An extensive wait for The Sandman is officially over and that ending needs to be analyzed. The first season adapts the graphic novels “Preludes & Nocturnes” and “The Doll’s House” by writer Neil Gaiman and artists Sam Kieth and Mike Dringenberg. The show remains strikingly faithful to the source material, but there are additions to the story that make it different with some tantalizing surprises along the way.
The Story of Sandman
The first half of the series saw Dream (Tom Sturridge) accidentally captured by occultist Roderick Burges (Charles Dance), who was attempting to capture Death to bring his deceased son back to life. Roderick imprisons Death for one hundred years, and when he finally escapes, he finds that his beautiful Dreaming realm and castle has fallen into disarray, and in order to return to its former glory and restore order, he’ll have to recover his tools of power: his pouch of sand, his helm, and ruby.
Dream visits necromancer Johanna Constantine (Jenna Coleman) and discovers that her ex-girlfriend has the pouch of sand and they’ll have to find her if he wants it back. He battles Lucifer (Gwendoline Christie) in hell for his helm, and must reclaim his ruby from madman John Dee (David Thewlis) who’s been causing all kinds of chaos by exploiting people’s innermost secrets.
Once this trial is complete, Dream is left with an emptiness inside of him. Searching for his tools gave him purpose and without a mission, he feels lost. Thankfully, his knowledgeable older sister Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) takes him on a tour of her job shepherding souls into the afterlife. She tells him that the quest isn’t about finding purpose outside their function, but that their purpose is their function and they exist to serve people. Afterward, Dream is committed to involving himself more in the lives of humanity.
The Dream Vortex and Sandman’s missing Arcana
In the second half of the season, Lucienne the librarian (Vivienne Acheampong) informs Dream that three of the major Arcana are missing: Gault (Ann Ogbomo), a nightmare shape-changer, the Corinthian, a bloodthirsty nightmare feeding on humanity, and Fiddler’s Green, vavasor of his own dominion. Rumors are spreading amongst the dream folk of a Dream Vortex, a girl named Rose Walker (Vanesu Samunyai) with the ability to blur the lines between the Dreaming and reality with the potential to destroy their world. Dream and Lucienne get into a debate about how she should be handled; Lucienne wants him to intervene, but Dream chooses to wait until she becomes a problem.
Rose, as we find out, is on a mission to find her brother Jed (Eddie Karanja) who’s been taken in by an abusive foster family. The errant nightmare Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook) kidnaps Jed to lure in Rose for her vortex powers, and takes him to the Cereal Convention (an actual serial killer convention). Dream watches Rose through his raven Matthew (Patton Oswalt) as she goes on a quest to find her brother.
After Rose’s meeting in New Brunswick with her great-grandmother Unity Kinkaid, who she finds out suffered from an illness that kept her asleep for many years, she travels to Florida and stays at an eclectic house with the owner and drag queen Hal Carter (John Cameron Mitchell), Barbie (Lily Travers) and Ken (Richard Fleeshman), two bridal goths, Zelda (Cara Horgan) and Chantal (Daisy Badger), and the mysterious Gilbert (Stephen Fry). She then continues searching for Jed while understanding how her dreams connect to the waking world.
Rose finds her brother
Rose is able to enter Dream’s world and she inquires about her powers. She learns what she is and about the missing nightmares, and she’s told to continue her search for Jed. She later finds Jed in his dreamworld where he’s pretending to be the superhero Sandman, and the real Sandman finds that Gault has been in control of the boy’s dreams. He reclaims his creation and Rose gets clues about Jed’s whereabouts with the help of her best friend Lyta Hall (Razane Jammal), who’s been having dreams about her dead husband Hector Hall (Lloyd Everitt), and becomes impregnated by him in the real world (just like Unity).
All the while, the Corinthian is on the hunt for Rose because of her vortex powers. He kills Jed’s foster parents and kidnaps the boy, bringing him to a Cereal Convention to lure the powerful girl out. Rose finds out Jed’s foster parents were murdered, but that Jed might have possibly escaped.
Rose gets a call from Corinthian (pretending to be a good citizen) and Jed who tell her they’ll be at a hotel in Georgia. Rose takes her Floridian housemate Gilbert on the road trip and she reunites with Jed at the hotel, but the Corinthian tries to convince her that Dream is the bad guy and that he will kill her because she’s destined to bring down the walls of the Dreaming, but if Corinthian protects her she could become the center of the Dreaming.
The final showdown
Dream arrives at the Cereal Convention and interrupts Corinthian’s speech. He condemns him for inspiring humans to indulge in the worst parts of themselves. He was meant to be a dark mirror to reflect everything humanity won’t confront, but Corinthian has gone beyond his parameters. Corinthian pulls out a knife and stabs Sandman’s hand when he tries to destroy him. Rose Walker is getting stronger and taking the place in the center of the Dreaming, which means Dream is getting weaker. It shows Rose and Jed in a nightmare where a man is butchering a man. Dream and Corinthian enter this dream and try to convince her of their positions. Dream tells her that if she brings down the walls of dreaming, it creates a single volatile dream that will destroy the world.
Rose decides that she’s going to find her own way, and she puts the walls back up. Thanks to the two of them, she’s wide awake. Back in reality, the Corinthian says that he does what he does to taste what it’s like to be human, and accuses Dream of not caring about humanity. Dream reminds him that he contains the entire collective unconscious and if he didn’t have rules he would be consumed and humanity would be consumed. Dream blames himself for creating him poorly, and uncreates the Corinthian, burning him into dust and a tiny skull. He says that next time he creates him he’s going to make a better version of him. The gathered serial killers are then commanded to pay for their sins, by feeling the guilt of what they’ve done and turn themselves in (or kill themselves).
Fiddler’s Green and the ultimate sacrifice
Rose and Jed drive away and she tells her brother that their mother has died, but she never stopped trying to get him back. Lyta calls and tells Rose that she’s in labor and they travel to the hospital. Rose introduces Jed to the gang and she tells them that Gilbert left a note saying that he had to return home. In Lyta’s hospital room, she tells Rose that she has to go into her dreams and find Dream to end this. When she does, she travels through her friend’s dreams and all of them turn for the worst, becoming more like nightmares, and a vortex is created, pulling everyone inside of it. Dream arrives and says that she’s caused this damage, but that he can repair it and save her friend’s life but the vortex must die.
Gilbert arrives to offer his life in place of hers. He’s Fiddler’s Green, a dream who left his post to experience life as a human being, but Dream says that’s not possible. The vortex must die. Gilbert returns to his form as Fiddler’s Green and the area becomes lush with life, trees, flowers, and grass. Rose agrees to give her life for the world, but Unity and Lucienne arrive with news that Unity was originally meant to be the vortex, but because of the sleeping sickness that occurred when Dream was captured, it passed onto Rose.
Rose reaches down inside of herself and pulls out a heart-shaped power and gives it to Unity. Unity breaks the symbol, sacrificing her life for her great-granddaughter’s. She mentions the golden-eyed man and Dream realizes that it’s his sibling, Desire (Mason Alexander), making Rose and Jed his siblings, children of the Endless. Dream disappears and Rose wakes up to find her brother smiling in his sleep. She visits Lyta the next day and holds her baby. She tells her friends that she’s going to live at her great-grandmother’s estate in New Brunswick. Hal says he’s going to sell the house and move to New York to follow his Broadway dreams, Zelda and Chantal offer to buy the house, and Barbie and Ken are at odds because of Ken’s infidelity dreams.
Family drama and the armies of hell
Dream goes to Desire’s chamber and tells them that he knows that they took advantage of his imprisonment and fathered a child with Unity. This was part of Desire’s plan to force Dream to kill the vortex, Rose, which is against the rules (for the Endless to kill one another). Desire has disdain for humanity, and Dream threatens his sibling, cautioning them, Despair, and Delirium, not to interfere in his affairs. Desire says next time they’ll draw blood.
Back in the Dreaming, Dream is rebuilding new creations when Lucienne says that Rose has written a book about her experience. Dream tells Lucienne that he’s not going to recreate the Corinthian and hands her Corinthian’s skull head. He turns Gault into a dream — a being with wings — and admits that he was wrong for expecting everything to be just as he left it. Dream wants to correct his mistake with new dreams and nightmares for the new age, and asks Lucienne to take care of things while he works.
Lucifer is approached by Maziken (Cassie Claire), who says that Lord Azazel would like a word. Azazel has come under the direction of the Lords of Hell and announces that the armies of hell are Lucifer’s to command. Lucifer considers using them to attack the Dreaming, the waking world, and even the Silver City. The Lords of Hell can’t leave their domain, but they can expand its borders until everything is hell. Lucifer promises to make God livid and bring Dream to his knees, and if The Sandman season two happens, things are going to get violent.