The Sandman “Season Of Mists”

Oh hey, The Sandman is back!  And he brought the family with him!

The Endless are a fascinating bunch in many ways.  Each represents a different concept, none of them are quite gods, and many are the opposite of what you might expect them to be.  Death is a friendly, perky woman.  Desire is cruel.  Dream is stiff and formal.  And the missing brother…I’ll get to him when he shows up.  He’s spoken of quite a bit in this episode, but he’s not seen or identified.

But hey, Destiny and Delirium made their first appearances.  Delirium will be hanging around for a while, but she actually makes a good impression even if she appears as a childish figure here.  The series showed her portrait in Destiny’s home is of Delight before the paint melts away to become Delirium.  Destiny made less of an impression, but he usually does.

As it is, Dream isn’t interested in being here as he’s rebuilding, and Destiny isn’t the sort to say why he called everyone so much as he knows some things have to happen, so he just needs to wait.  In this case, it means waiting for Dream to leave the room so Death can get in his face about something.  That something is Nada, a queen from the first human civilization who caught the Dream Lord’s eye.  She knew mortals cannot love the Endless, and as a result of a short dalliance, her nation was destroyed by a meteor.  Naturally, she tries to break it off, and because Dream is a mature, thoughtful soul, he condemned her to Hell for 10,000 years.

By the by, I love the fact Death is always there to tell her kid brother that he’s full of crap.

I also love how this series turns things on their head.  Sure, Dream says he’s going to go get Nada back from Hell, and sure, he sends Cain ahead of him to tell Lucifer that he’s coming and why, leading to what looks like a demon army that Dream will have to fight his way through.  Except, you know, this isn’t that sort of story.

But that’s probably for the next episode.