The Sandman Season 2 Episode 12 Ending Explained: Is Death Dead?

The second season of Netflix’s ‘The Sandman’ gives a bonus episode to the fans by adapting one of the most popular storylines from the comics universe. This special episode focuses entirely on Death and takes place over the course of the one day that she has taken off from her duties. She treats this day as an occasion to live like a mortal, to experience the world from the eyes of a human and not as Death of the Endless. However, at the end of the day, she must confront the very thing that humans have to when they live their lives. SPOILERS AHEAD.

The Sandman “Death: The High Cost of Living” Plot Recap

The episode begins with Sexton Furnival trying to write a suicide note for his ex, Sylvie. He is a journalist who primarily writes on climate change, and the deteriorating condition of the world has depressed him to the extent that he doesn’t see the point of continuing anymore. His note writing is interrupted by his roommate, who arrives there with her girlfriend, and not-so-subtly asks him to leave so that she and her girlfriend can have the apartment to themselves. Once outside, Sexton tries to record a voice note, but then his eyes fall on a book. In fact, he finds several books which are mixed up with a lot of other junk, which is topped with a refrigerator.

As Sexton stands atop that junk, he looks out at the city, and for a moment, he feels good enough to put his sleeping pills back in his pocket. Then, he slips and falls, and his arm is caught under the fridge. Luckily, someone arrives just in time to help him. This person turns out to be Death, though she doesn’t immediately introduce herself as such. She shakes hands with him, which isn’t concerning because she is on leave today. She takes Sexton to her apartment, where she patches up his arm and his shirt. When he asks her what she does, she tells him that she is Death. He is weirded out by this woman who believes she is Death, but as he runs out of his building, he is confronted by an even weirder woman who turns out to be Mad Hettie.

She forces him to go back to Death’s door, and then uses him as bait to ask for Death’s help in finding her soul, which she seemed to have hidden for safekeeping a long time ago, but now has completely forgotten where she kept it. Death agrees to find her soul, but she also wants to live the only day she has as best as she can. She brings a reluctant Sexton to tag along with him, and the more time he spends in her vicinity, the more questions he has about her. It turns out that she is incredibly nice, and people are nice to her in return, which means she gets a lot of stuff for free, be it food from a street vendor, a ride from a cab driver, entry into a club called the Undercut Club, and even the drinks there.

Here, Death is introduced to Sexton’s roommate and her girlfriend, and Theo, the owner of the club, who shows particular interest in Death. It later turns out that he summoned her there because his girlfriend died of an overdose, and he wanted to bring her back to life. However, his plan doesn’t work out as expected, and the worst that happens is that he hits his head and is taken to the hospital. With all of this, the hours of the day come to a close, and Death decides to spend them wrapping up a few things, while also dreading the fact that she will not get to be like this again for another hundred years.

Is Death Dead? Why does Mad Hettie put the Pennies on Her Eyes?

One of the great things about the Endless in the universe of ‘The Sandman’ is that they are not limited to one form. They morph according to how people see them, according to the time and place they are in, and even according to the fluctuations in their own mood, but most importantly, according to the things that are required of them. So, when Death gets her day off and she decides to live it like a human, she actually does take a mortal form. This means that she is born like a human and must die like a human too. There is a point early in the episode where she tells Sexton that she is only a few hours old.

This comes off as strange because she has existed since the dawn of time, but it makes more sense by the end of the day, when she doesn’t simply disappear but actually dies. So, when she falls into the water, she passes away and her body is left behind, like it would any other human. When Sexton calls for help, the paramedics declare her dead, and they believe that it could be because of a heart attack, but of course, Sexton has a hint by now that the woman he spent the entire day with was no ordinary being, and her death doesn’t mean she is gone for good.

To make the experience more human, when Death dies, Mad Hettie places coins on her eyes. Interestingly, these coins are the only money that Death had left after she spent the twenty dollars she had to buy a necklace. She left the necklace for Hettie and gave the two pence to Sexton, noting that you never know when you might need them. This shows that she already knew what those coins would be used for, mainly because she is Death and knows almost everything, but also because this isn’t the first time she has done it. The placing of the pennies on the eyes of the dead is practiced by several religions. In the Greek myth, the pennies were a token for the ferryman to take the deceased across the river Styx. A similar meaning can be attached to Hettie placing the coins on Death’s eyes.

Does Hettie Get Her Soul Back? Who is Cordelia?

One of the main things for Death to accomplish for the day is to find Hettie’s lost soul. The strange immortal has forgotten where she kept it, but she knows that she hid it so that Death could never find it. Ironically, now she wants Death herself to find it for her. As the events of the day transpire, Death indulges in a deeply human experience, but the thing with Theo summoning her and holding her hostage does steal a few hours from her day, which makes her wonder how she will find Hettie’s soul in such a limited time. Fortunately, the answer presents itself the next morning as Death and Sexton walk by the river, talking about life, death, love, and everything in between.

They come across a vendor selling necklaces and pendants. She finds one that is like the one she was wearing hours earlier, before Theo snatched it off her neck, believing it would help him bring his dead girlfriend back. She is interested in buying it, but then her eyes fall on some other completely different pendant, and she decides to buy that one instead. This is where she pays for the first time in the past 24 hours, and even then, the vendor takes twenty dollars because that’s all that she can pay at the moment, rather than asking her to pay the real price. Even then, the necklace is not for herself but for Hettie. This points towards another important part about dying: even Death doesn’t take any material belongings with her to the other side.

It is after Death dies and Sexton gives the necklace to Hettie that we discover that this is where she had kept her soul. Moreover, her soul is actually the picture of her daughter, Cordelia, which is the only thing that she has left of her now. While it is not revealed how old Hettie is, we know that she has been around for a very long time, long enough for her to cross paths with the Fates and start working for/with them. In this long era of immortality, she has seen a lot of things, from the ordinary deaths of mortals to the death of an Endless.

But the most heart-shattering thing would have been to see her own loved ones die, which includes her only daughter, Cordelia, who passed away centuries ago, and the necklace with her picture in it is the only thing valuable enough for Hettie to hold on to and protect so that it never falls into the wrong hands. One could say that she hasn’t kept her actual soul in it, and when she spoke of it, it was more in figurative terms. In any case, she has the pendant, and hence her soul, back now, and Death has delivered what was asked of her.

Do Sexton and Billie End Up Together? Does He Drop the Idea of Suicide?

When we meet Sexton for the first time, he seems to have made up his mind about killing himself. He is more concerned about getting the suicide note right, and he doesn’t even address it to his roommate or a family member. He wishes to leave it for Sylvie, the girl he is still in love with, but not in a relationship with anymore. He wants to tell her that he is not killing himself because of her, but the way he still clings to her shows that his heartbreak is one of the reasons why things have become so intolerable for him. And because he has decided to kill himself, he doesn’t seem interested in anything new that life has to offer, which includes Billie, whom he meets at the club where he reluctantly goes with Death.

While Billie is clearly interested in him, Sexton doesn’t reciprocate her attention. They have a brief talk where he lets it slip that he is suicidal, while she shares her own experience with abuse and how she, too, almost killed herself but was grateful to be alive when she didn’t die. This creates a sense of understanding between them, and on top of that, the experience with Death gives a new perspective to Sexton. The next morning, he talks about the whole thing, from their meeting to the woman claiming to be Death and her sudden passing away, with his roommate, who wonders if it was really Death all along. Then her girlfriend arrives, and with her comes Billie.

Had it been any other day, Sexton would have rebuffed her, remaining shut off, making him more miserable. But now that he has seen things from a new perspective, he is more open to Billie and her friendship. He asks her to have tea, and when she agrees, he deletes his suicide note and decides to spend time with Billie instead. Does this mean that he has finally moved on from Sylvie and suicide and might actually have a romantic relationship with Billie? There is a good chance of it. Referring to a statement made by his roommate earlier in the episode, the world is a bad place for everyone, but it becomes bearable and worth living in if you have the right person by your side. His roommate finds this person in her new girlfriend, and perhaps, Sexton will finally find the same thing in Billie.

Why are There Two Deaths in the End?

When humans die, they are greeted by Death, who explains their situation to them and helps them cross over to the other side. But what happens when Death dies? In this case, we go back to the point about the Endless being much more than the one form that we become familiar with in the series. In this context, one must also note that Death needs to be at a lot of places at once, as nearly two people are believed to die every second. This means hundreds of deaths per minute. Because it takes a few minutes for Death to console people, it means that she has to be about a hundred places at once, which suggests that she takes many forms. The idea of an Endless taking more than one form has been addressed in ‘The Sandman’ a couple of times, most notably in the second season when there are multiple Destinies.

In the context of this episode, it is fair to believe that Death sent one of her forms to Earth to live for a day as a human. This doesn’t mean that the one who spent the day with Sexton wasn’t the real Death. Rather, everything that Didi feels is felt by the Death whom she meets when she dies at the end of the day. Still, they are different, even if temporarily, because Didi has taken over mortal form, which makes her entirely human for the span of 24 hours. This means that when she dies like a human, she will still find Death waiting for her on the side, even if it means shaking hands with herself as she sheds her mortal coil.

The second Death asks Didi how her experience was, and she expresses her wish to have been able to live like that forever. However, Death points out that the very reason it feels like this is because it is so temporary. If she didn’t have to die at the end of the day, she wouldn’t have known what it feels like to live, and that is “the high cost of living” that everyone must pay. It is incredible to be alive and to have the moments of happiness, sadness, delight, despair, and everything else that comes with being human. But life cannot be meaningful without death, which is what everyone, including Didi, needs to understand if they are to truly appreciate the gift they have.

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