The third volume of The Sandman Universe: Lucifer, subtitled The Wild Hunt, draws us closer to one of the more daring threads in the prior installment (The Divine Tragedy).
Within the second volume, there is a memorable scene involving Lucifer, Caliban and the ancient Egyptian pantheon. To gain an audience with the Egyptian dieties, Lucifer must weigh his heart against the feather of truth with Anubis. The scales balance and Lucifer says “My heart is never heavy. I do as I will, and never otherwise.” To which Anubis says “Would that all had it that easy.”
Later, Caliban attempts to follow his father and his own heart cannot balance against truth. Obviously, Caliban has more in common with a lot of us than Lucifer. The majority of us have had to do at least some things against our will, or have been forced to. To many, an entire existence with no involuntary compulsion sounds mythic.
The quality that the society of witches revered within Sycorax was her total refusal to live under the rules of another. Thessaly, who voices most of this, says that she herself would not have been brave enough to refuse both the overtures of the Moon and Lucifer. Thessaly expresses that most people are so desperate for power and safety that they would agree to anything for it. Essentially, it is the coin that is always accepted and Sycorax, in the eyes of Thessaly, has turned her freedom into something so precious that no coin can buy.
Between freedom as a naturally occurring absolute (Lucifer) and freedom as something to be gradually embodied over time (Sycorax), the latter is just easier to relate to. At the end of The Divine Tragedy, Lucifer has begged every pantheon to shelter Sycorax from the eventual wrath of Jehovah and very nearly fails- what eventually happens to her is something she consents to.
If someone spends a lot of time bending over backwards for another person while claiming they only pursue their own ends, it sews tension. One begins to wonder how honest with himself Lucifer is, when he claims he cannot be coerced. This tension is the main dynamic within The Wild Hunt.
It also involves some character details last glimpsed in the original Sandman. Such as Lucifer’s tendency to sew the seeds of violence and disaster within humans without even noticing he is doing it. The crimes of passion or deaths by accident that Lucifer passively engenders have never really been unpacked until now, and even this unpacking can go unnoticed. We see it a lot in these pages (with almost comedic repetition) but it is never commented on directly. The implication is enough, though: the members of the Wild Hunt claim that if the Hunt is not called regularly, that a build-up of bloodlust will accumulate within all sentient beings which then spills over.
The individual identities of the Wild Hunt support this as well: Thirst, the eldest, appeared when the first being to ever kill felt that desire. Thrill and Fear then manifested and, lastly, Honor, the youngest, whose lot it is to make violence permissible. The Wild Hunt is a ceremonial release of primal, destructive energy that once kept the world in balance. Odin was the original leader of the Wild Hunt and was later supplanted by Lucifer. Lucifer, being both famously goal-driven and wed to his own infallibility, whittled the soul of the Hunted God each time she manifested until she appeared to stop. This leaves the Wild Hunt hanging until Odin summons them in our third volume of the new Lucifer comics.
So you have antagonistic characters claiming that, if the ceremonial Hunt does not occur, a deadly reservoir of violence will grow in the universe. Our protagonist, meanwhile, seems to provoke death and destruction without even noticing or caring and they are also the one that effectively “stopped” the Hunt a long time ago. The one who stopped this release now seems to have a knack for randomly provoking release in others.
Lucifer’s long-protected fallibility is also highlighted in the opening pages. The opening narration says he was followed by Mazikeen (a daughter of Lilith, whose face has a living and a dead half) after abandoning Hell and eventually leaves him. Narrator says we wouldn’t quite dare to openly say that Lucifer was hesitating. And then, when words involving Mazikeen are uttered in the ancient Hellenist underworld of Hades, he is relieved. Odin says Lucifer is attempting to thwart the Hunt “for love.” The unspoken fallibility and dependence of Lucifer are a big deal in this story. To go light on the spoilers for once, whether he succeeds in this pursuit is left on the note of a genuine cliff hanger. This current story arc is not complete enough to be evaluated yet, but I really wanna know what happens next.
AilixChaerea 