Summary
All set in one diner, this episode is showing the power of the ruby.
This recap of Netflix’s The Sandman season 1, episode 5, “24/7,” contains spoilers.
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The Sandman season 1, episode 5 recap
In the previous episode, the show ended with Morpheus unconscious and John taking the ruby for his own.
John is a diner, discussing dreaming about a more honest world with the waitress, showing her the ruby. He watches the waitress, Bette, as she goes through her mundane daily routine, talking to customers, and providing good customer service, but lying to herself. As she’s talking to two people she set up on a date 5 years ago, things get a little bit tense, and as John is watching you can tell he is upset that people are lying. Even small little lies like about ordering something different from what you really want. When Bette comes back to wait on John, he confronts her about writing, and stories, stating that all stories will eventually end in death. He points the ruby at her and makes her tell the truth, saying this is how they change the world.
The scene intensifies as John is making everyone tell the truth about what they are thinking rather than lying and saying what people want them to hear. Everyone in the restaurant is saying what they are actually thinking and feeling. We learn that Bette’s boss is sleeping with her son, that Bette is a lesbian, that the happy couple is not in fact happy, and John watches how lives drastically change when people are actually honest. John looks sad and almost devastated that he’s proving himself right. John sits eating ice cream whilst three sets of people have sex around him in the restaurant.
Things then turn violent, and Bette realizes that John is the one who is having an effect on people. All he’s done is take away the lies, and it’s showing who they really are, sex-driven, crazy, killers. Each person then begins to self-harm, cutting off their fingers, slitting their artists, and burning themselves. Bette is the last one standing, asking John, how is this a better world? He asks her to embrace the darkness, so she stabs herself in her eyes and tells John his future.
The ending
This episode ends with Morpheus waking and finding John, telling him that the ruby wasn’t made to save the world and the ruby needs turning to him as it is harming John and the waking world. He challenges that they are not lies, they are in fact dreams. People use their dreams to get them through life.
John threatens to take Morpheus’ powers, but that can only be done in his realm. In his dreams. We’re now in a dream world. In the house of his father, Roderick Bussels, which turns into the Dreaming. John is slowly killing Lord Morpheus, hurting the dreamers, and breaking the ruby into small pieces. We slowly think that John has killed Morpheus, but really he broke the ruby and released all of its powers, which is most of Morpheus himself. The ruby was never meant to be in the hands of men, so Lord Morpheus lays John back in his psychiatric prison and lets humanity sleep in peace.
The final shot is of one woman, standing in the street, who says “I’m watching you, big brother” and laughs.
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