Now, think of the happiest things, it’s the same as having wings, but it won’t save you from a Xenomorph in Alien: Earth.
Noah Hawley’s Alien TV series holds J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan close to its heart, as the primary thematic impetus behind trillionaire Boy Kavalier’s (Samuel Blenkin’s) revolutionary hybrid project. And because I’m like this, I’ve rounded up all the references to Peter Pan you’ll encounter in the first two episodes of Alien: Earth.
Prodigy’s Neverland research facility
Children never grow up in Neverland.
Credit: Patrick Brown / FX
Boy Kavalier’s secret island research lab is dubbed Neverland, after the fantastical world of Peter Pan. The world where children never grow up, Neverland is an apt name for the Prodigy facility where hybrids are made — the consciousness of terminally ill children implanted into synthetic bodies. They quite literally will never grow up.
The Lost Boys
Gang’s all here.
Credit: FX
Not able to keep their own human names due to being part of a classified project, the hybrids are renamed for the characters from Peter Pan. Marcy (Sydney Chandler) takes on the moniker of Wendy, named for the matriarch of the group. As for the rest, they all take on the names of the Lost Boys, Peter Pan’s gang of kid runaways: Tootles (Kit Young), Slightly (Adarsh Gourav), Curly (Erana James), and Nibs (Lily Newmark). The only one of the Lost Boys to have the name of a pirate from the story is Smee (Jonathan Ajayi), the villainous Captain Hook’s boatswain. Leading them all is Boy Kavalier, who fancies himself quite the Peter Pan.
Mashable Top Stories
Disney’s Peter Pan
Think of the happiest things…
Credit: Disney / RKO / Shutterstock
In the lab where hybrids are made, Boy Kavalier plays Disney’s 1953 film Peter Pan during the procedure that transfers their consciousness from their human bodies to their synthetic bodies. You can see in episode 1, they’re playing the scene in which Peter Pan teaches Wendy, John, and Michael to fly, whisking them all off to Neverland.
Boy Kavalier’s nightly bedtime stories
“…tidying up her children’s minds…”
Credit: FX
Each night, Boy Kavalier reads a bedtime story over the Neverland speakers to the Lost Boys, though through Blenkin’s performance, the tale takes on a more sinister tone in the world of Alien: Earth.
In episode 1, he reads passages from Barrie’s 1911 novel, Peter and Wendy (otherwise known as Peter Pan), all of which fittingly — and forebodingly — speak to the “tidying” of children’s minds and the nature of Neverland, the namesake of the research facility:
From Chapter 1:
Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children’s minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight.
When you wake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out your prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.
From Chapter 4:
In the old days at home the Neverland had always begun to look a little dark and threatening by bedtime. Then unexplored patches arose in it and spread, black shadows moved about in them, the roar of the beasts of prey was quite different now, and above all, you lost the certainty that you would win.
There’ll be plenty more where that came from, we’re sure, so we’ll be updating this post as Alien: Earth episodes drop.
