Destruction of the Endless

The last member of the Endless family introduced in The Sandman teaser trailer is the one referred to as The Prodigal, portrayed by Barry Sloane. If the name doesn’t tell much, and even defies the rule according to which all Endless have a name starting with the letter “D”, he is in fact the moniker the other Endless use when speaking of Destruction, the one Endless who ever retired and abandoned his position… proving that humanity (and all sentient beings) were more than capable of causing destruction even without his help. Beware some spoilers in what follows, and let’s see who this rogue Endless is in the comics.

Destruction was the fourth son of Time and Night, and among the last of the Endless prophesied to disappear from existence, right before Death and Destiny. Appearing as a huge red-haired bearded man, he inhabited The Fulcrum, a realm always in a state of mid-explosion, with a huge black sword, that was also his sigil, at its center. The concept he embodied, destruction, was more than necessary for the life of the universe, as no new thing or being can ever be born without the disappearance of its predecessor: Destruction was the one who burnt a forest down to build a city, to cancel winter to make room for spring, to eradicate a generation to make space for the following. Despite being the fourth Endless, he acted as a big brother for most of them, showing a deeper understanding of the Endless’ place in creation than even his older siblings: he laughed more than all the others, enjoyed existence more than the others, and he even distinguished himself for loving the unlovable, showering his younger sisters Despair and Delirium with warm affection. He also dispensed his wisdom to his older brother Dream, and had long and deep conversation with Death, who often accompanied him in his line of work. He had seen entire star systems disappear, but always for natural causes: he wasn’t prepared when at the beginning of the XVIII Century humanity devoted its mind to science. The Enlightenment opened humans’ intellect to the laws of nature, and Destruction accurately foresaw how that knowledge would have been weaponized, turned into means of mass destruction of unprecedented scale. Not wanting to be accomplish of such a devastation, he called for a family meeting in 1718, and announced that he was retiring: he let mankind be the instrument of its own destruction.

Destruction’s predictions turned out to be painfully accurate, and the path started by Isaac Newton, who theorized the inter-convertibility of light and matter in his Third Book of Opticks, led directly to the creation of the atomic bomb. Albeit some had imagined him to disappear, Destruction was very much alive even if he had stepped down from his responsibilities: he simply wasn’t actively leading the affairs of his domain, letting people be responsible for the devastation they caused. In the centuries after his departure, Destruction went on the run, and dedicated himself to something he had wanted to experience for too long: creation. He wandered Europe, helping building a cathedral, reinventing himself as a pavement artist, forging wall paintings… he wasn’t very good at it, as he found out, but it was a pleasure to give shape to something that wasn’t there before rather than bringing things to an end, inverting entropy for the brief moment of art. He lived peacefully and happily, with the sole company of Barnabas, a talking dog who lived with him. He was somewhere in Spain when finally, three centuries after his disappearance, Dream and Delirium found him at the end of a long quest. While Dream wanted to discuss his choices with him, but was still impervious to Destruction’s words of wisdom about change, metamorphosis and self-knowledge, Delirium only wanted her favorite big brother back. As much as he loved his siblings, though, Destruction didn’t want to come back to his responsibilities as Delirium implicitly asked of him, nor he wanted to be disturbed by Dream’s judgement any more. After a brief reunion, during which he tried to convince Dream that the Endless were not really needed in the universe, and had no right to interfere with human life, he left Barnabas to Delirium as a gift to quell her solitude, and then left Earth altogether, walking into the sky and disappearing from view. Being away, he missed Dream’s funeral, but stepped into the Dreaming to meet his brother’s successor, Daniel: maybe, he would have listened to the wisdom he had acquired over his infinite life.

Destruction is an unexpectedly jolly and joyful entity, the one Endless with a true sense of humor, full of love for his siblings and for creation as a whole. As an Endless, he embodies destruction and takes power from it, guiding the processes of annihilation throughout the entire universe, and he can destroy literally everything, responding to his primary function; he also possesses other powers typical to the Endless, such as immortality, omnipresence, shape-shifting, omniscience, teleportation, and much more; plus, he’s also the best trained for battle and the physically strongest of all the Endless. In his long existence, Destruction came to the conclusion that the Endless are not needed in the universe, that the concepts they embody can carry on by themselves, and that their ultimate calling is that of finding and embracing a normal life of relations and affections, without interfering with mortals’ and immortals’ existence… but his words go unheard, and he’s the only one among his siblings who walks creation in full bliss of its marvels, not caring for a self-imposed burden anymore.