Joffrey Actor Resurfaces as Sandman's New Villain
Jack Gleeson is officially back from the acting wilderness — and he's playing another mischievous little menace.
The former Game of Thrones star, best known as the smug, punchable Joffrey Baratheon, returns to TV in The Sandman Season 2 as Puck, a "malevolent hobgoblin" with a thing for messing with mortals.
The new season drops on Netflix July 3, with Part Two coming July 24 and a bonus episode landing July 31. So yeah, buckle up for a strange, stylish July.
Gleeson's character Puck — yes, that Puck, as in Shakespeare's troublemaker from A Midsummer Night's Dream — is described as the royal jester to King Auberon of Faerie, a twisted little chaos agent who treats humans like chew toys. And if that sounds tailor-made for the guy who made Joffrey one of the most hated villains in TV history, that's because it was.
Showrunner Allan Heinberg told EW he wrote the role specifically for Gleeson:
"He brings sexiness to it and mischief and psychology and heart... I think our Puck is a very different Puck from the comics, but also from the Puck that I would've written for any other actor."
A new image from SFX Magazine shows Gleeson's Puck standing beside Freddie Fox's Loki (yep, that Loki), giving fans a better look than the earlier shoulder-up teaser. It's safe to say the trickster energy is strong this season.
Gleeson joins a stacked lineup of newcomers, including:
- Ruairi O'Connor as Orpheus
- Clive Russell as Odin
- Laurence O'Fuarain as Thor
- Ann Skelly as Nuala
- Douglas Booth as Cluracan
- Indya Moore as Wanda
- Steve Coogan as Barnabas
Gleeson himself largely stepped away from the spotlight after Game of Thrones, taking a break from acting after 2014. Since then, he's made only a few appearances, including a recent reunion with Alfie Allen in Safe Harbor. In 2023, he told University College Dublin:
"I started acting when I was eight... but when it became less of a recreation and more of a profession, it put more pressure on the acting itself and made it a tiny bit less enjoyable."
Still, fans are excited to see him back — and probably ready to hate him all over again, just in a different costume. Whether Puck will live up to Joffrey levels of loathing remains to be seen, but The Sandman is clearly handing him the material to try.