Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘The Sandman’ follows the turbulent story of Dream of the Endless. Each episode unfolds a new chapter of his story, and with each page, we discover a snippet from his life that makes him as old as time. Having been alive for so long means that Dream has had his fair share of love affairs, but none compares to the love he had for Nada, the Queen of the First People. His love for her leads him to do some despicable things, which he tries to rectify in the second season. However, the way things turn out, their romance seems just as doomed as always. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Nada Refuses to Forgive Dream for His Actions
When we first meet Nada, she is imprisoned in the depths of Hell. When she calls out to her former lover for help, Dream acknowledges that he still loves her, but he mentions that he has not yet forgiven her for her betrayal. The whole story comes out in Season 2, when we discover that the betrayal was more of a rejection that Dream couldn’t handle. As exceptional as she was, Nada was still a mortal, and her romance with an Endless wasn’t supposed to work out by nature. Still, she fell in love with Dream, who met her in her dreams and was captivated by her dedication to her family.
It didn’t take much time for tragedy to strike, and her entire kingdom was turned to ashes. Wishing to repent for engaging in an affair that she knew wouldn’t end well for her people, she broke things off with Dream. In a fit of anger, he condemned her to hell and spent the next ten thousand years or so in Hell. In the family meeting called by Destiny, Dream is poked by Desire on Nada’s matter, and even Death tells him how he did the queen wrong. Wishing to make up for his sins, he decides to free Nada from Hell, and after resolving a major issue, he eventually succeeds.
When he meets Nada again, he is nervous because he knows what he has done. He tries to ask for her forgiveness, but she has spent ten thousand years in complete agony simply because her former lover couldn’t handle rejection. She is in no mood to let him off the hook, and she tells him as much when they meet again. She states it in clear terms that she does not love Dream anymore. Moreover, she doesn’t believe that he loves her either. He just wants what he cannot have. However, catering to his emotions is not her job, and now that she is finally out of Hell, she wants to focus on herself. So, she leaves Dream to his own devices and goes back to Earth.
Nada Gets a New Lease of Life While Dream Longs for Her
The last we see of Nada, she is ready to go back to Earth and experience being human from a fresh perspective. Dream asks her to be with him one more time, but she rejects him again, and this time, he has matured enough to understand that being rejected in love is not the end of the world. He lets Nada go, though he tells her that she can still find him in the Dreaming. She, however, doesn’t seem remotely interested in crossing paths with him again.
Later, when Delirium comes to him with the proposal to look for Destruction together, he takes it as an opportunity to go to the mortal realm and track down Nada. When warned against it, he doesn’t pay any heed to it. He doesn’t stop to think that even if he accidentally bumps into her, she will not consider it a coincidence. Rather, she will interpret it as Dream stalking her, which will show her that he hasn’t changed a bit. Fortunately, they don’t cross paths, even though there are times when Dream believes that he has caught a glimpse of Nada in the crowd.
The truth is that Dream has no idea where she is or in what form. In the comics, when Nada leaves, she is born again on Earth, which means that when Dream and Delirium come looking for Destruction, Nada should be a newborn. Had Dream not gone looking for Destruction, things might have turned out well for him, and in a couple of decades, he might have been able to find Nada again. Unfortunately for him, he ends up killing his own son to locate his brother, which means that he has no time to fret about stalking his ex anymore. The clock is running out for him, and by the end of the second season, he is going to have much worse things to worry about than having his heart broken by Nada. In any case, he is not going to see her again.
Read More: Will Dream Die in The Sandman? Theories
