Wonder Woman 1984 featured an old relic straight out of Sandman’s scariest comic book story ever.
WARNING: The following contains important spoilers for Wonder Woman 1984, now in theaters and on HBO Max.
Wonder Woman 1984 has the Amazon superhero struggling to save the world from a nefarious plot by Maxwell Lord, who uses a mythical artifact known as Dreamstone to become the most powerful figure in the world. The Wonder Woman investigation leads to the revelation that the ancient relic was created by the God of Lies, Dolos, and is linked to the fall of civilizations throughout human history. After absorbing Dreamstone and its capabilities, Lord gains the power to change the reality around him, albeit at a distorted cost, like a live monkey’s paw.
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While it may seem like an impressive story, Dreamstone has an even more illustrious creator and was used for much more horrible things in the comic book DC Universe, which played a central role in a horrifying story from the Vertigo series, The Sandman.
Dreamstone’s DC iteration was actually one of three relics belonging to Morpheus of the Endless, the Lord of Dreams, to help him channel his supernatural powers. At the beginning of the series, a cult accidentally arrested Morpheus in a magical prison after performing a ritual with the intention of invoking the death of his sister. While Morpheus has been in prison for decades, a woman linked to the cult stole Dreamstone and traveled to the United States, where she had a son named John Dee who would later become the supervillain Doctor Destiny, with the power to manipulate dreams through his mother’s. stolen stone.
When Morpheus regained his freedom decades later, Destiny was defeated by the Justice League and confined to Arkham Asylum. Escaping, Destiny recovered Dreamstone and stopped at a nearby restaurant to enjoy his newfound freedom and reunite with the source of his power. The result was “24 hours”, a story in The Sandman # 6 written by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Mike Dringenberg and Malcolm Jones III, colored by Daniel Vozzo and with lyrics by Todd Klein. The problem is widely known as one of the most terrifying of the entire series and a reminder that the story that Gaiman was weaving was firmly rooted in terror and not just dark fantasy.
Over the course of 24 hours, Destiny uses Dreamstone to gradually fold the other customers and workers into the cafeteria around him under his sinister will. From horrible confessions and treating you like a king to brutal fights and his horrible and final deaths, Destiny’s whims have become a reality with bloody effect.
Television broadcasts during the editing revealed that Destiny’s use of Dreamstone was spreading beyond the confines of the cafeteria, as people across the country were driven to temporary insanity when the effects of Dreamstone began to spread for miles and miles. miles out. When the macabre day came to an end, Destiny was confronted by Morpheus, who destroyed Dreamstone and gained the powers he had stored within the gem for centuries, not unlike what Maxwell Lord does in Wonder Woman 1984.
With mass hysteria taking over the world as the Lord expands its reach at the end of Wonder Woman 1984, the scenes certainly resemble Destiny’s own far-reaching effects of Dreamstone’s misuse, albeit with far less dire consequences. And while Lord of Dreams hasn’t yet made an appearance in the DC Extended Universe, Dreamstone’s prominent inclusion in the film highlights the incredibly wide influence of The Sandman.
Directed and co-written by Patty Jenkins, Wonder Woman in 1984 stars Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal and Natasha Rothwell. The film is currently in theaters and on HBO Max.
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