DC introduces us to a formidable family that rivals the gods in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. They are known as The Endless because they are the physical embodiment of one facet of life. Each of the Endless family’s seven siblings is responsible for something specific. Death, the second eldest of the group, however, has the most crucial role of all. Consider what would happen if everything ceased dying all of a sudden.
Humanity would most likely devolve into an even worse catastrophe. That is why Death’s job is to ensure that the natural order of human life is maintained. She is the one sibling that enjoys life the most, despite her moniker. Death as depicted by the Sandman is not the image with which we are all too familiar. So, without further ado, let us dig into the video and learn more about Death of the Endless’ persona.
The first comic book appearance and origins explored
Death made her first appearance in comic books with The Sandman volume 2, issue #8, The Sound of Her Wings, which was published in August 1989. She was created by the most celebrated English author Neil Gaiman, along with the artistic attributes of Mike Dringenberg and Malcolm Jones.
Now before getting into the story, let us take a look at the seven Endless siblings. Time is their father, and Night is their mother. To begin with the oldest, we have Destiny, who is chained to a book that contains everything that will ever happen. The second oldest is Death. Ironically, she always wears the Egyptian symbol of life known as the ankh in the form of earrings and a pendant.
Dream, also known as Morpheus, is the King of the realm of Dreaming, a place where people travel when they sleep. Destruction is the sibling who has abandoned his family and responsibilities. Desire is non-binary, and they serve as the endless appetite of lustful mortals. On the other hand, Despair, Desire’s twin sister, feels joy in causing misery to the mortals. And Delirium, being the youngest sibling, gives company to humans who are going through mental health crises.
Now, issue #8 begins with a glimpse of Dream, Death’s younger brother, who is sulking and feeding the pigeons. He is soon visited by Death, who appears rather chirpy compared to Dream. The very first glance at Gaiman’s modern personification of Death seems to contradict how the general idea of death has been portrayed to us thus far. Usually, when we think of death, a scary, robed skeleton-like figure carrying a scythe comes to mind. But here, Death walks into the comic as a lovely and spirited teenage girl with a goth vibe.
Death tries to lighten up the mood by making several references to the musical movie adaptation of Mary Poppins in 1964. It gives us an indication that even though she might give the impression of a teenage girl, Death is, in fact, significantly older. It is clear to her that something is wrong because Dream is still moping. Dream confides in her about the time when he was imprisoned for 72 years by The Order of the Ancient Mysteries, an occult organization founded by a magician who was obsessed with becoming the greatest magician of his time.
After escaping, Dream took his revenge on his captor’s son, but that did not make him feel satisfied. It shows how even an entity such as Dream is not immune to the emotions of revenge. When he returned to his home, he found that it had fallen apart in his absence. He needed his tools of power to restore everything as it was. He mentions retrieving his pouch of sand. As for his helmet, he had to travel to the gates of hell and defeat Lucifer in a battle of wits in order to obtain it.
The last item was his ruby which came into the possession of a human. The human attempted to destroy a lot of lives using the ruby, but when Dream fought him to take it back, he destroyed it thinking it would kill Dream. Instead, it resulted in the return of the power of the ruby to Dream. But nothing seems to make him feel good anymore. He is actually having a full-blown mid-life crisis because he cannot find his purpose anymore.
Being the elder sister, Death tries to console him in an aggressive manner. They are interrupted by a boy who is playing football nearby. Death seems to assure the boy that she will meet him soon. But now, she must head to work, so she takes Dream along with her. Death and Dream are then seen walking around on Earth but no one is able to see them. Perhaps a few people feel their presence when they pass by them, but they are only truly seen by the people who are about to die.
It is because Death has come to collect their souls. The first-person Death visits is an old Jew. Moments before dying he sees Death and realizes that his end has come. His soul is out of his body, and holding Death’s warm, friendly hand, he is gone with the sound of her wings. The dream then reveals to Death that his captors were actually looking for her. They wanted to attain immortality by capturing Death. Death appears to be well aware of this fact.
The next soul that Death consumes with her comforting smile is that of a stand-up comedian, who actually dies on stage. Eventually, she also welcomes the soul of a newborn baby into her arms. Dream ponders how humans are terrified at the sight of his sister and fear her sunless lands, even though it is as natural to die as it is to be born. In fact, humans embrace his realm each night without fear.
He calls Death’s responsibility a gift and says, “I walk by her side, and the darkness lifts from my soul.” The bond he shares with her is quite remarkable. Towards the end of the issue, we see that Death is always aware of the souls who are soon going to meet her as she finally greets the boy we previously met when Dream was feeding the pigeons.
Now, let us go back billions of years ago when Death was created after the emergence of the first lifeforms in the universe. However, she was not always this kind-hearted. Initially, she perceived her job to be the toughest, and she stopped doing it for a brief period of time. And chaos prevailed since nothing came to an end. So, when she returned to her realm, she became cold and detached.
But one day, a soul that she collected asked her, “How would you like it?” As a result, she started a custom of spending one day of the century as a mortal to experience how she felt about it. And after having a taste of mortality, her perspective on her job had a one-eighty, turning her into the most affectionate member of the Endless family.
One of her most prominent mortal experiences happened in 1880 when she disguised herself as a peasant girl and decided to spend the day by the Yangtze River with a young ox driver who told her all about his huge dreams and aspirations. Aside from the moment of death for each human being, her mortal states are probably the closest human interactions she will ever truly experience and feel.
She has always been the closest to Dream among her family members as we have just witnessed, and he follows her advice on many of his life decisions. It is ironic how the embodiment of the Dream finds solace in the embodiment of Death.
The numerous TV appearances of Death
Apart from the comics, the character of Death from the Endless has also appeared in various television shows. In the Superboy episode “Into the Mystery,” a version of Death appeared that is known as Azrael. This character was played by Peggy O’Neal. Next, in two episodes of Teen Titans Go! a male version of Death appeared, voiced by David Kaye. This version was also seen as the godfather of Raven, who was a prominent member of the Teen Titans.
Death is also mentioned in the HBO Max series called Doom Patrol. According to Edward and Charles of the Dead Boy Detectives agency, “she” is pursuing them. Although Charles also says, “Death is quite nice. And she is super fit”. This accounts for the version of Death that we have explored. Another indirect reference to Death can be found in the third season of Arrow in the episode “The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak.” Here, we see Felicity Smoak’s goth style from her college days, particularly her black hair and goth outfit along with a silver Egyptian Ankh necklace, all of which serve as an allusion to Death.
The upcoming Netflix series
The fans of Neil Gaiman have something major to look forward to. Netflix is finally releasing Gaiman’s seminal DC Comic book The Sandman as a series. In their official introduction regarding the series, Netflix said, “A rich blend of modern myth and dark fantasy in which contemporary fiction, historical drama, and legend are seamlessly interwoven, The Sandman follows the people and places affected by Morpheus, the Dream King, as he mends the cosmic and human mistakes he has made during his vast existence.”
The show’s first season will consist of eleven one-hour-long episodes, which will cover the first volume of the comic, Preludes and Nocturnes. This volume contains issues one to eight. It is also highly possible that in this season, the show will also include certain parts from the second volume, The Doll’s House. As a fan of Gaiman’s work, you will be pleased to know he has stated that the show has been adapted in the most faithful manner and will stay as true to the comics as possible.
Although one slight change will be that the show is set in the present day, whereas the comics took place about 30 years ago. Now coming to the spectacular cast of the show, Tom Sturridge will be starring as the Sandman. From Game of Thrones, we also have Gwendoline Christie, who will be playing the role of Lucifer, Ruler of Hell, and Charles Dance, who has been cast as Roderick Burgess, the villainous magician who kidnapped Dream in the comic.
Now, about the character we have all been waiting for to be cast, Death will be played by Kirby Howell Baptiste who you might know from A Good Place. More on the cast is Vivienne Acheampong who starred in The Witches and will play Lucienne, Dream’s chief librarian, and devoted caretaker. Logan’s Boyd Holbrook will portray Sandman’s infamous The Corinthian. The Corinthian has been said to have teeth for eyes and a taste for other people’s eyeballs. In the roles of Cain and Abel, we will see Sanjeev Bhaskar from Yesterday and Asim Chaudhry from Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.
Although there is no official release date yet, our advice will be to stay on the lookout because it does not seem long before we get a glimpse of the first premiere of Netflix’s The Sandman.
Death in a DC short
The DC short is directed by Sam Liu, written by J.M. DeMatteis, and produced by Warner Bros. It is based on the character of Death. It follows the story of Vincent Omata, a man living in Gotham City, and how he comes to meet Death of the Endless.
Vincent has always loved to draw ever since he was a kid. So, despite his father’s disapproval, he decides to attend the fine arts program at Gotham City University. There, he is once again met with serious criticism as his professor crushes his dreams by telling him that he is not talented enough to make a career as an artist. Eventually, another traumatic event occurs in his life when his girlfriend Charlotte leaves him due to his failed career.
Later on, we see Vincent painting the front gates at Arkham Asylum, but soon he is fired from this job as well. Everything seems to be taking a toll on him, so he goes to a bar to blow off some steam. He is still being mentally tortured by the demons of his father, the professor, and Charlotte. We now see Death for the first time at the bar, where, upon laying eyes on her, Vincent is completely mesmerized by her and wishes to paint her portrait.
He obviously does not know that this woman is Death. When he goes back to his apartment, he takes heroin and falls asleep on his couch. After waking up, he is revisited by Death, who is interested in his artwork. In the hopes of being able to convince her to let him paint her, Vincent shows her all of his unfinished canvases. To his surprise, she realizes his natural talent and finally allows him to paint her.
When he starts painting Death, he slowly notices the demons in his head vanishing away, but a rather odd thing happens once he has finished the portrait. Time seems to have stopped altogether, and not a single minute has passed since he began painting. This is the moment when he realizes that he died from an overdose of heroin a couple of hours ago. The only thing he now feels grateful for is the portrait he just painted which is his life’s masterpiece.
However, once Death un-pauses the time, the ash from his cigarette falls onto the papers lying on the floor and sets the whole apartment on fire. And since his soul is now out of his body in the ghost form, he is unable to save Death’s painting. Death discloses that nothing can be done anymore because his end was written a long time ago in the book of Destiny. She then holds his hand and walks him toward his afterlife.
At the end of the story, when the Gotham City fire department arrives and takes away Vincent’s burnt corpse, they notice that everything in the apartment has burned to ashes except that portrait. It looks like, in the end, Death did grant Vincent his dying wish.
What makes Death so powerful?
Since Death of the Endless is an anthropomorphic embodiment of a universal fact, it makes her the most powerful being in the entire universe, including her family, The Endless. As everything ends with Death, she has the power to free the soul of a body and lead it towards the path that awaits. In certain situations, Death allows the other death gods to take the soul of a person with whom they might have a contract. This happened with Element Girl, a superhero metamorphic. When she begged Death to take her soul and end her life, Death told her that because she had received her immortality from the sun god Ra, he was the only one who could give her an end.
What makes Death the most powerful Endless is the fact that she is able to terrify even the Furies, who persecute the violators of divine law and are not afraid of any other Endless. Moreover, she can see all possible futures and ends for the humans whose souls she is tasked with carrying. She is virtually immortal and has even outlived her older brother, Destiny.
Till the end of time, she only has one responsibility- to serve as a gateway into what lies beyond for the souls of the dead. This is why she does not know if a soul is headed towards heaven or hell, for she is merely a portal to each. She is responsible for putting the universe to rest after all life forces have ended. As she loves to say: “When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I’ll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave.”
She is also present everywhere on Earth but in a form that is not visible to humans. We saw a glimpse of this in her first comic appearance as she traversed the Earth with Dream in order to collect souls. This ability shows that she is capable of teleporting anywhere on Earth as well as traveling between different magical realms.
Death appears to be present even at the time of birth and can imbue a body with life. That is why everyone meets her twice, first at birth and then at the end of their lives. During birth, she is also capable of giving someone a second chance in the form of reincarnation.
Another power she has is that of shapeshifting which means she can change her size, form, and appearance as per her will at any time. She can also see and interact with spirits that are roaming in the living world. Apart from that, she has the power to leave a soul on Earth as a ghost.
Although Death is the Endless whom most humans would not wish to meet, her role in her family is quite motherly. Despite her casual and informal dress, she is the maternal figure for all her siblings. In fact, she is quite the opposite of her elder brother Destiny, who is comparatively colder and more distant. It is surprising to know that of all the Endless, Death is the most compassionate and kind towards human beings and is also able to relate to them.
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