Character guide

Peter Pan

major

Also known as Peter, Pan, cunning Peter

Peter is the eternal child-commander of Neverland, ruling the Lost Boys with cocky bravado and forgetting his own adventures almost as fast as he has them. He craves Wendy's stories and mothering but recoils from any bond that might tether or change him, and his carelessness cuts even those who adore him. His arrival at the Darling nursery is the hinge on which the whole story swings, pulling three ordinary children out of Bloomsbury and into the pirate-haunted island of his imagination.

Wendy Darling

major

Also known as Wendy Moira Angela Darling, Wendy Moira Angela, mother Wendy

Wendy is the practical, sewing, story-telling heart of the Darling nursery, the girl her brothers follow and the one Peter recruits to keep house for the Lost Boys. She longs to be needed and admired, yet her domestic instincts sit oddly against a place that punishes growing up, and she must mother boys who will never age. Her arrival transforms Neverland's chaos into something like a home, making her both the story's emotional anchor and the target of its most dangerous enemies.

Captain Hook

major

Also known as James Hook, Hook, the real Hook

Hook commands the pirate brig with theatrical menace and a genuine taste for cruelty, feared by his crew and haunted by the ticking of a crocodile that once ate his hand. Educated, vain, and prone to sudden weeping, he is a villain who knows he is playing a part and cannot stop, and his obsession with Peter gives the island its central feud. His schemes drive the story's escalating danger, turning Neverland from a playground into a place where children can genuinely be lost.

Mr. Darling

supporting

Also known as George Darling, George, the once proud George Darling

Mr. Darling presides over 14 with pompous arithmetic and a nagging fear of being thought foolish, whether he is totting up the cost of a new baby or chaining the family dog in the nursery. He adores his children but measures his love in shillings, and his small vanities—the respect he boasts of, the kiss he never wins—make him both comic and quietly sad. His anxious grip on respectability is what the children fly away from, and his remorse in their absence gives the story its first real ache of home.

Mrs. Darling

supporting

Also known as the Shadow Mrs. Darling, the real Mrs. Darling

Mrs. Darling keeps the nursery at 14 with tender, slightly dreamy care, drawing faceless babies in the account books and tidying her children's dreams after they fall asleep. She loves her husband and children deeply, yet something in her stays unclaimed, a private corner no one has ever entered. When she finds Peter's shadow and hears of the boy who never grows up, her half-belief opens the door through which the whole adventure comes, and her watchfulness makes the children's disappearance feel like a genuine loss.

John Darling

supporting

Also known as John

John is the swaggering, self-important brother between Wendy and little Michael, forever rehearsing the parts of pirate, explorer, and man of the world. He wants to be taken seriously and to be brave, and his boyish posturing both amuses and exposes him when real danger arrives in Neverland. As one of the three children Peter leads away, he embodies the ordinary child's hunger for adventure, and his presence keeps the flight from feeling like Wendy's story alone.

Michael Darling

supporting

Also known as little Michael, gallant Michael

Michael is the smallest Darling swept into the Neverland adventure, tagging after Wendy and John and racing his brother through the sky. His habit of falling asleep mid-flight turns him into Peter's favorite kind of sport, saved only at the last possible second, which exposes how casually cruel Peter's cleverness can be. He matters because his near-drownings raise the stakes of the journey early, and because his grown-up fate, an engine-driver, measures how far the children travel from the nursery.

Tinker Bell

supporting

Also known as Tink, poor Tink, O Tink, Ware Tinker Bell

Tinker Bell belongs to Peter alone and makes that clear the moment Wendy appears, calling her a great ugly girl and vanishing into the bathroom in a huff. Her common origins, she mends kettles, and her rude, unapologetic loyalty set her apart from the sentimental fairies of gentler tales. She matters because her jealousy toward Wendy plants the first friction in Neverland, and because her devotion to Peter will be tested in ways that reveal what fairy love costs.

Nana

supporting

Also known as O Nana

Nana occupies the odd position of family dog and trusted nursemaid, tucking the Darling children in, tying their feet to bedposts after Neverland, and guarding the nursery with a seriousness that borders on maternal. Her flaw is her total conviction that only she can properly look after children, which makes her difficult in old age and comically rigid in her prime. She matters because her watchfulness frames the children's flight, and because her death in the later narrative quietly marks the passing of the whole Darling world.

Slightly

supporting

Also known as Slightly darling, Poor Slightly, Even Slightly, How Slightly

Slightly is the Lost Boy who insists he once had a mother and lords it over the others with a pompousness that is more pitiable than impressive. His pretension is his defining flaw, and it makes him both a comic figure and a small, sad emblem of boys inventing the families they lack. He matters because his vanity sharpens the texture of the Lost Boys' hierarchy, and because his later academic slide, Class IV then Class V, quietly confirms that Neverland glory does not translate to the mainland.

Tootles

supporting

Also known as Poor kind Tootles, Foolish Tootles, Poor Tootles, So Tootles

Tootles is the Lost Boy who always seems to arrive a moment too late, kind-hearted and hapless, forever on the edge of the action rather than in it. His defining quality is a gentle, almost apologetic goodness that the narrator treats with real tenderness, calling him poor kind Tootles. He matters because his exclusion from the great exploits makes the Lost Boys feel like real children rather than a chorus, and because his eventual transformation into a judge gives the story one of its strangest, most satisfying grown-up echoes.

Smee

supporting

Also known as pathetic Smee, the ignorant Smee, poor Smee

Smee serves as Hook's boatswain aboard the Jolly Roger, a soft-spoken pirate whose chief qualification is being the only man on the crew Hook can tolerate. His tension is that he is genuinely gentle, fussing over the captain's moods and the crew's morale, in a profession that rewards neither. He matters because his ordinariness and quiet decency throw Hook's theatrical menace into relief, giving the pirate ship a human, almost domestic texture in the story's middle stretch.

Nibs

supporting

Nibs is one of Peter's band of Lost Boys, and the one whose cheerful nerve makes him the group's unofficial spokesman when Tinker Bell refuses to get out of bed. When Wendy offers to take them all home to be adopted, he jumps for joy and then, mid-air, wonders aloud whether their parents will find them rather a handful. That small flash of doubt is pure Nibs: eager for novelty, quick to follow Peter, yet just sensible enough to glimpse the cost of what they are leaving behind.

Jane

supporting

Also known as the shameless Jane

Jane belongs to the grown-up world Wendy entered when she left the nursery behind, and she grows up hearing the tales her mother once lived. Her name carries the whole arc of the book: the girl who listened to stories becoming the woman who tells them, and the daughter who may yet be summoned when Peter needs a Wendy again. She matters because she closes the circle the novel opens, showing that the story does not end when childhood does.

Curly

minor

A Lost Boy with curly hair who is part of Peter's band.

Gentleman Starkey

minor

Also known as Starkey

A well-dressed pirate and Hook's second-in-command.

Tiger Lily

minor

Also known as the brave Tiger Lily

The proud princess of the Piccaninny tribe who rescues Peter.

Liza

minor

The Darling family's maid who helps with the children.

Cecco

minor

Also known as The Italian Cecco

A pirate known for his skill with a knife.

Bill Jukes

minor

Also known as Jukes

A pirate who once fought Hook and bears a scar.

Robt. Mullins

minor

Also known as Mullins

A pirate who serves under Captain Hook.

Johnny Corkscrew

minor

Also known as Johnny, Red-Handed Jack

A pirate with a distinctive corkscrew gait.

Long Tom

minor

A pirate who is part of Hook's crew.

Flint

minor

A pirate mentioned as a former captain of the Jolly Roger.