Never smile at a crocodile… especially if that crocodile has two sets of teeth, acid blood, and a penchant for popping out of human stomachs.
Alien: Earth, the new FX series from creator Noah Hawley, cannot stop making Peter Pan references. Some are incredibly obvious, others are more subtle, and all make for a layered viewing experience as lush as Neverland itself.
Oddly enough, Alien: Earth is the second series of late to spin off an interstellar movie from the 1970s and do Peter Pan analogues, taking that “second star to the right” thing literally. The kid-friendly Star Wars: Skeleton Crew had young adventurers and pirates too, as well as a droid named SM-33 a.k.a. Smee.
But J. M. Barrie’s stories are never too far out of the cultural conversation. Heck, in 2024 Taylor Swift released an album with a song called “Peter” that uses how Wendy Darling grew up waiting for Peter Pan as a metaphor for bad timing in relationships.
Peter Pan is a fitting sandbox for a franchise like Alien, which has dappled with motherhood as a theme in a variety of ways. To name a few: Weyland-Utani’s computer system “MU-TH-UR,” the way characters become “pregnant” with Xenomorphs, and the relationship between Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley and the orphan Newt in Aliens.
Peter Pan is the ultimate motherless child. He thinks he wants Wendy to be a mother for the other boys, but that doesn’t work out as planned. Here’s a guide to how Hawley ties Pan, Wendy, and Barrie’s fantasy world into the hard science fiction of Alien: Earth.
“Neverland” Research Island & The Lost Boys
Let’s begin with the obvious. Boy Kavelier (Samuel Blenkin), the trillionaire CEO of the Prodigy Corporation, is clearly a Pan fan.
He named his research island “Neverland” after the fictional paradise. He reads ominous passages out loud from Peter and Wendy, Barrie’s novelised version of his 1904 play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up throughout the series.
An immature mogul, he very much sees himself as a Peter Pan figure. The company logo is a teddy bear, like the one Michael Darling takes with him to Neverland. Kavalier openly refers to his hybrids, synthetics with consciousnesses transferred from human children, as Lost Boys. The metaphor is pretty easy to grasp. These robot children, by definition, will never grow up. It’s also, to be frank, a good branding strategy. They’re prototypes of a product, after all.
Kavelier shows footage from Disney’s 1953 animated Peter Pan to his terminally ill test subject Marcy Hermit (Florence Bensburg) before she “transitions” into a hybrid body. This manipulates/inspires her to name her shiny new self Wendy (Sydney Chandler) and the other children after the fictional Lost Boys: Tootles, Curly, Nibs, and Slightly. They call the sixth member of the group Smee, who is of course a pirate in Peter Pan.
Given that the other members of the Lost Boys in Barrie’s text are unnamed twins, we can guess that Wendy simply ran out of names. It’s not a perfect naming system, and the kid is only 11 years old. Send your complaints that she should have called him “Rufio” or something to Wendy c/o Neverland Research Island.
When Marcy transitions into Wendy, she sings herself the popular song “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive.” What does Peter Pan instruct the Darlings to do in order to fly? “Just think lovely, wonderful thoughts.” Accentuate the positive!
Then, when we first see Wendy explore the island in the pilot, the song “Killer Crane” by TV on the Radio plays. In Peter Pan, a jealous Tinkerbell tells the Lost Boys that Wendy is a bird and orders them to shoot her down. Alien: Earth’s Wendy is the subject of jealousy from the other girls on the island too, primarily Curly. Without giving too much away, we’ll later learn more about Curly that ties back to Pan in an interesting way.
In the fourth episode, Kavalier asks Wendy if fighting a Xenomorph felt more like “pirates or Indians,” Pan’s adversaries. When she doesn’t give a satisfactory answer, he theorizes that the Xenomorph is more like the crocodile that stalks Captain Hook. It even makes a clicking, ticking sound!
Nobody wants this Peter Pan allusion to be a 1:1 allegory more than the boy genius. He wouldn’t be pleased with Wendy and her brother Joe connecting over a joke from Ice Age 2: Continental Drift, or Slightly watching Epic. (Huge flex, thanks to corporate mergers in our world, that Alien: Earth can use clips from both Disney and Fox animation. Anastasia next, please?)
He would, however, be thrilled that fans have identified Kavalier’s confidant with a pixie cut, Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant), “tinkering” in the lab as the show and Island’s counterpart for Tinkerbell. This comp is something to watch going forward, as Tinkerbell is known to go rogue.
Wendy, her pesky brother, and the real families that inspired them
Our young leading lady contains a fascinating bundle of Peter Pan allusions beyond the name she chooses, the on-the-nose way Dame Sylvia (Essie Davis) calls her “Wendy, darling.”
Like Peter’s Wendy, she has an attachment to her brother that keeps her from wanting to stay in Neverland. Joe (Alex Lawther) represents both of Wendy Darling’s brothers in the story, John and Michael, who share initials with Barrie himself, as do “Joe and Marcy” for what it’s worth. Unfortunately, Joe does not carry an umbrella and a top hat like John Darling. Perhaps that was a bridge too far for Alien: Earth.
Speaking of initials, the character Wendy Darling was inspired by a childhood friend of Barrie’s named Margaret Henley—same as Marcy Hermit in Alien: Earth.
Young Margaret was not the only muse to inspire an iconic literary figure in her immediate family. Her father, a one-legged writer named William Ernest Henley, was Robert Louis Stevenson’s inspiration for Long John Silver in Treasure Island. Fascinating stuff, given that Barrie referenced Treasure Island a few times in Peter Pan, and that it’s tradition for actors playing Mr. Darling, Wendy’s father, to be double cast as Captain Hook. And in the Alien: Earth pilot, Wendy/Marcy looks at a family photo and we see that her father has a cane and an eyepatch. Curiouser and curiouser!
As for the rest of the Darling family, one of the more subtle, yet hiding-in-plain-sight Peter Pan references in Alien: Earth is a pair of married Protegy employees who act as the Lost Boys’ de facto parents on Neverland Island.
The scientist (David Rysdahl) and psychologist (Davis) share their first names with Arthur and Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, Barrie’s real life friends in London whose children inspired Peter Pan and the Darling family. You might notice that Dame Sylvia’s hair resembles a modernized Gibson Girl, a visual reference bringing the early 20th century to the future.
Who are the pirates in Alien: Earth?
You can’t have Peter Pan without Captain Hook, and Alien: Earth has a doozy in the Weyland-Utani security officer Morrow who survived a doomed (space) ship. He has a robotic arm that can become a knife, hook, or soldering iron as needed. He seems to have a preoccupation with finding the Boy Kavelier that borders on obsession. He’s a little more of a company man than Hook, but he isn’t afraid to corrupt a Lost Boy, in this case Slightly, in order to accomplish that goal.
Does this mean that synthetics are fairies, hybrids are Lost Boys, and cyborgs are pirates in the world of Alien: Earth? It’s likely not that simple.
Pirate imagery occurs throughout. We’ve already noted how Joe and Marcy/Wendy’s father had a pirate-y look about him. When Wendy fights the Xenomorph, she uses a meat hook even more curved than Morrow’s hand. Are the Hermits the pirates? Or, perhaps, because they’re pitted against Prodigy, Weyland-Utani are the pirates? There doesn’t appear to be a Tiger Lily comp, which is probably for the best.
Let’s also keep our eyes on Prodigy’s enigmatic CEO Boy Kavalier. His name is a variant spelling of “cavalier,” which may be a word used to describe Pan’s flighty Devil-may-care attitude. That’s being generous.
One of the more delicious things about Alien: Earth as a Peter Pan allusion is that it leans into early depictions of the titular manchild as a cruel, dark little despot. He’s conceited and heartless at best. That said, a cavalier is also a type of hat that we colloquially associate with gentlemen pirates like Captain Hook.
From a distance, the Prodigy’s logo almost resembles the skull and crossbones on a pirate flag too. When it comes to the storybook villains, the call may be coming from inside the house. Everyone get your best Maggie Smith impressions ready, all together now: “So, Peter, you’ve become a pirate?”
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