Destiny of the Endless

The second season for The Sandman is approaching, and we finally got a very brief teaser, that gives us a first look at the remaining members of the Endless. The first one is, as it should be, Destiny, portrayed by Adrian Lester. Destiny is the oldest of the Endless, the most powerful one… and even the only one who doesn’t originate in Neil Gaiman‘s book, as he appeared way before in Marv Wolfman‘s Weird Mystery Tales to be later absorbed into The Sandman‘s mythology. Who read the comics know what to expect from him in the upcoming storylines, all the others can read what follows.

The eldest son of Night and Time, Destiny was the first of the Endless, and came into existence with sentience itself. He appeared already chained to his book, the Cosmic Log, that summarized everything that ever was, is and will be, and he will cease to exist only when everything, most of his siblings included, will disappear, as the book will have reached its final page. Only Destiny was allowed or capable of reading the Cosmic Log, despite the fact that he was factually blind. His realm was the Garden of Forking Ways, that he walked ceaselessly, observing existence as it unfolded itself into his book, everything recorded, everything accounted for… well, almost everything. As Delirium once pointed out, there were some things that weren’t written even in the Cosmic Log, and Destiny was bound to write them down in first person. Among his siblings, he was also the one more committed to his cosmic role, and rarely stepped out of his function as observer and recorder: one such occasion in which he abandoned his passive stance on existence was around 98.000 BC, when Despair was murdered, and the Endless carried her body to the Necropolis to have her treated accordingly to her nature. Things, however, didn’t go as expected: the people of the Necropolis had forgotten their ancient alliance with the Endless, and when they asked of them the Book of Rituals not only they didn’t know what the weird visitors were talking about, but they even dared laugh at them. To everyone’s surprise, it was Destiny who acted out of his indignation: he called off the agreement between the Endless and the city, and tore off the page of the Necropolis from his book, calling upon it a definitive end. As a result, a supernatural wind came onto the city, and wiped it away as if it never existed. A new city, Litharge, was chosen in its place… and they took care of never forgetting their agreement with the Endless.

One of Destiny’s roles, as the eldest Endless, was to host the family meetings, and such he did when Destruction called for one in the XVII Century. As the book spontaneously opened on the page regarding that very meeting, Destiny was not surprised at all when Destruction announced that he was effectively retiring from his position. He was however surprised in 1915, when a dream ship appeared in his garden: the ship wasn’t meant to be there, as no imaginary item nor being had ever entered the Garden. Enraged by the intrusion, Destiny forcibly summoned Dream… and it turned out that was exactly Dream’s intention, as he had been trapped into a black hole by his mother Night and had sent the ship exactly in the hopes of being pulled out of his prison by his older brother as a consequence. Another such extremely rare occasions of surprise came seventy years later, when the Fates appeared before him in the Garden: their mere presence changed the book, adding a page to it, one in which it was written that Destiny would have called for a family meeting… and so he did, without even knowing what the topic would have been. As all the Endless, minus Destruction, appeared, Desire started mocking Dream for condemning his former lover Nada to Hell, and even Death admitted that it had been cruel and childish on her brother’s part. Spurred by such words, Dream left immediately to travel to Hell… and as soon as he disappeared, Destiny declared the meeting over, as he was now able to see what Dream’s travel to Lucifer‘s kingdom had put in motion. From there on, Destiny found himself at a crossroad, one he found hard to walk: he was the personification of everything that must happen, sure, but he was also Dream’s brother… and for that, he couldn’t help but worry for the terrible things that would have befallen his little brother if he didn’t change his path. Not that he could, of course.

Destiny of the Endless is the personification of existence as a whole, of everything that transpired through time, that is happening and that will come into existence: as such, he’s normally stoic and distanced, observing events he’s expecting since the dawn of time to unfold. Being the incarnation of necessity itself, Destiny is the only being in existence (apart from the Presence) free from such constraints: he’s impossibly powerful, eternal and omniscient, and can from time to time decide to modify what is written in his book, albeit that is an extremely rare occurrence. Nobody but a very few beings can escape Destiny’s gaze (the Challengers of the Unknown being the only known ones), and nothing that happens is new to him… but there are some paths outside of his garden, and things that are not (yet) written in his book: for these unique speckles of free will Destiny is grateful, for he can experience surprise.