A life unlived and a nightmare that became a dream.
If you ended "The Sandman" with red eyes and wet cheeks, you're not alone.
Picky comic book fans might be tempted to binge-watch this new version with a frown
as "The Sandman" opens with a stirring tour of the Dreaming at the height of its power.
The Gates of Horn and Ivory open to show us Dream's shining palace, a place where nothing
is impossible, every color shines, and every book that's ever and never been written can
be found.
It's a small change from the original text, and it may feel like the special effects team
is showing off to hook new fans, but this sequence matters.
The Dreaming is part of Dream himself, and as he withers in his magic cell, so goes the Dreaming.
His release should feel triumphant, but instead, it's staggering.
The Dreaming we glimpsed is gone.
All that's left are sandy ruins and the faithful librarian Lucienne, who's outlasted her magical halls.
Dream rarely shows emotion.
It's his nature.
Yet, he reels subtly at the failure of his world to thrive without his presence.
Meanwhile, we gawk in horror at the bland and ruined dream territory.
It's the first depressing body blow we get and a warning that this isn't a story with
cheap, happy endings.
And it's not going to get easier anytime soon.
When Dream sets out into the worlds beyond, he usually has his raven with him.
He's had more than a few during his endless reign, but when he's off to corner the Corinthian,
the gig is held by the raven Jessamy.
When what should have been a simple chore for Dream goes sideways thanks to Roderick
Burgess, Jessamy is quick to try and rescue him.
It's a hopeful moment when she flits inside the manor and starts a chain reaction of mayhem,
all to buy herself time to get down to Dream's prison.
It's a shock to see her splattered against the glass sphere, victim of a shotgun blast
from Burgess' traumatized son.
Through her blood, we can see Dream's stunned face, or we could if we weren't busy choking
up over this brave little bird.
The Dreaming is ruined and Dream's faithful companion is dead.
Surely things are going to start looking up from here, right?
Well, no.
Dream's not just weakened from his enforced hundred-year vacation, he's missing his tools.
Basically, he's on 3 percent phone battery, and he's got to recharge what he can just
to go find his stuff.
That means collecting whatever dream material has survived the fall of the Dreaming.
There's only one piece left, and its name is Gregory.
Gregory is a cutie — a big, goofy gargoyle with expressive eyes who loves his caretakers,
Cain and Abel.
Then, Dream comes to ask him for his final sacrifice to save the Dreaming, to which Gregory,
with those puppy eyes, looks up into his face and agrees.
It might have had to be done, but did it have to hurt this much?
"Good luck, my lord."
"Simpering suckup!"
The Netflix series pulls away from some of the gorier aspects of the comics without losing impact.
If anything, Johanna Constantine's visit to ex-girlfriend Rachel hits harder this time out.
There's no sign of the comic's fleshy webs of meat all over Rachel's apartment to warn
Johanna about what's to come.
Instead, she's greeted warmly by Rachel herself, and the pair immediately begin to rekindle
their romance.
It feels like a dream.
Unfortunately, it is.
Dream, on the advice of his new raven, Matthew, has to check on Constantine, and he finds
her ensnared by the druglike temptations of his pouch of sand.
Shaking the dream off, we find the real Rachel trapped in bed, withered and barely alive.
She doesn't want anything but her dreams, and the pouch, grasped in her bony hand, won't
let her die.
Ugliest of all, Dream finds it hard to give a rip about mortal torments after his imprisonment.
He's ready to walk off with his sand and let Rachel's agonized body thrash the rest of
the way out.
It takes Constantine's rage to get Rachel a peaceful death.
The glimpse of Rachel's final dream is beautiful and heartbreaking.
She loved Johanna till the end.
Odds are pretty good that a second season of "The Sandman" will open with a version
of "Tales in the Sand," which will explain the reasons why Dream recognizes a special
prisoner in "A Hope in Hell."
Nada is his former lover, and long ago, when her tribe was among the first rulers of the
world, she knew Dream by a different name.
What happened between them is unclear, except that Dream doesn't forgive her and that he
condemned her to an eternity in Hell for an act of defiance.
Even without context, it's bleak.
Dream's not an ordinary protagonist, and his behavior toward Johanna Constantine shows
his coldness.
Seeing a crying young woman locked in hell's thorny cells and barely caring shows us that
Dream is capable of being monstrous in his own right.
It takes some stern stuff to make it through the first half of "The Sound of Her Wings"
without bawling.
It's not that it's all about death, exactly.
It's that Death of the Endless is so gentle and empathetic to her charges that our grief
turns cathartic.
It may be the baby that won't live to its first birthday that took you out or the kind
old man who recites the Shema to comfort himself before taking Death's hand, or you went full
waterworks on all of them.
An argument can be made that Death is the most necessary character to come out of "The Sandman."
Sure, fans know how important she is to the overall story, but this is a Death none of
us have to be afraid of.
For anyone that's grappled with heavy fears of mortality, the smiling face and outreached
hand of this Death is a comfort, a fictional notion that deserves to be more than that.
If you thought you were safe from choking up in the back half of "The Sound of Her Wings,"
think again.
The life and times of semi-accidental immortal Robert "Hob" Gadling showcase the best of
our humanity.
Hob's just some medieval dude, a guy with a big mouth that catches Death's ear when
he claims he'll refuse to die.
Dream doesn't realize that Death's set him up with a hobby project that'll teach him
a bit about being mortal, and he acts grudgingly about his centennial appointment with Gadling
most of the time.
Hob finally angers Dream in the 1900s so badly that he storms off.
It seems like a bit of an overreaction when Hob just offers an explanation for why Dream
continues to keep their centuries-long meetups.
"Friendship.
I think you're lonely."
From Hob's view, Dream deliberately misses their next appointment to prove he's not.
Dream has to go out of his way to find Hob and in his understated way, finally admits
that Hob was right after all.
It's a big step for Dream and a tearful reunion for us.
"It seems I owe you an apology.
I've always heard it impolite to keep one's friends waiting."
"The Sandman" streamlines some of its original storylines, and the results are a bit easier
to follow.
Of course, there are also emotional turns of the screw.
A twelve-year-old boy named Jed Walker is missing, and his sister, Rose, will do anything
to find him.
Jed's trapped in an abusive foster home, and his only refuge comes at night.
Gone from this arc are the ugly nightmares Brute and Glob.
Instead, an elegant nightmare named Gault has Jed under her wing.
Gault's taken the form of Jed's mother, using her power to support his dreams of being a
superhero called the Sandman.
The Dream King assumes she's trying to make her own kingdom out of a little boy's dreams
once she's cornered, but Gault challenges him over it.
It's about the right to change, she tells him.
Gault is banished to Darkness for wanting to be a dream and not a nightmare, but it's
clear that she goes down a raging victor.
It's yet another painful moment that reminds us that Dream is our protagonist, but he's
not exactly a good guy— not yet.
It might not take viewers long to realize that Gilbert is one of Dream's lost creations,
something called Fiddler's Green.
"Fiddler's Green is not a who, it is a where.
I was not a person, I was a place."
Despite that, his love for the human world shines through his round and happy face.
It's that love that later sends him back to the Dreaming to try to save us all.
Fiddler's Green likes to monologue about his interests, which can put a listener to sleep,
but he gets a showstopper speech when he shows up to try and stop Dream from killing Rose.
While his offer to replace Rose can't work, Green tells Dream what he believes is the
reason behind the vortexes: They're meant to remind the Endless that as mighty as they
are, they're servants to mortal needs.
To underline his point, he returns to his true form, and that's when we started crying
in earnest.
Fiddler's Green is a verdant, rolling field, and it's among his flowers that part of the
big finale of "The Sandman" will play out.
Unity Kincaid enters the story early on as one of the dreamers caught up in the sleeping
pandemic that comes with Dream's capture.
However, she doesn't return until she reveals herself to her great-granddaughter, Rose Walker.
Unity only wakes when Dream goes free, and she's trying to make up for lost time with
the few relatives she has left.
Unity funds Rose's attempts to find Jed, and she's already made plans for her great-grandchildren
to visit her.
She even wants to buy a house of her own for them to all live in.
It's unfair that she has to step between Rose and Dream in the season finale and unfair
that the life she should have had is an unwritten book in Dream's library.
Unity deserved a full life of her own, but the machinations of the Endless got in the way.
It's more generational trauma and more sacrifice from people that already gave so much, but
Unity does it freely for a family she didn't get to enjoy but already loves.