Headscratchers / The Sandman (2022)

New entries on the bottom. Notice that the entries contain unmarked spoilers!

Hob just waited in that pub for 30 years for no reason?

• In the comic, Dream gets free of his imprisonment just in time to go see Hob Gadling for their centennial meeting. But here, the year of their meeting is still 1989 like in the comics (the Shakespeare part of the story wouldn't work if the year for that scene wasn't 1589), even though Dream is only released in 2021. So Dream doesn't make it to the pub in 1989, and based on how their previous meeting went, Hob would have to assume Dream doesn't want to see him again. Despite all this, Hob apparently bought the new pub that replaced the old one, and sat there every day for over 30 years just in case Dream would happen to show up? Even for an immortal that seems pretty pointless, as Hob had no way of knowing Dream was imprisoned, while he had every reason to think Dream would never come to visit again.
  • Hob's unwillingness to give up his immortal life shows that he's a pretty big optimist, so it's not out of character for him to hope against hope that he would see his friend again. Assuming he did buy the pub, he wouldn't actually have to sit there every day waiting for Dream, since he could just tell the staff to notify him if a thin pale man came in asking for him. And since Hob is a guy who clearly likes his beer, it is hardly surprising that he would happen to be in his own pub when Dream finally arrives. (Considering this last point, he may even have bought the place just because he liked it and it was a source of fond memories for him.)
  • I thought Dream showed up on the anniversary date but the wrong year, so Hob would only need to be there once a year.
  • Dream does mention that he has an appointment to attend to, then goes to the pub. So, it's probably indeed the same date but the wrong year, with Hob spending that same date at the pub every year.
• He might just like hanging out in that pub. Seems cozy.
  • Also, Hob's table was covered in papers. He was working. Just like some people work in coffee shops, Hob effectively made an office in the pub. Perhaps he even bought the place, just so he could be close by if Morpheus showed up again.
• It's his pub now. He can hang out there for as long as he wants.

What kills Hope?

• Despair. Despair kills hope. Why isn't this the obvious answer?
  • While the rules of the game are deliberately vague, it is mentioned that there are many ways to lose the oldest game, and hesitation is mentioned explicitly. The point isn't that hope is indestructible. Otherwise, it would be an "I win" button. The point is that Lucifer cannot think of anything that would destroy hope.
  • The Game demands that each step one-up the other in some way. In a game with a different arrangement, maybe "Despair" could beat an early "Hope" move. But you can't wheel out plain Despair when you've already played "the Anti-Life, the Dark at the End of Everything", because it's a step backwards.
  • Since The Sandman is at heart an optimistic story, the point made here is that no situation is so desperate or bad that it would kill hope completely. In addition: (and more so in the comic, where "Hope" was always Dream's intended trump-card from early in the battle), this is a microcosm of Dream's later comment that Hell would be nothing without the ability of its inhabitants to dream of Heaven - a devil knows this deep down in their psychology, as it's how their domain works.
  • Arguably, Hope kills despair. Anti-Life is the incarnation of despair after all as it is the state of hopelessness that allows one to be enslaved utterly according to Darkseid (and Jack Kirby). However, in the Kirby view of the world, hope and good is stronger than despair. The Devil doesn't believe despair is stronger than hope (because they still dream of heaven) so they can't use that answer.
  • Because Despair defines Hope. It does not kill it. One can lose Hope, but not outright kill it.
  • Because in order to put forward any sort of defense at all, Lucifer would need to embody that concept, as he did for the serpent, the nova, etc. And he dare not embody despair, or doubt, or any other would-be murderer of hope, because that would mean relinquishing an illusion that has sustained him since he left the heavens.
    • Indeed, Hope being so invaluable that not even the Devil, the ruler of all that's unholy and one of the most powerful beings in creation, is willing to destroy it just proves how powerful it is.
  • As I recall, this was made more clear in the comics, but Lucifer does know how to kill hope, they just cannot do it because they cling to it too desperately themselves. This is emphasized by Morpheus' response at the end when Lucifer threatens to keep him there. Also, when you take a form in the game, your opponent is subjected to its attack - and hope hurts Lucifer more deeply than any of the physical attacks used previously, to the point of leaving them unable to retaliate.
    • In the comics Dream was fighting Chronozon directly, not Lucifer, and he just couldn't come up with anything. The show plays it differently.
  • Truth - illusion-shattering, dream-dispelling. Among them the hope that one day the Prince of Lies will be again allowed to enter Heaven...
    • Doesn't work; truth is far more relative than that, as the next episode explores.
    • To be more specific, the idea that truth could counter hope implies that hope is a lie or an illusion, which isn't in line with the worldview presented by The Sandman. As Morpheus explains to John, the dreams of the people in the diner aren't lies and it's overly simplistic of John to view them that way.
  • Important to note here; despair is the absence of hope, not what destroys it. Trying to destroy hope with despair is like trying to destroy heat with cold. You'd have to destroy hope with something else in order to get despair.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Dream kills hope. He gives out Hope by giving people dreams and aspirations, but he can also kill hope by taking them away like he did with serial killers. Presumably, using your opponent as a trump card in "The oldest game" is automatic loss and you admitting that you lost the game. If Lucifer said "I am Morpheus, Lord of Dreams, hope giver and destroyer" Dream's answer would be a smile and "No, I am. Good game, thanks for playing." as he takes his winnings.

Jessamy's ten years

• Lucienne makes a point of saying that ravens can travel between worlds and later Dream says he took Matthew with him to Hell to keep Lucienne informed. Why didn't Jessamy tell someone in the Dreaming about what happened to Morpheus and get some help rather than wait outside that house for ten years?
  • Everyone was ransacking the place or departing and it seemed only Lucienne remained loyal.
  • It's possible that Dream's ravens can travel between realms only by channelling the dimension-hopping power their master has, and with Dream magically cut off from the rest of the universe, Jessamy lost that ability. If the ravens channel their power directly from Dream, that would also explain why it was so easy to kill her, even though she's supposed to be a dream and not an actual biological being.

Burgess dying in front of Dream

• Shouldn't that mean that Death was right there in the basement with them? Dream even says he's sure his siblings already know what happened to him. And yet neither Dream nor the watcher see her and she says she was worried sick about him.
  • It can be assumed that as the embodiment of the concept of dying, Death is on some level present every time someone or something dies, including both Burgess and Jessamy (who also died in the basement). At the same time, not every death requires her personal touch, so she can walk around a city without having to rush off to take care of a natural disaster on the other side of the globe. So she might be aware that a magician and a raven passed into her domain, and could recall "meeting" them if she concentrated, but she didn't appear "in person" in the basement in a way that would allow her to be observed and chat with her brother (possibly because doing so would have been too risky, since Burgess and his lot had already captured Dream).
    • It's not clear if this applies in the show but in the comics Death absolutely does show up in person for everyone but time works differently for her so she can wander a city with Dream or otherwise enjoy herself and still be on time for every death.
  • In "The Sound of Her Wings" Death says he should have called out to her for help. Based on his reasoning to Lucienne on why he wasn't asking Destiny where his items were and instead calling on the Fates she may have felt coming to his aid (without him explicitly asking her too) would do nothing but offend him on a very deep level. Word of God confirms this is the reason for the comics version so it is a safe assumption the same holds true here.
    • At least in the comics, Death dismissively describes what Dream was doing and had gone through as a "game" - with the implication, I think, that he didn't actually have to play by the rules of magic and could have just chosen to break out at any time. His siblings don't take it seriously because it wasn't serious, not at the level they operate on.
    • The "game" she refers to is his quest for his lost items, ot his imprisonment, and she's only being that dismissive of it because she's annoyed that he's getting depressed over it being done rather than looking for inspiration elsewhere.
  • Also, unlike in the comics, here it is hinted that Desire had something to with Dream's imprisonment. So maybe they were using their powers to keep Dream's condition hidden from his other siblings.
  • As Dream and others of the Endless frequently note there are rules to their existence. Burgess imprisoned Dream according to rules of magic, he can only be freed within the same rules. And if the ritual didn't include stopping the Endless from coming to get him then it would be quite worthless.

Superheroes exist in this universe?

• When Jed is helping her sister to pack her things, he is seen giving her some toys of Wonder Woman and Batman, that means that other entities and superhumans exist?
  • More likely the toys mean that Wonder Woman, Batman, and other superheroes are fictional in this universe, just like they are in ours.
  • This is supported by the scene in a subsequent episode where Jed is watching one of the DC Animated Universe shows in the hotel room.
  • Other than the Constantines the closest hint we get to other DC characters is when the Corinthian states the Boogieman drowned in Louisiana, as in the comics, which happened in an edition of Swamp Thing years before Sandman.

Why is the old pub still around

• So in the missed 1989 meeting, Hob learns the pub's going to be closed as they want to build new flats. By 2022 when Dream returns... the old pub is still there, boarded up. So what happened to the whole flats things in the intervening 33 years? They clearly never got built, why did the pub move?
  • The pub and the land it was built on were sold. Just because the new owners never got around to doing what they intended to do with the place does not mean they are willing to sell it back to the pub owner or to anyone else.
  • A big problem in the UK, and London especially, in the last few decades or so is land-banking. Corporations buy up land, remove any previous occupants, and then do nothing with it except hold onto it for a few years so they can sell it at a profit as prices rise. As long as the eventual sales price exceeds property taxes, which technically ought to be paid each year but often is years delinquent in the case of corporate or "investment" owners, then it is literally money for doing nothing. This gets worse if there is an economic downturn, because it encourages the new owners to hold onto land for longer to wait until the market picks up again, which in turn hinders eventual development. In this case the new owners evicted everyone to turn it into a development site, then decided that the eventual returns of being able to sell an unoccupied site were so much greater than taking rent for having a pub on it.
  • Yes, it makes sense for the new owners to do that for a few years, waiting for a better opportunity to sell it. But keeping the property empty for 33 years makes no sense at all. During that time there were several economic upturns and boom periods for property sales in the UK, so it defies logic that the owner would've just kept the place empty and boarded up without doing anything to it.
  • The bartender mentions some kind of to-do about who’s doing what with the land. A British bureaucratic mess that holds up even the smallest step for 30+ years is comically believable.
  • Hob bought it from these buyers out of sentimental attachment, but then it still became unprofitable. He couldn't demolish it, so it just gathers dust now.

Why did Burgess' spell catch Dream instead of Death?

• We know that the Magus' spell from the grimoire was supposed to catch Death, so why did it grab Dream instead? Just a plot contrivance, or did Desire have a hand in this too?
  • The most likely explanation is that Burgess, operating on limited information, (he wasn't even aware that Death had siblings) messed it up somehow. Another possibility is that the writer of the grimoire made a mistake when designing the spell, and never noticed since they never actually cast it themselves. (If the spell had been successfully cast before, either Dream or Death would know after all.)
  • This isn't a complete answer, but here's a bit of Fridge Brilliance for you: when the ritual homed in on Dream, he was near the Corinthian and the man he'd just murdered. Perhaps the ritual was designed to snag "one of the Endless who's currently in the physical world next to a recently-dead person", which in 99% of cases would be a good proxy for identifying Death, but because of wrong-place-wrong-time, in this one instance, Dream was there too.
  • The spell probably worked to catch any of the Endless, and the part that would've specified which one was either lacking to begin with or wasn't written down in the book. Note that in the comic book (and Gaiman has said the same applies to the TV series) the spell wouldn't have captured Dream either if he hadn't been weakened by the events shown in The Sandman: Overture. And since Death is more powerful than Dream, there was never any chance the spell would have worked on her.
  • Burgess is implied to be an incompetent idiot when it comes to magic, at least in the series. He simply botched the ritual in some way, but instead of backfiring on him altogether it "merely" captured the wrong Endless. On the other hand, the implication is that Desire somehow arranged for Morpheus to be captured, so he could tamper with the text beforehand. Or even be the original author in the first place, and deliberately design the spell to capture Dream, then put a false desription that it would capture Death instead.
  • Dream says outright in the narration that he was captured by a spell cast by an amateur. So yeah, I think Burgess' incompetence is the most likely explanation.

The Ruby in the diner.

• How did no one in the diner notice John was holding a glowing ruby?
  • How come the Fly didn’t notice it was standing on a Spider-Web?
  • I thought the implication was that he used its powers to make himself inconspicuous (as made clearest when he casually walks past the various people having sex).
  • Given that the ruby has the power to make dreams come true, it can theoretically do anything, so a Perception Filter would be well within its established range.
  • Also even if they did notice it, so what? Unless you know what it is it just looks like John has a bit of rather tacky jewellery.

Great Grandma Kinkaid's in surprisingly good shape!

• So Unity was in a coma for a century, right? Disregarding how her body, and more importantly her brain, was able to maintain function for such a long time while she was comatose (especially when falling into a coma during a time period where life support was nothing like it is today), how the hell is she able to freely walk around without so much as a cane to support her, let alone a wheelchair? Surely someone whose body has been left unmoving for decades would barely even have the strength to sit up upon awakening. Also, does this coma brought about by Morpheus's absence include slowed down aging as one of its symptoms? Because Unity is over a hundred years old, yet barely looks older than 60.
  • Given that the Corinthian refers to the benefits of being in the presence of the Endless, I'm reasonably sure this is meant to be another one of those curious side-effects, given that Alex and Paul are still kicking about at a hundred years old - and Paul himself looks pretty damn spritely, too. Unity's doing even better than either of them thanks to being a recipient of Desire's seed - in other words, Sexually Transmitted Superpowers.

Couldn't Morpheus destroy the vortex without hurting the host?

• Because Rose was able to use her vortex powers to extract the essence which made her the vortex and pass it along to her great grandmother, who was meant to be the vortex in the first place, what was stopping Morpheus from destroying the vortex essence while it wasn't currently occupying a host, thus not having to take any innocent lives in order to prevent the destruction of reality?
  • It could be that Rose and Unity's situation is an outlier - one of them had been in a relationship (thus exposed) with another Endless and the other is a child of an Endless. Note that the physical manifestation of the power is shaped as Desire's sigil meaning that their tampering with the vortex had some side-effect in allowing this to happen. The only other known vortex in the comics was unable to do this as they were created naturally and was allowed to develop their vortex powers without tampering and is shown to be unable to manifest their powers as such.
  • Rose passing the vortex to Unity happens inside a dream, so most likely her taking it out of her body is just visual symbolism to depict its transfer to Unity, and the vortex never really existed outside them as a separate object. In the earlier dialogue between Dream and Lucienne, it's implied that the vortex is always tied to some entity, it doesn't exist separately as itself. Also, Dream is clearly surprised that the vortex could be passed to another person, so it probably didn't cross his mind to try to destroy it during the brief moment it was outside Rose's body.
  • Unity didn't consume the power, yet she died when it was destroyed. The implication is that Unity was the vortex all along, while Rose was merely a decoy proxy thanks to Desire's tampering, and destroying the vortex would kill Unity anyway.

"This amulet has kept me alive for 116 years." No, it hasn't. It couldn't have.

• Ethel tells John the amulet has kept her alive for 116 years, but she couldn't have had it for 116 years. A couple of scenes before she walks out with Dream's tools, Paul recommends Vile Bodies, a book that was published in 1930, to Alex. Assuming that the scenes took place in sequential order with no time skips between them, that Vile Bodies is still a new book, and that she traded the helm to Choronzon immediately after making her escape, the absolute maximum amount of time that Ethel could have had the amulet in the present is 92 years.
  • Touch nickpicky there. Ethel is saying the amulet kept her alive to be 116 years old, she's just phrasing it in a way that is slightly wrong in a literal sense.

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