Dark Nights: Metal's Sandman, Explained

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Dark Nights: Metal #1, by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo.

Dark Nights: Metal is packed full of twists, turns, reveals and surprises, with characters coming out of the woodwork from all over the DC Universe. Thanks to some early previews, it was little surprise to see long lost fan-favorites like the Challengers of the Unknown, Red Tornado and more make themselves known, but others were genuine surprises. Of course, the biggest surprise — possibly of the year — was the final page, which revealed Batman has caught the attention of Dream of The Endless, who warned him that things were going to get far more dangerous from there.

Though the character is part of Vertigo's biggest property, this particular version of Dream isn’t the most-well known (that would be Morpheus who was the titular Sandman for the majority of Neil Gaiman’s groundbreaking series of the same name). Instead, this incarnation was once a boy named Daniel Hall, who succeeded Morpheus as The Lord of Dreams. But while Daniel may not be a household name, his connection to the DC Universe stretches right back to the Golden Age of comics with links to some of the most important and iconic DC heroes.

To Infinity, And Beyond

To understand Daniel, we need to stretch back to DC’s original version of Earth-2, where he originally resided. Earth-2 was where the Golden Age heroes such as Jay Garrick, Alan Scott and Carter Hall lived, and was a world where time ticked along concurrent with the real world. Thus, by the '80s, the original JSA members were getting on in years. As such, many of them had children of their own, offspring who went on to form their own team — Infinity, Inc — after being denied membership to the JSA.

Hector Hall was the son of the Golden Age Hawkman and Hawkgirl, but because of the curse placed on them which caused them to reincarnate into new lives, Hector was born without a soul. He grew up alongside the other children of the JSA, but felt overlooked by his parents in favor of their godson, the winged Northwind. Hector created the Silver Scarab armor out of Nth Metal and helped form Infinity, Inc., but the curse of his birth came back to haunt him as his soulless body was used as a host for the ancient being also known as the Silver Scarab. Unwittingly, Hector Hall nearly destroyed the world. He was ultimately stopped by Infinity, Inc., but unfortunately died in the process.

Hippolyta “Lyta” Trevor was the daughter of the Golden Age Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor and inherited Amazonian powers from her mother. As she grew up — like many of her fellow children of heroes — she sought to follow in her mother’s footsteps as the superhero known as Fury, and was a founding member of Infinity, Inc. As members of the team, Lyta and Hector fell in love and got engaged, but Hector died before they were able to marry. However, moments before he died Lyta told Hector that she was pregnant with their child which contained the purity and goodness of Hector Hall, which was part of the reason the Silver Scarab was able to be stopped.

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I Dreamed A Dream

Meanwhile, in The Dreaming (an other-dimensional reality where a person's mind goes to while they're sleeping), Morpheus had been missing for decades. During his absence, two of his underlings -- Brute and Glob -- resorted to installing mortals as temporary Lords of Dreams in order to make sure things ticked along as well as they could. Instead of passing onto the afterlife, Hector Hall’s spirit was snatched by Brute and Glob, and adopted the guise of the Silver Age Sandman, once held by Dr. Garrett Sanford. As The Sandman, Hector could only leave The Dreaming for an hour a day, and used a lot of his time to visit Lyta in her dreams. He eventually revealed himself to her and invited her to join him in The Dreaming where they could live as husband and wife, an offer she accepted. However, Morpheus eventually returned from his exile, and after banishing Brute and Glob, he sent Hector to his eternal reward and told Lyta that due to the majority of her pregnancy taking place in The Dreaming, he would one day lay claim on her child as the next Lord of Dreams.

It was Morpheus who named the child Daniel, and as he grew up, he started to enter The Dreaming at night where was regaled with stories by the denizens of the in-between place. Meanwhile, Lyta slowly lost her mind, blaming Morpheus for taking her husband from her and furious that one day he was destined to take her son from her, too. Lyta’s quest for vengeance led to her invoking The Kindly Ones (a trinity of character based on the greek Erinyes), who were eventually successful in killing Dream. However, it turned out that Dream allowed them to kill him, so he could save The Dreaming from their wrath. In the aftermath, Daniel ascended to become the new Dream of The Endless.

The Story Continues...

Daniel’s ascension and Dream’s death wasn’t the end for the Hall family. Hector found himself trapped in a reincarnation cycle much like his parents, and was brought back to the world as the new bearer of the mantle of Doctor Fate, finally joining the Justice Society of America. His father Carter returned not long after, and the two finally had time to bond not just as parent and child but as peers.

Hector discovered his wife, now in a coma, and sought all manner of magical means to wake her,. After he eventually disenchanted her, he learned that the woman he thought was his wife was actually Dawn Granger — the hero known as Dove — who had magically been made to look like Lyta by Mordru, a major DC Comics magician. Hector eventually discovered that Lyta was actually being kept from him by Nabu himself, the force that powers Doctor Fate, and the pair were eventually reunited.

At some point, the Spectre (essentially, the incarnation of God's wrath) went on a rampage against all magic in the DC Universe. During the battle, Hector was badly injured and near death, as he and Lyta were trapped in a section of Hell, surrounded on all sides. In what seemed to be their last moments together, their son Daniel — now Dream — appeared and offered them the chance to live together forever in The Dreaming, an offer Lyta accepted. Their physical bodies remained, but their spirits followed their son into his mystical domain, from which they would never return.

The re-appearance of Daniel after a decade away certainly raises a lot of questions, but perhaps the biggest is how his involvement in Dark Nights: Metal might link to that of his grandfather, Carter Hall. So much of what we know the event to be involves Nth Metal itself, and it would be a huge missed opportunity if there wasn't some sort of Hall family reunion at some point before its end. Considering Daniel's appearance just after Batman discovered Carter's journal hidden in Wayne Manor, it's looking like Snyder and Capullo are planning to give us precisely that.