(Credits: Netflix)

The Sandman has drawn a full circle. And while Netflix was at it, many were on the brink of tears. Season two, volume one ended with a major cliffhanger with Dream doing that one thing he isn’t supposed to: spill family blood. It was inevitable that he must confront Furies, the Greek goddess of vengeance, AKA the Kindly Ones. As expected, volume two picked up with the Kindly Ones wreaking havoc in the Dream realm.

The first part was an emotional rollercoaster with Orpheus’s life on the line. But The Sandman closes with twice that intensity as Dream summons the Kindly Ones to a cliff at the edge of the Dreaming. Morpheus has only one ask from the Greek goddess of vengeance, who’s been storming up his realm via Lyta Hall, that they spare those whom he’d sworn to defend.

Instead, they remind Dream that they cannot retract until the needful is done. As a retribution for Dream shedding blood in his family, the Kindly Ones won’t be satisfied until Dream is dead. It’s not like Morpheus is oblivious to what awaits him. He knows well. But even then, he couldn’t bear Orpheus’s suffering for a minute longer.

So, what he does is he lets himself be taken rather than hurting those he holds dear. “It’s all one story: Dream learns to love and to be loved, and what love really means. But in doing so, he has to die,” Allan Heinberg explains.

How does Dream die?

At the farthest edge of Dreaming, Dream sends off Matthew the Raven to summon his sister, Death. It’s the one last assignment the Master of Dreams has for his friend. “There is a price for what I have done, and I must pay it,” he tells Death. Subsequently, Death takes Dream’s hands and they disperse into a bright light. So, yes, that Dream of the Endless does die in The Sandman.

But he is reborn as a different Dream in Daniel Hall. In the inaugural season, Lyta Hall’s dreamworld pregnancy with her dead husband, Hector’s child, became tangible, courtesy of her friend, Rose Walker, a dream vortex. This mystical conception made Daniel the first human child to take shape within the Dream realm. However, after destroying Hector’s ghost, Dream told Lyta that Daniel was her child.

In The Sandman season two, episode eight, Loki cast the infant into a fireplace, intending to scorch away his humanity. But it wasn’t until Dream died in episode ten that Daniel transformed into adult Dream.

How does The Sandman conclude?

The Sandman ends with the funeral of Morpheus, now the former Lord of the Dreaming. Everyone who is close to Morpheus, including his Endless siblings, except, of course, Destruction, attends the funeral. From Hob Gadling and Johanna Constantine to Alex Burgess and Nuala, nearly everyone is present from the Dream realm.

Episode 11 also introduces Daniel as the new Dream of the Endless, who is as unsure as he can be, having been granted the powers of a god when he has been alive only for eight months. Although he tries to seek the assistance of Morpheus’s closest allies, the realm without the former Dream makes them resent Daniel to an extent. In short, it’s not just Daniel who’s uncertain; most of them from the former Dream realm are.

The Sandman’s last scene shows Daniel meeting with his Endless siblings over family dinner. “We start with a family dinner that kicks off the event, and we end with a family dinner, and it wraps everything again,” Kirby Howell-Baptiste explained.