When Dream is imprisoned, Roderick Burgess takes away his three tools: his pouch of sand, his helm, and his ruby. A few years after this, the items are stolen by Burgess’ mistress, Ethel Cripps.
When Dream finally breaks free, he goes on a hunt to find his tools. He retrieves his pouch of sand and his helm from Johanna Constantine and Lucifer, respectively, and then makes his way to John Dee (Ethel’s son) who has the ruby.
But does he succeed in getting it back?
While battling with Dream, John theorizes the only way to beat him would be to destroy the ruby since it could be the source of Dream’s powers. However, the move backfires as the powers from the broken ruby automatically return to Dream.
The ruby is probably the most powerful of Dream’s tools. It contains a large amount of his pure power, as well as gives the user the ability to create dreams, bring them to life and even alter reality.
The thing is, like Dream’s other tools, the ruby was never meant to be used by humans. This is why John has always been suffering from the consequences of having the ruby around him. (That, and given his entire upbringing that stems back to Ethel’s time with Burgess).
Craving to carve out an “honest” world, John tries out his first experiment in Ep 5. We witness just how ugly and animalistic these powers can get when John drives the people to slaughter each other under the guise of honesty. Worse yet, he shows no remorse for his actions.
From John’s perspective, Dream isn’t using the ruby to its full potential and is a passive culprit, enabling the world to be corrupt. This is why he doesn’t hand the ruby back to Dream, and chooses to fight him instead.
With the ruby’s powers, John is able to one-up Dream and even manages to take away his power. But then he gets too conceited and makes a mistake. He crushes the ruby, believing that once broken, it will kill Dream.
But it doesn’t! There is a moment of panic as the screen turns white and we see only John Dee present. But it slowly pans out to show Dream as a behemoth, holding John in the palm of his hand.
Dream decides to not kill John and sends him back to the hospital. He reasons that John did not get the ruby through his own means and was subjected to it because of his parents’ doing. Even his mental health suffered because of that. Plus, he did not cause any major havoc with it, either.
So while Dream does not get his ruby back in its physical form, he is able to reabsorb all its powers. This may be for the best, because now, no one can steal the ruby/these powers from him—unless, of course, he decides to recreate the ruby.
About The Sandman
The Sandman is an American fantasy drama TV series based on the 1989–1996 comic book written by Neil Gaiman and published by DC Comics. The series was developed for Netflix and is being produced by DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. Television.
The first season adapted the first two comics in the series, Preludes & Nocturnes and The Doll’s House. In 1916, Dream, the king of Dreams and Nightmares and one of the seven Endless, is captured and imprisoned after an occult ritual. After being held captive for 106 years, he escapes and sets out to restore order to his kingdom of The Dreaming.
The Sandman stars Tom Sturridge as Dream, with Gwendoline Christie, Vivienne Acheampong, Boyd Holbrook, Charles Dance, Asim Chaudhry, and Sanjeev Bhaskar in supporting roles.
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