Here's How Lucifer Could've Easily Won That Duel With Morpheus in 'The Sandman'

In 'The Sandman ' episode 4, 'A Hope in Hell', Morpheus heads to Lucifer 's domain in order to retrieve one of his power tools – the helmet that one of the demons came into possession of.

But Hell is not exactly known for handing things away that easy. To get his helmet back, Morpheus has to win a battle of imagination against Lucifer. Both come up with things they "turn into" in order to defeat each other: starting with a snake and a hunter, and finishing with concepts of universe, hope and even "anti-life".

The latter becomes Lucifer's final weapon against Morpheus: at some point, the ruler of Hell seems absolutely confident of her victory, with Dream taking his time to come up with something that could defeat "anti-life".

However, Morpheus lands a victory by proclaiming himself to be "hope" – something that Lucifer seems to be unable to beat. But some fans were disappointed with Gwendoline Christie 's character losing the battle, arguing that a perfect counter-attack was right there, because it was… Dream's sibling, Despair.

Despair, fans argue on Reddit, is an obvious thing that defeats hope and could have given Lucifer a chance to avoid being publicly humiliated by Dream when he won the battle and left Hell with his helmet.

With an obvious answer in mind, some fans argue that Lucifer might have not used it because hope is something she herself, as a ruler of Hell, relies on a lot: as Dream said, Hell would be powerless if those captured in it would not be able to dream of Heaven, and, therefore, keep up hope.

The battle scene between Dream and Lucifer is easily one of the fans' favorite in the show, with people praising it not only for pondering eternal concepts but also for masterfully using music, lighting and directing to channel tension and drama of the face-off instead of simply relying on CGI.

'The Sandman' is currently streaming on Netflix.