SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from “The Real Monsters,” the Season 1 finale of “Alien: Earth,” now streaming on Hulu.
“All children, but one, grow up.” It’s the opening line of J.M. Barrie’s “The Complete Peter Pan,” following the tale of a young boy who can’t grow up, whisking mortal children away from harm’s reach far from adults who plague their imaginative minds. It’s the type of story that Prodigy Corporation’s CEO Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) has built an empire on, becoming the world’s youngest trillionaire, as he’s on the brink of changing humanity by transferring terminally ill children’s subconsciousness into synthetic bodies.
Throughout the season, Boy Kavalier’s real intentions begin to take over Neverland Research Island after successfully securing the alien specimens that the USCSS Maginot had been researching in space, discarding his decade-long work on the hybrids. It’s until the finale that the perspective on Kavalier’s eccentric behavior begins to shift for the Lost Boys as they’re being held in a cell while the island is being terrorized by a loose Xenomorph, killing all Prodigy Corporation guards in sight. With an understaffed island, Boy finds himself at war — not only with the aliens he captured, but with the children set to make him trillions of dollars in revenue.
Samuel Blenkin as Boy Kavalier
Courtesy of Patrick Brown/FX
Blenkin spoke with Variety about how that finale reveal has affected his character’s upbringing, what his final laugh represents, and what he imagines a song based on Boy Kavalier would sound like in a future season of “Alien: Earth.”
Boy Kavalier speaks about his upbringing, and reveals that when he was 6 years old, he killed his alcoholic father due to the fact that he was jealous of his son’s intelligence. He was raised by a synthetic he created at a young age, becoming a ruthless CEO in his 20s. How do you imagine his childhood was after being raised by something that was programmed for his own needs?
So much of how that experience formed him is present throughout the whole series, especially in the sense of someone who doesn’t have any examples in his life of when he has failed in order for him to be humbled slightly. He’s never been humbled before. This character has two separate lives, one is the life that he had before the event of when he killed his father, and the hero version of himself that he invented at some point down the road. He’s got this little part of himself where his father was abusive and horrible to him that’s locked up deep inside.
When you’re completely surrounded by people who consistently say yes to you, it turns you into a Boy Kavalier type of person. I imagine it being a very strange upbringing, and one that was very fast in coming into power. He ultimately had success at his fingertips from a very young age, and that really does something to somebody.
We see Hermit (Alex Lawther) get under Boy’s skin as he’s present on the research island with Wendy (Sydney Chandler) after the rescue mission. Does his hatred for Hermit stem from the knowledge that both siblings had a proper childhood with a father who cared for them, which is something he lacked?
He can’t have what Hermit has with Wendy, which is an emotional connection that is bonded by being a family. It’s something that he actively got rid of, and removed from his life. The reason why that turns into hatred [for Hermit] is because nobody deserves to have that connection with something or someone that he views as his property. He sees Hermit as a big threat to his ownership of Wendy.
There’s a line that Boy says to Dame Sylvia (Essie Davis) in Episode 2, where he reveals that all he wants is to have a proper conversation with someone who is smarter than him. In the final moments of Episode 8, he’s being held hostage with the newfound realization Wendy and the rest of the Lost Boys have been able to outsmart him. Does his final laugh come from the fact that he’s successfully gotten exactly what he’s asked for, which is finally being challenged by something or someone?
That’s absolutely what’s going through his head. When that laugh comes out, it comes from a sense of what happens in “Peter Pan” is suddenly happening in real life. Wendy is saying that the Lost Boys have to grow up and leave Neverland in order to have meaningful lives. It’s the fact that the book that he loves so much is coming true in real life, but also, he’s kind of proud of them! They did a great job.
He’s looking at them from above in the cage like, “My kids did that!”
Exactly, he’s so arrogant about it! He’s like, “I invented these guys and they’re doing exactly what I wanted!” They’ve gone far beyond what he thought they were capable of. That laugh is just filled with admiration for them.
While he got his wish of wanting to be challenged intellectually, the hybrids have no idea he’s celebrating his victory even after being chased around by a Xenomorph.
It’s horrible. I was really excited about the fact that we get a couple of moments in this episode where he does get taken down a rung, as he has been such an arrogant and obnoxious character for the whole season. When he comes face to face with the Xenomorph for the first time, suddenly this performance that he’s been doing for the whole series of being a hero in his own journey completely falls away. In that moment, he is flesh and blood. That moment for me was very much a sense of being my body and realizing how vulnerable my skin is.
By seeing the Xenomorph in front of him, he realizes that there’s no one left to protect him, because he’s always been guarded with protection all around him on the island. He’s the reason why so many of his staff members are dead, and while he got what he wanted, it’s not what he imagined.
It’s a great scene to happen after he’s talking about his father. I love that during that moment, the door swings open [to the cell], and he decides to walk in anyway to talk. It’s that upbringing of never having failed in life and choosing to believe that he can’t be beaten. It takes looking into the Xenomorph’s jaws for him to realize he is actually just a mortal human being.
Each episode of “Alien: Earth” is driven by music, from the heavy metal needle drops to Noah Hawley releasing song covers to amplify the soundscape of the series. As a musician who has previously written music for other characters you’ve portrayed in projects like “Mary & George,” if you were asked to compose a song for Boy Kavalier for the series, what do you imagine it would sound like?
The song would be all about him, and it would be completely unbearable! Nobody watching would want to listen to it. In fact, I’ve been meaning to send Noah some of my work because I write my own songs, and I love the fact that he incorporates music into all of his projects in different ways. So, who knows, maybe in a couple of years! We’ll see.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
