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.
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 exsplored 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.
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.
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.
Growing Up Sucks: At first, but after her adventures in Never Land, she accepts and embraces it.
Not Growing Up Sucks: In the book, Wendy wants to grow up and have her own family very much. She leaves Neverland because she realizes that Peter can never give her what she truly wants.
The last chapter of the novel even goes so far as to reassure the reader that Wendy was happy with growing up:
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.
Pajama Clad Heroine: Because she left with Peter in the middle of the night, she spends most of the story in her nightgown.
The Storyteller: The reason Peter takes her to Neverland in the first place.
Team Mom: Takes on the role partly by choice and partly because she is begged to.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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 & the Pirates, and of course Hook, she speaks normally.
Heroic Sacrifice: Drank poison to save Peter. Resurrected by clapping hands.
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.
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 *
excluding Peter Pan in Scarlet, where their names are eventually revealed to be Marmaduke and Binky
]] 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.
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.
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.
