A Hope in Hell | The Sandman Ep 4 Reaction 

Oh shit you right

I knew ya’ll get that

hey roshi, what happened to the COTE(classroom of the elite) reaction?

Can you all react to sweet home

That's what I said.

he's literally white, rather than pink like most white people, which makes me think that the Endless's white skin is supposed to be symbolic of a blank page

@@Patrick-jd1ku No, he’s not literally white. The comic book makes it clear that different people see him differently.

and a cat to cats when they dream!

The Martian Manhunter sees him as a giant flaming skull. (from the comics, not in the show) Cats see him as a big longhair black cat. (not in the show until episode 11) Nada sees him as a black dude. Hell, she lived 10,000 years ago, she probably wouldn't know what a white guy even looks like, or what that even means. Also shoutout to the guy they found to be black Tom Sturridge, because he sells that. Fact is, the only reason that *we* see Morpheus as a white guy is because white guys are normative in our culture. Even if you're not white, you know that white guys run the world, so that's why we usually see him as a white guy on-screen. Which gets kind of meta. We're seeing Tom Sturridge just because of our cultural filter. Other people with different cultural filters might see somebody else.

@@Patrick-jd1ku He was drawn as a white man, black and asian, as a cat, a flaming skull and a cat headed god. So, yes, white and yes, a lot of things.

Also if she's from 10,000 years ago, that pre-dates white skin (which started around 8500 years ago).

He doesn’t appear differently to every being, he just has many different aspects. Kai’ackul is the aspect he is known as by Nuada’s people. She doesn’t know him as Morpheus, so she wouldn’t see Morpheus.

He appears to ppl as their own race. That is why she saw him as a black man.

@@elsacastilleja8571 No he doesn’t 🤣 why would he do that!?

@@spiraljumper74 They don't actually have human forms. They only appear to us as human personifications because it is what our human brains can comprehend. There was a conversation between Cain and Abel in the comics that mentioned this.

yup! A lotta people missed on this I fear - which is another reason why Lucifer was so damn pissed off.

Yes. Lucifer, who acts smug, detached, and disinterested in these affairs to mask the constant misery and pain of the fall from grace, got called out big time.

And he can't say despair because despair is equal to hope, not superior. And Despair is Dream's sibling so...

Yeah, its quite beautiful, as writing goes.

@@0okamino Lucifer's not really choked up on the Fall. In DC at least during the War in Heaven God really pulled up and said. "Hey you want an out? There's this place that you can rule yourself free of my Presence." Lucifer took the out and 10 Billion years of ruling Hell later he realized it was a lie.

It is also a game that clearly can *only* be played by the most powerful beings in existence. Even Marvel and DC heroes would be dead after "I am a nova" lmao

True, these are beings that can shape reality with a thought, resorting to physical confrontations would be beneath them.

@@bravaman I was half expecting to see Death and Michael on the sidelines eating the concept of popcorn while watching their respective siblings play the game.

@@bravaman this is why I love the calliope episode !! The punishment he gave that mortal was fitting to his crime

@@gabrieldossantos1116 yes I love how they did it showed how powerful these being are in every scale possible while also not doing to much overall these are the strongest beings in comic book creation

Spoiler

So a notorious cultural appropriator. Time to cancel dream.

@@X3MAntics 😭💀

@@X3MAntics all cultures start in the dreaming tho, all myths and gods do too. he is the father of all cultures

@@brunoqueiroz2759 While that is true, he doesn't have Power over all, like certain Dreams that were Created by Humanity, like the "Cain & Abel" in this Series, those were created by Humanity, that's why he couldn't absorb them, so he chose to Absorb Gregory since Gregory was a Nightmare/Dream that he created. So to say that he's the father of all Cultures is a bit of a stretch.

Like this so he knows

And I've always found it funny when I realized that the Superman symbol stands for hope. Probably just a coincidence that it ended up as a Darkseid vs Superman reference.

They reference anti-life but they definitely didn’t use the anti-life equation. The Anti-life equation is used to dominate all life in creation, if Lucifer could use it they wouldn’t be in hell

@@ultralm7250 Lucifer stays in hell willingly. He’s a being of infinite will and near infinite power, the anti-life equation can’t do anything he couldn’t already do himself.

@@ultralm7250 But Lucifer wasnt using it literally, she was evoking the concept of Anti-Life which is capable of destroying anything in the universe. And even so, if you see Michael and Lucifer in DC universe both are pretty much omnipotent. Lucifer even leaves hell willingly in Sandman

In the comic, it’s explicitly the grove of suicides.

@@Ashamanic Damn, thinking about all the sad, depressed people who couldn't fight anymore and gave up. Having to be forced to experience an even worse depressing existence.

@@blueskybelyr It might not be kind, but it is definitely better than saying that killing themselves means ending up in a better place. Also though (spoilers!) the damned in this version WANT to be there.

@@blueskybelyr It's a reference to very old literature, to Dante's Inferno. Besides which, the only people who go to Hell in this setting are those who believe in Hell and believe they deserve to be there. They are actually free to leave if they choose to. Mind you, this scheme of things is even more horrifying, because it means there are people in Hell who are genuinely objectively innocent of any crime, and only think they are guilty of sins they were taught to believe in from a young age. That's the dark power of belief in this setting.

Neil Gaiman is a literate mfer.

"What power would hell have if those here imprisoned wouldn't be able to dream of Heaven?" is the full quote

@@ericstahmer720 My interpretation to that is the same as Roshi. If you couldn't dream of something better, hell is just another place for you.

Exactly: "Maybe you can beat my move, but if you do you're beating yourself." And that's the one thing Lucifer (Pride) would never do.

But there's another factor here: Despair wouldn't even exist without Hope. None of the aspects of existence embodied by the Endless would exist without their opposite. A dream is the opposite of reality, death is the opposite of life, so on. So even Despair can't "kill" hope, for it wouldn't exist then, it's more like if there was an Endless that represented Hope, then Despair and Hope would be at each other's throats in an eternal struggle. Sadly, "Hope" starts with an H, not a D, so that's not happening lol

@@Ragdefender Yep. If there were no Heaven then Hell would just be the After-life. It's no longer a place where people go when they committed a sin but just a place you go when you die.

Tho in comic he unalives her

@@elsacastilleja8571 yep kills her dead

@@elsacastilleja8571 but on the comics she stopped from been afraid of him mid trip and it did lead onto us that he wouldnt kill her. Until that very end.

@@FilipeBellosi Yeah I read the comic version of this and the next episode because I was curious what they were like originally... and it's crazy how different Jon is. They truly turned this Rotting Skeleton Joker into an (almost) sympathetic villain with goals and ideals. It's insane

@@elsacastilleja8571 comic Dee is just a psycho, the show made him a much more complex character. Personally one of the changes I liked the most.

Oh boy this is going to be funny

He's already said explicitly what he wants, it's not really a mystery what's going on

I really wish John was the antagonist (or the central antagonist) for the whole season. His character was just interesting and I loved watching him. Corinthian was a little boring

No silly, we see what's going on in the hell THIS episode.

@@chasekellar3943 yeah, but Corinthian is still my favorite. I wish his affect on the world was given more depth. I also wish they split the series into three parts. 1 part with John, then Corinthian, then the dream vortex.

He really is a child in a man's body, if you look at his pattern of behavior. Rosemary really gives him such a different view of humanity and why people lie. I wonder too if he sees a mother who was the victim of lies and was just trying to be a good person...and he gave it his best shot in saving a mother

We also can't forget that Lucifer preys on people's hopes and dreams. If they found a way to beat out hope, Lucifer has hamstrung themselves in the grab for power. Dream really knows Lucifer well and so he fights smarter not harder.

From what I remember of DC’s Lucifer, their ultimate goal is to be free of god’s power, to have a reality all to themself. He basically told the devil they were nothing without god.

You literally just described how Dream appears as what we expect him to look like, which is sort of poetically ironic because that's exactly the complaint of the fans who were fans of the series before the Netflix adaptation. They were presented with various characters looking one way and fell in love with them, that image of them solidifying in their mind over the years. It would be as if when Dream walked by Nada's cage she didn't see her beloved walk by, but Jackie Chan. Or a woman. Or a cat. It's gratifying to see the character that you love on the screen in the flesh but there's a dissonance because they don't look like how you remember them. And simply flipping the gender or race of a character and carrying on as if nothing has changed ignores the social differences each person experiences. Simply flipping John Constantine's sex to Joanna Constantine but keeping everything else the same may SEEM simple enough, but it unintentionally changes the character. A straight male being in a relationship with a straight woman is different than a lesbian woman in a same sex relationship - the latter implies all of the trials and tribulations that come along with it growing up or living as an LGBTQ+ adult. And that's just one example. So you're inherently changing not only the character but also subtly the story often than not when you just slip sex and race and orientation willy nilly. And I say this as someone who is bi and trans IRL. Not all of us wanted nor needed beloved works to be changed to play some kind of representation game. What's wrong with faithfully adapting Sandman and then making a new, original work that shows as much love to the LGBTQ+ community as you want?

The actor who played Nada's version of Dream had his work cut out for him, though, and he nailed it. I hope he's back for the Season of Mists arc

@@DerUberGaijan buddy... both Joanna and John are bisexual, he isnt straight

@@DerUberGaijan oh and they used joanna because the show couldnt get the rights to John, along with all of the other DC characters that appear or are mentioned in the original sandman comics.

That sounds like a nightmare considering his fear of fire... fitting.

Apparently in the comic he kills her. I like this much better

@@TheJerbol i just read it earlier today and yeah Dee shoots her; the show Dee is much more of a person with a set of ideals than we get in the comic where he's basically just out to use the ruby to rule and/or destroy the world for no real reason

Physically unharmed, but that experience could really shake a person to their core.

Abandon Hope In Style, All Who Enter Here

oh shit i just got that dammit! 🤣

That look when he says "Until then, Lightbringer" is just absolutely epic!

On 3, I think this is the absolute closest they could get to Bowie, who was the original inspiration of the comics version of Lucifer. As far as 4, everyone in Hell has hopes and dreams. Lucifer preys on those very things. If they win the metaphysical battle here, they've admitted defeat in the long-term fight to be the most powerful. That's why Lucifer makes the "what power" comment, I think. They want to make Dream back down so they don't lose face in front of everyone.

This is an often overlooked point

Hope would always be stronger than anti-life, Lucifer just can't bring themselves to kill hope for the reason you stated.

More like Hope to escape God's omniscience but yeah

John really is a broken child in an adult's body. Life isn't fair, and he's been subjected to that. He's lost so much in a short period of time, and he meets a women who is genuinely a good person, a good mother. He couldn't save his own mom, but I think her staying to continue to offer him a ride...that feels like him still trying to make up for not being able to save his own mother in the end.

Humans and Gods fight blow for blow Lucifer and the Endless are above that

And there is still power displayed, not only in how they hurt each other with just words, but also because they’re the few beings who can survive the invocation of novas and anti-life to continue the duel.

If we get a season 2 we might get to see that Dream isn't always that patient

Good for us then that some beings have empathy.

He's not an all powerful being. There are things he's not allowed to do. He answers to powers greater than himself.

Neil Gaiman would have been about 3 when the Disney film was released, and 22 years from even being born when the novel was published, so both are very likely to have served as some inspiration.

It helps that Netflix didn't actually produce this. they just bought the rights to stream it on their platform.

This portrayal of Lucifer is honestly a lot closer to how he's portrayed in the comics. Tom Ellis does a great performance, but its not *this* Lucifer.

Tom wouldn't make for an intimidating Lucifer because we are so used to him being a goofball

@@GodwynThePrinceOfDeath yeah, Tom's lucifer doesn't have the right level of casual disinterest and arrogance. Sandman Lucifer doesn't give a shit about 99.9% of other people/beings, but Tom!Lucifer, from what I've seen of the show, wants people to like him

I think it would be very interesting to see how David Bowie (the original visual basis for this version of Lucifer) might have played the role. Unfortunately, he has been unavailable for some time now.

He didn't turn black. Nor is he normally 'white' per-se. He appears differently to different people because he is a manifestation of a concept. We see him the way we do because that's Neil Gaiman's vision of Dream and he's telling the story, so from our 'objective' lens, he's a dude who looks like Robert Smith from The Cure. Nada on the other hand has never seen a white person before, she lived over ten thousand years ago. Aliens see Dream as one of their own too, and animals see him as an animal Dream. Heck, one of the spin-off comics features a planet of sapient flowers in which Dream appears as a black and white flower.

@@Sesharon Omg, chill out! I know!😂 I'm just exaggerating 🙄

@@__Oku__ No worries, I'm chill. :P

@@__Oku__ literally the chilliest explanation ever, I didn't know about the flower part

Also the dude is doing straight magic, it’s not like she knows how it functions. For all she knows he could blink and fucking disassemble her with a thought.

@@spiraljumper74 Yes, also true. She saw him do just that to the clerk.

The fact that I read this with Lucifer's voice 💀

@@CloudyRythm that's funny, i wrote this with Morpheus voice in my head.

@@sgcastle8389 lmao I'm imagining it rn

Yeah

Lmaooo bruh i hadn't even considered that

If you're Quoting Sartre it's "Hell is other people"