Peter Pan/Characters

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Peter Pan

The Boy Who Never Grew Up and titular character. Peter Pan is a mischeivous, unaging boy who lives in Neverland and can fly thanks to a combo of fairy dust and happy thoughts. While often an egotistical, arrogant and childish person, Peter is very considerate and loyal to his friends.

  • Anti-Hero: Type V
  • Ambiguous Innocence: Peter is quite cruel for being a child, laughing as John and Michael Darling nearly fell to their deaths, told Wendy her mother abandoned her, and not to mention what he did to Captain Hook.
  • Children Are Innocent: And this is explored rather thoroughly in the book, both the positive and negative sides to never losing your childish innocence.
  • Crosscast Role: Often in theatre, Peter is portrayed by a woman. However, in the Disney film, 2003 film and Hook among others, he is played by a boy or a man.
  • Growing Up Sucks: Peter vowed to never grow up when he just a baby after overhearing his parents discussing his already planned out future despite only being born, and fled to Kensington Garden where he met Tinker Bell, learnt how to fly and went to Neverland.
    • He actually grows up in Hook and forgets his past life until later.
  • Fiery Redhead: In the Disney film.
  • Fisher King: To Neverland. The island reflects his mood and sleeps when he does or when he leaves.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold
  • I Believe I Can Fly
  • Kid Hero
  • Kids Are Cruel: Though in Peter's case it's (mostly) not intentional.
  • Living Shadow: Averted in the original novel and play, where Peter's detatched shadow is never mentioned to be alive or moving on its own accord. Most of the visual adaptations, though, do portray Peter's shadow as alive and able to live sepaeately from Peter -- probably because this is much more visually exciting than a shadow that just hangs in someone's grip like a piece of laundry.
  • Lonely at the Top
  • Never Grew Up: The Trope Namers.
  • Oblivious to Love: In the novel and play, but averted in several of the films.
  • The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Has made all the Lost Boys promise to leave Hook to him.
  • Parental Abandonment: Implied in one take, but may have been actually accidental.
  • Pointy Ears
  • Public Domain Character: Aside from the United Kingdom.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: Subverted since he's so popular.
  • The Trickster
  • Vague Age: The only clue in the book is that he "still has all his baby teeth."
  • Verbal Tic: His cockerel cry.

Wendy Darling

Wendy Moira Angela Darling becomes Peter's companion and Designated Love Interest. An enthusiast on telling the stories of Peter Pan, Wendy idolises the flying boy and accompanies him to Neverland with her brothers but must learn she has to come of age sooner or later. She later grows up and has a daughter named Jane.

Wendy was grown up. You need not be sorry for her. She was one of the kind that likes to grow up. In the end she grew up of her own free will a day quicker than other girls.

Captain James Hook

The Big Bad of the novel and all of its adaptations. One of the greatest pirates in history, Captain Hook's right hand (left hand in most of the adaptations) was chopped off by Peter and fed to a crocodile who now has a taste for Hook. He has a personal grudge to settle with Peter because of this.

  • Acting for Two: A common trait of Peter Pan is that actors play both Captain Hook and Mr. Darling in the same performance.
  • Big Bad: Of the story, obviously.
  • Disproportionate Retribution / Freudian Excuse: Hey, Petey cut off his right hand and served it to a crocodile for his lunch, that shit don't fly in Never Never Land.
  • Green-Eyed Monster: Hook's motivation for hunting Peter is his cocky attitude and "good form" (charisma), which Peter maintains without trying or even realizing it. Hook believes this is the best form to have.
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: Played by a number of great actors including Hans Conried (Disney), Tim Curry (Fox's Peter Pan and the Pirates), Dustin Hoffman (Hook), and Jason Isaacs (2003 film).
  • Hook Hand: The master of this trope.
  • Impossibly Cool Clothes: Captain Hook is always dressed in his best clothes.
  • Manipulative Bastard
  • Never Smile At a Crocodile
  • Not Quite Dead: In Peter Pan in Scarlet, it's revealed that Captain Hook survived being eaten by the crocodile and eventually managed to escape -- but his stay in a crocodile's stomach had changed him beyond recognition, and he became Ravello the circus man.
  • The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: He wants to be the one to defeat Peter.
  • Pirate
  • Pirate Parrot: Has one in the 2003 film.
  • Shrouded in Myth: His origins.
    • Word of God says that "Hook was not his true name. To reveal who he really was would even at this date set the country in a blaze."
      • Additional details have Hook as having attended Eton College. Barrie gave a speech at the college in 1927 where he gave more of Hook's background: one story had it Hook once sat on a wall meant for the privilege of Eton graduates. When a guard confronted him about it, rather than admit he was a student - and shame the school in the process - Hook nobly hopped off to retain the school's honor.
    • We also know Hook once served as boatswain to Blackbeard, and was the only pirate that Long John Silver ever feared.
    • The novel Peter and the Starcatchers (currently being adapted to film by Disney) posits that Hook was originally known as Captain Black Stache, after his black mustache.
  • Surrounded by Idiots: Smee is nowhere near as monstrous as he is.
  • Wicked Cultured: An evil, bloodthirsty pirate he may be, but he's also a refined, well-schooled gentleman who places a huge value on "good form."

Mr. Smee

Captain Hook's first mate and Bumbling Sidekick. The nicest pirate in the Jolly Roger's crew.

Smee had pleasant names for everything, and his cutlass was Johnny Corkscrew, because he wiggled it in the wound.

  • Lovable Coward: Often scene fleeing the Jolly Roger in a longboat.
  • Minion with an F In Evil: While there's no doubt he could kill the Lost Boys if he wanted and slaps them around, none of them can actually take him seriously as a threat and find him lovable. Since Smee wants to be a real villain, Hook actually considers it "too cruel" to tell him what children really think of him.
  • Pirate
  • Punch Clock Villain: In the Disney films.

Tinker Bell

Peter's fairy sidekick. She is quick to anger and jealousy, but is loyal to Peter.

  • Ambiguous Innocence: "Tinker Bell was not all bad. Sometimes she was even all good."
  • Betty and Veronica: Veronica to Wendy's Betty.
  • Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Trope Namers.
  • Clingy Jealous Girl
  • Cute Mute: Not literally mute, just speaks in a voice that to human ears sounds like tinkling bells. The audience generally does not understand her, but Peter does. In the book, the Lost Boys do as well, and towards the end, Wendy has at least learned enough of the language to recognize the insults Tink hurls at her.
    • How adaptations treat this varies a lot: Several adaptations, including the Disney movie, make Peter the only one who can understand her perfectly, and with everyone else she has to resort to miming to get her point across. In other adaptations, such as the World Masterpiece Theater version, Peter Pan and The Pirates, and of course Hook, she speaks normally.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Drank poison to save Peter. Resurrected by clapping hands.
    • In the World Masterpiece Theater version she uses almost all of her Life Energy to save Peter from a Death Trap instead. She gets better thanks to Tiger Lily.
    • And in the Disney Animated version she gets terribly damaged trying to remove the exploding time bomb that was intended for Peter. Though his hideout is ruined by the explosion, both survive as he searches for the frail, weak Tinker Bell.
  • Killed Off for Real: Turns out she died sometime before Peter came to take Wendy back for "spring cleaning" a year after their first adventure, and Peter does not even remember her.
    • In Peter Pan in Scarlet, which takes place twenty years later, she is resurrected by the wish of the new fairy, Fireflyer, who's been told about her by Wendy and the Lost Boys. At the end of the novel, they're married, have set up a lucrative business selling dreams to pirates, and are so happy they're determined not to get killed for at least a hundred more years.
  • Our Fairies Are Different
  • We Are as Mayflies: Fairies have very short lifespans, probably about a year or so.
  • Yandere: Sweet cute Tinker Bell... tries to have Wendy killed twice out of jealousy.

The Lost Boys

Peter's trusty gang; boys who were lost or abandoned by their parents and eventually ended up in Never Land. There are a lot of them over the years, and different adaptations and sequels have different Lost Boys -- but the original, and most commonly-used ones, are Tootles, Slightly, Curly, Nibs and the Twins.

  • Band of Brothers: They bicker and fight a lot, but they're always there for each other. At least until Peter says something else.
  • Born Unlucky: Tootles. He misses out on more adventures than anyone else because they have a tendency to happen when he's just left the scene, and if something bad happens it generally happens to him.
  • Butt Monkey: Again, Tootles, though Slightly also has traces of this.
  • The Dividual: The Twins are the Twindividual variety; they don't even have individual names [1] and are never seen apart. Some adaptations has them as Single-Minded Twins.
    • To a lesser extent, the Lost Boys as a group can be said to have a Syndividual thing going on; they have their individual personalities, but it's as a group they're important, and most often they only appear as a group.
    • Interestingly, the "Single-Minded Twins" trope is subverted a few times in the play and the novel; "First Twin" is said to be prouder than his brother, "intellectually the superior of the two", and the best dancer of the group. The truth is that the twins intentionally act as much alike as possible because Peter, who doesn't have a realistic view of what twins are, thinks that they should.

Second Twin: Slightly, I dreamt last night that the prince found Cinderella.
First Twin: Twin, I think you ought not to have dreamt that, for I didn't, and Peter may say we oughtn't to dream differently, being twins, you know.

  • Class Clown: Curly is treated as this in some adaptations, thanks to his (stated, but not really shown) tendency to get into mischief in the book.
  • Fearless Fool: Nibs has traces of this.
  • The Fool: Tootles, something Tinker Bell tries to take advantage of. There's a bit of Dumb Is Good there as well, as Tootles is very clearly the kindest and most selfless of the Lost Boys.
  • Gender Bender: Tootles in Peter Pan in Scarlet, as a part of the books recurring and exaggerated "clothes make the man" theme -- when the now adult Lost Boys become children again by dressing in their children's clothes, Tootles (who only has daughters) is forced to dress as a girl, and so he physically becomes a girl, and starts acting like a wannabe Princess Classic -- and like Wendy, Tinker Bell and Tiger Lily before him/her, develops a crush on Peter and begins displaying traces of Hopeless Suitor.
  • Growing Up Sucks: Unlike Peter, they do eventually grow up (if we exclude the Disney version), and quickly discover it's not as much fun as they'd thought. Not played completely straight, though, as several of them actually turn out to have rather nice (if less adventurous) lives as adults.
  • Hidden Depths: Tootles, not surprisingly. He even grows up to be a judge.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Slightly; he's snooty and pompous but not a bad person.
  • Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Slightly thinks he remembers what it's like to be a normal boy and have parents. He's wrong.
  • Plucky Comic Relief: Tootles and Slightly share this role, which is probably why they tend to get the most individual attention.
  • Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: In some adaptations, they can have traces of this.
  • Took a Level In Kindness: Slightly in Peter Pan in Scarlet -- very notably so.
  • The Voiceless: Tootles in the Disney movie.
  • Yes-Man: All of them are this to Peter.


John and Michael Darling

Wendy's younger brothers, and her regular audience for stories about Peter Pan. They accompany her to Neverland and become part of the Lost Boys for a while, but eventually return home.

  • Age Lift: Most notably with Michael in the 2003 movie; in the book he's around three or four, but in the movie he's eight. John is eight in the book, ten in the musical and around eleven or twelve in the movie. Averted in the Disney movie, which has them roughly the same age as in the book.
  • Annoying Younger Sibling: Partially subverted, in that Wendy is the one who insists on bringing them along -- though Peter blatantly doesn't care about them and can take or leave them.
  • Companion Cube: Michael's teddy bear in the Disney version.
  • Killed Off for Real: Michael in Peter Pan in Scarlet. He's revealed to have died in World War I.
  • Nice Hat: John wears a top hat, which in the book is eventually used as a chimney for Wendy's house.
  • Not Allowed to Grow Up: An in-universe variant with Michael in the book, who is designated (by Wendy) to be the "baby" and is made to be younger than he really is.
  • Pajama Clad Heroes: Along with Wendy, they spend their entire time in Neverland in their sleepwear (apart from John's top hat, which he grabbed at the last moment before flying off to Neverland).
  • Stuffy Brit: John. It's especially noticeable in the Disney movie, but it's definitely present in the book and play as well.
  • Tagalong Kid: Both of them, to some extent, but Michael especially.

George Darling

The put-upon patriarch of the Darling family. He cares for the well-being of his children, especially Wendy, but believes that precision, order and practicality are more important than having fun or any kind of happiness. His opinion of Peter Pan is not high, despite the rest of his family believing in him and this is one of the reasons why he and Captain Hook are played by the same actor.

  • And You Were There: One of the reasons he and Hook are played by the same man is because Hook is a physical manifestations of Wendy's feelings towards her father.
  • Catchphrase: "A little less noise please."
  • Exiled to the Couch: A variation. After Peter takes his kids to Never Land, he punishes himself in Nana's doghouse.
  • Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Since Wendy is turning thirteen, he believes that she should have a room of her own. He also doesn't want her telling stories of Peter Pan to her brothers just so they can grow up to become like him.
  • Pet the Dog: Literally to Nana.

Mary Darling

The loving matriarch of the Darling family.

Liza

The maid of the Darling household, who frequently appears in a few of the adaptations.

  • Adapted Out: She appears in the Mary Martin musical and a character similar to her appears in Hook.

Nana

The family's pet dog/nurse to the children.

  1. ↑ excluding Peter Pan in Scarlet, where their names are eventually revealed to be Marmaduke and Binky
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