusive interview with Screenrant, Boyd Holbrook spoke about his initial hesitation with the role.

“At the beginning, when we first started talking about this, I was a little concerned as a lot of acting is done through the eyes. The soul is lying in your eyes.” However, producer and developer of the show, Allan Heinberg, explained to Holbrook the subtleties and overtone of The Corinthian’s character. This eased up the actor as he understood the depth and layers better. “It became, not a handicap, but an impediment that he has. But it’s almost a sensory thing as well. It was a lot of playing in darkness, a lot of finding your way.”, admitted Holbrook.

Who is The Corinthian in The Sandman?

A living nightmare, The Corinthian first appeared in issue #10 of The Sandman graphic novels by Neil Gaiman. Morpheus, The Sandman, or simply Dream, actually created The Corinthian, as a nightmare so that humanity confronts its anxiety or “A black mirror, made to reflect everything about itself that humanity will not confront.” The experiment clearly was a huge failure, and Dream unleashed a sadistic and narcissistic serial killer with a spine-chilling grin upon the world.

Have you noticed how so many villains have amazing fashion sense? Well, The Corinthian is one of them. Often dressed in all white, he adorns opaque shades that shroud his non-eyes, which are actually two sets of teeth. And his MO, you guessed it right, is devouring his victim’s eyeballs using his teeth-eyes (Insecure much, Corinthian?) Also, don’t the white clothes and obsession with eyes remind you of 001 or Vecna from Stranger Things?

https://youtu.be/83ClbRPRDXU?t=22

Well, that’s a gruesome villain if we ever saw one! Are you excited about the Netflix premiere of The Sandman on August 5? Tell us your theories about the live-action and your thoughts about Boyd Holbrook as The Corinthian.