The optimistic way of looking at Sandman: The Wake... or the semi-hidden Sandman: Encore
Warning: Posting this on broken / less than three hours sleep. I need a nap. Anyway, here we go…
We all know and accept that by the end of the original Sandman comics Morpheus no longer wanted to be Dream of The Endless. He wanted to be free of his title but unlike Lucifer he couldn’t just up and leave. He needed an heir. And he needed to die.
Now, let us say he did die. Many of the entities of long-term or collective dreams within The Dreaming have sentience / self-awareness. The Corinthian, Merv, Lucien, and even Cain, Abel, and Eve. We also know the souls of the dead can be transformed into dream entities, such as Morpheus’ ravens like Matthew.
And I cannot ignore the old mantra of “It’s never just a dream.”
In the epilogue of The Sandman: The Wake, Sunday Morning. (issue 73 of The Sandman) Hob (Morpheus’ immortal friend) dreams of his deceased friend. He dreams of Morpheus and of Destruction but he does not know of Morpheus’ personal connection to Destruction. He only knows the man (Destruction) as a random pavement artist he saw once.
Hob is an immortal. Morpheus had a great impact upon him. He is going to recurrently dream of Morpheus for a long, long, long time. That indicates to me only one possibility. Daniel brought Morpheus back as a dream entity.
Yes, many people dream of the dead and it’s often just an illusion but what makes this one different is how Hob dreams the connection between Morpheus and Destruction without having any previous knowledge of their connection. And remember, “It’s never just a dream.”
Morpheus is walking away with Destruction… of The Endless. Morpheus is no longer “Of The Endless.” Being an aspect of Dream of the Endless- that may been destroyed. As Dream of The Endless perhaps he was destroyed. Yet Destruction is embracing his other half, if not creation than of transformation.
You either change or you die so why not both?
Let’s say Morpheus became a posthumous dream entity. Now free of the burden of being Dream of The Endless, Morpheus may do as he wishes. By technicality he is dead. As Dream of the Endless he is dead. As A dream, however, he is free.