Recap / The Sandman (2022) S01E06 "The Sound of Her Wings"

"I'm worried about my brother. And I'm enjoying this apple."

"The only reason we even exist, you and I, and Desire and Despair, the whole family. We're here to serve them. It isn't about quests or finding purpose outside our function. Our purpose is our function. We're here for them. Since I figured that out, I realized I need them as much as they need me."

— Death

Feeling at a loose end since completing his quest to regain his tools, Dream mopes for a bit until he's visited by his sister Death, who tells him off for being self-pitying and then invites him to spend the afternoon with her while she does her rounds. Death demonstrates that she finds joy in serving humanity.

She also encourages him to look in on Hob Gadling, a very old friend he hasn't seen since before his capture and imprisonment. Hob was the subject of a bet between them from the 14th century — Death won't take him as Dream thinks he will eventually tire of living; the two then meet in the same tavern once a century. Despite all the ups and downs of the succeeding 700 years, Hob never lost his zest for life, and warmly meets Dream in 2022.

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This episode contains examples of:

• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Dream misses his 1989 meeting with Hob due to still being imprisoned (itself due to the show's Adaptational Timespan Change), after having a fight over whether they were “friends” in 1889. But Dream finds him again in the present day, and they make up.
• Adaptational Location Change: In the original comic book version of "The Sound of Her Wings", the park where Dream is feeding the birds when Death finds him is Washington Square Park in Manhattan, and the people she and Dream visit are all in New York. The TV version moves the action to London, with the park scenes taking place on Richmond Green.
• Adapted Out: In the comics, the second person Death is seen coming for is a female comedian who gets killed by electrocution. In this episode, that woman is replaced by a man who drowns while on his honeymoon, possibly because said comedian's act was focused on Batman as a real person and the story no longer takes place in the DC Universe.
• Armor-Piercing Question: When Dream expresses his distaste for slavery and suggests Hob find a different line of work, Hob gets defensive, as Dream said he could live his life however he chose. Dream's response is thus:
  Dream: The choice is yours. But would you take that choice away from others?
• Armor-Piercing Response: Dream has been treating his meetings with Hob very much as a chore, waiting for Hob to get fed up with immortality; in 1689, when he hears about the absolutely horrendous past eighty years that Hob has had and asks if Hob still wishes to live, Hob's reply leaves him speechless:
  Hob: Are you crazy? Death is a mug's game; I've got so much to live for!
• Artistic License – Law: While the old bar closing down and a new one replacing it makes for a fitting narrative, realistically the White Horse Tavern would have been protected by law as a historical building, the tavern having been around for 700 years by the time it closed down (although the comment about being able to do whatever you want if you have enough money might indicate some corruption involved).
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: After Hob tells Dream how much he's hated every moment of the past 80 years, Dream asks if he still wants to live, and Hob reacts with astonishment that the question even needs to be asked. For a moment it seems like he's had enough, but it turns out that actually he's still retained his original determination to live as long as possible and see as much as he can.
• Blessed with Suck: Hob points out that you can get very hungry when you can't die of starvation.
• Breather Episode: Despite all the deaths, it's a light episode compared to the arcs that precede and follow it.
• Bullying a Dragon: Lady Johanna Constantine hears rumors that the Devil and the Wandering Jew meet at the White Horse Tavern every hundred years, so she crashes their party with two street toughs in an attempt to beat their arcane secrets out of them. Trying to mug two immortal beings proves to be a poor choice.
• Call-Forward: Hob isn't afraid of anything because he's immortal, but Dream points out he can still be hurt or captured, which is what happens to Dream in the 20th century.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Lady Constantine hires a couple of street thugs to kidnap Morpheus and Hob Gadling. Given that this is an aristocrat and her Dumb Muscle going up against an immortal soldier and an ethereal super-being the ensuing conflict goes about as well as you would expect.
• Dark Is Not Evil: As in the comics, Death is a Perky Goth rather than a classic Grim Reaper who makes it clear to those she claims that she's nothing to be afraid of, just inevitable.
• Deal with the Devil: After living a hundred years without aging after a meeting with Dream, Hob starts to worry that he made a deal with the Devil. Dream assures him that’s not the case. However, Dream does make a deal of some sort with William Shakespeare, though he scoffs at the idea that he'd ask for Will's soul.
  "Nothing so crude."
• Death by Adaptation: Downplayed. Hob outright states that the child his wife died giving birth to also died, while the original comic hints this is the case but leaves it ambiguous.
• Death of a Child: One of the souls Death collects during her walk with Dream is a baby. Death appears to respond to the child's soundless questions, apologizing about how little time the infant has. As the two of them are departing, we hear the mother in the next room, presumably about to come back in to find the child's body.
  "Yeah. I'm afraid so. That's all there is, little one. That's all you get."
• Delayed Reaction: A common bit is how when people meet Death, they're at first confused but then somehow seem to know who she is. The reactions can range from denial to acceptance, with one woman in a hospital bed looking almost happy to have her pain be over.
• Did Not Think This Through: Lady Constantine tries to kidnap Morpheus and Hob Gadling, two beings she knows to be immortal and one of whom is rumoured to be the Devil. She quickly realizes that Bullying a Dragon is a bad idea.
• Don't Fear the Reaper: Death is shown to have a kind, upbeat personality, and is always gentle with the people she visits. She reveals that she wasn't always like this, and that she'd once been rather jaded with her job due to people fearing her: developing empathy for humanity and realizing that her job was to help them in the worst moment of their life (the end of it) changed her perspective.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Dream storms off in a huff when Hob implies that he visits him out of loneliness.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Johanna believes in the legend that "once every century the Devil and the Wandering Jew" meet in a pub.
  Dream: I am no Devil.
  Hob: And I'm not Jewish.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Right before her second pickup, Death mentions not wanting "to miss this one" while glancing over the bridge at the lake. At the end of her conversation with Sam, his body is pulled from the water.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • When Dream finds Hob at the new pub, the latter is marking off a paper with two underneath having letter grades, implying he is now a teacher. Word of God is that he teaches history.
  • At the very end of the episode, we get to see Desire's gallery and therefore each member of the Endless' emblems. Despair's is her hook, Dream's is his helmet, Death's is her ankh, Destiny's appears to be a scroll, The Prodigal's is a blank mirror (due to him having abandoned his position), and the youngest Endless gets a pulsing blob of color (this is also the first time in the show that's hinted at her existence).
• Friendship Denial: When Hob suggests that Dream is just looking for a friend, Dream is furious and walks out on him, promising never to return to prove him wrong.
• Friendship Moment: When Dream and Hob meet up again, Dream makes a point of calling him a friend.
• Horrible Honeymoon: Death comes to escort the soul of a man named Sam who accidentally drowned while swimming in a river; he explains that he's on his honeymoon and begs Death to at least allow him time to give his wife his phone password, as all their flight information is on there. Death can only apologize, as there's nothing she can do for Sam but guide him to the afterlife (nor would his wife be able to see or hear him). Death and Dream depart with Sam just as the now-widowed woman sees her husband's body being pulled from the water.
• Incurable Cough of Death: The first hint that Death has come to see Harry in a professional capacity is when his playing is interrupted by a bout of coughing. Not counting general agedness, it's the only symptom of illness he exhibits.
• I Never Told You My Name:
  • When a young man hits on Death and asks if he'll see her again, she smiles softly to reply, "Yeah, Franklin. You'll see me soon." It's only after she leaves that Franklin wonders how this stranger knew his name.
  • Hob also does a small double take when Dream calls him "Robert Gadling" without having been told his name.
• Identical Grandson: We meet the original Johanna Constantine, who is visibly identical to her descendant who we met earlier in the series.
• Idiot Ball: Lady Johanna Constantine grabs it, when she decides to try and ambush and capture Dream and Hob, with only two thugs as backup, despite the rumours being that they are the Wandering Jew and The Devil. On the other hand, it appears to have worked out for her in the long run.
• Ironic Echo: Pubgoers can be heard griping about the same issues in both the 14th century and the 20th.
• It Will Never Catch On:
  • Hob decides to get work as a printer as it doesn't require guild membership at the time, but thinks there isn't much future in it. He doesn't think much of Will Shaxberd's plays either, but it's implied Dream had something to do with inspiring him to greater efforts.
  • During an earlier visit, a man can be overheard telling Geoffrey Chaucer that he's not going to make a lasting name for himself writing bawdy stories about pilgrims.
• Living Forever Is Awesome: Hob Gadling has some ups and downs over the centuries, but every time they meet he tells Dream that he wants to keep on living.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Dream's sister Death, and his friend Hob, both help Dream get out of his angst.
• My Grandson, Myself: Hob fakes his death and passes himself off as his own son multiple times. The one time he gets overconfident and lives in one village for 40 years without doing this, he ends up getting (unsuccessfully of course) drowned as a witch.
• Never Recycle a Building: A plot point; although there's a pub on the same land for hundreds of years, eventually the land gets bought up so more profitable houses can be built there. So it looks like Dream has missed his chance to meet with Hob; fortunately the pub has just been moved elsewhere—it's implied with Hob's money, as Dream finds Hob there even though it's not their appointed meeting day. True to the trope, the abandoned shell of the old pub is still standing for Dream to find when he comes looking for Hob, decades after the land was bought for housing development. Although Hob may have had a hand in that as well, given the likely origins of the spray-painted directions to 'The New Inn'.
• Non-Answer: When Hob tries getting any specific details about him (his name, what he is, etc), Dream either gives him a Mathematician's Answer or no answer at all.
• Offhand Backhand: Both Dream and Death catch a ball thrown in their direction, one-handed, without looking.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Dream refuses to cooperate with Johanna Constantine on their first meeting, but she apparently did a task for him since then that changed his attitude towards her.
• Orphaned Punchline: A man in the tavern in 1389 tells a joke that ends with the punchline, "Hunting for rabbits again, friar?", and a man in the pub in 1989 tells what sounds like the same joke only with a vicar. In both cases most of the set-up is not heard.
• A Place Holds Memories: Dream goes to visit the pub where he used to meet with Hob, and finds it derelict. He starts remembering his history with the place, leading into a series of flashbacks of his meetings with Hob.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: In the comics, the dead baby speaks to Death in full sentences. The show simply has her answer its unheard question as if she knows what it's thinking, which removes the potential Narm and serves to make Death seem more otherworldly.
• The Reveal: Turns out Dream's imprisonment was arranged by Desire.
• Revisiting the Roots: Discussed by Dream when Hob mentions seeing a version of King Lear with a happy ending.
  Dream: "That will not last. The great stories will always return to their original forms."
• Running Gag:
  • A dark example: Franklin the football player is shown to have a tendency of getting distracted while chasing the ball. It ends up getting him killed.
  • Both Dream and Death are shown to effortlessly catch Franklin's stray ball a second before it hits them in the face.
• Say Your Prayers: Death comes for an old Jewish man, Harry. When he realizes who she is, he recites the Sh'ma, a prayer that Jews are traditionally supposed to say as their last words before dying.
  Harry: I'm glad I said the sh'ma. My old man always said it would guarantee you a place in Heaven. If you believe in Heaven...
• Silly Rabbit, Cynicism Is for Losers!: Dream learns this lesson from Death, who reminds Dream that instead of moping about his lack of purpose and the disappointing nature of the vengeance he took against the Burgess family, he should be focusing on connecting with the people of the world.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • When Johanna holds them at knifepoint, Hob is more annoyed at the horrible drawing of himself from a guy a century earlier.
  • The first thought of Sam, the man who drowns on his honeymoon, upon realising he's dead, is that their flight details are on his mobile phone and his wife doesn't know the password (admittedly a less extreme example, as he's thinking of his wife's well-being and this is just going to be one more thing she'll have to deal with while already grieving his death).
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: After 400 years of acquaintance, it is the news that Hob has gotten into the transatlantic slavery business that prompts Dream to give him advice on what he should do with his life, as he finds it particularly distasteful. Hob can choose what to do with his own immortal life, whereas slavery involves depriving people of choice.
• So What Do We Do Now?: Now that Dream has taken vengeance on those who imprisoned him and recovered his powers, he feels at a loss because the quest gave him purpose. Thanks to his sister he rediscovers purpose in doing his appointed task and rekindling his friendship with Hob.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Just after Death tells Franklin they'll meet again soon, Franklin turns to pass his ball back to his friends, and the camera turns to follow his movement. When Franklin and the camera turn back a moment later, Death and Dream are nowhere to be seen.
• A Tankard of Moose Urine: When Death and Dream visit a medieval tavern to mingle with humans, Death takes one sip of her penny ale, grimaces, and cheerfully says "This is terrible!" She then unsuccessfully encourages Dream to try it.
• Tempting Fate: The scene in 1589 ends with Hob saying that he has everything to live for and nowhere to go but up. The next time Dream sees him, he's lost everything.
• You Are Already Dead: When Death and Dream come to him, Sam is walking on the riverbank when he actually drowned in the river. Likewise, when Death meets Franklin again, he's exclaiming in shock how he just barely missed getting hit by a car, when in fact he was struck and killed instantly.
• You Are Not Alone: Death has realised she's not alone in her task as she finds companionship in the people she escorts to the Sunless Lands. Dream in turn finds comfort in his sister and Hob.
• Young Future Famous People:
  • In 1389 Dream and Death overhear a man chatting with his friend about the audience appeal of stories about pilgrims. While he isn't young at this point, Geoffrey Chaucer will be very well known in the future.
  • In their 1589 meeting, Dream and Hob see a young aspiring playwright named Will Shaxberd. Hob derides the quality of his plays but his enthusiasm intrigues Dream, who pulls him aside for a chat. Two hundred years later, Dream and Hob talk about how that boy ended up becoming pretty famous in the end.