The children all appear to be in their mid-20's (convenient, as that is how old the actors were) but inside, where it counts, they are no older than 10 to 12 years. Each one was terminally ill with one thing or another, and Curly was confined to a wheelchair. Boy Kavalier chose them because they were so young that their minds would cope with the transition to synthetic bodies more easily than adults would. Their families were told that they would never see the children again, and most believed them to have died. Boy Kavalier had plans to offer the prospect of living in a synthetic body to the (rich) public in general, if the first experiments worked. However, he underestimated how resilient the child minds were until they were locking him up in his own holding cell. (The names in parenthesis are the children's original names.)

WENDY (Marcy Hermit) Wendy was the first terminally ill child to transition from a human to a synthetic body. The success of the experiment rested on her, so it is not surprising that she was Boy's favourite hybrid from the beginning. He assigned Kirsh to monitor and protect her, and Boy hoped that she would be the friend he longed for, that would be far more intelligent than he, so he could have real conversations with her. To this end he gave her heightened senses, which led to her being able to hear the language of the xenomorphs and learning to speak to them. She had grown up with her father, Frank, and her older brother, Joe. Her attachment to Joe was so strong that Boy allowed her to access the network to watch him day by day. When she saw him submitting a request to be discharged from his Prodigy contact, so that he could go to Mars to study medicine, the thought of never seeing him again was too much for her. She manipulated the network to deny his petition. It was through her insistence on helping Joe that the children were sent to the crashed Maginot with Kirsh. There, she protected Joe from an adult xenomorph, killing it with only a guillotine blade. Although seemingly compassionate where Joe is concerned, Wendy does not care for other humans at all. She uses her relationship with a younger xenomorph to cause the death of many Prodigy soldiers. She was ready to lash out at Joe when he tasered Nibs. It took another hybrid child to point out that Nibs had killed one of Joe's human friends to stop her from harming her brother. She would have locked him up with the other adults, but Smee insisted that he was "one of us".
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CURLY (Jane Mita) Curly is rather a sad girl. She had spent all her young life in a wheelchair, with no immune system, and wanted to be fit and able to walk, run and dance. She insists that she is better than Wendy and longs to be Boy's favourite. She pointed out that while Wendy only cares about her own brother, she, Curly, wants to help the whole world. She has ambitions of being even greater and more powerful than Boy. This should have led to him adopting her as his favourite, especially when he tries to give her a job to do, and offers to give her books and recordings to learn from. Poor Curly doesn't realise that she has to contend with Boy's ridiculously short attention span and his constant desire for new things, new "undiscovered countries".
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NIBS (Rose Ellis) Nibs had spent years of ill health, lyng in bed and wondering when she would be going to die. It preyed on her mind to such a extent that she found the transition to hybrid to be more difficult than the others' experiences. She never really completely comes to terms with it. She is always quiet, at the back of the group, fearfully observing everything. She is the most child-like of the group, still playing with soft toys, and she is the one who is most resentful about her new name. When she goes into the crashed Maginot, Kirsh tells her to find something to keep a strange alien creature in, with Culy and Smee. She is unsettled, seeing the carnage from the crash, and the bodies of the dead Maginot crew. T. Ocellus attacked her in the ship's lab and she had difficulty in keeping it away from her face. Perhaps that is why she later insisted that she was pregnant. (I did wonder if T. Ocellus had managed to implant something in her and that she was aware of it.) The sad thing is, many young children will experiment with feelings and with being adults by saying they are pregnant, while not understanding what it meant. So it is particularly upsetting when Dame Sylvia agrees to wipe Nibs' memory of the crashed ship and everything that happened there. Sylvia had tried to talk to Nibs about it, but Nibs reacted aggressively, as a young child would. However, being a hybrid with twice the strength of a healthy human, angering Nibs would have had grave consequences.
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SLIGHTLY (Aarush Singh) Slightly is a sweet boy who loves everyone and yet, he cannot keep a secret for more than two seconds. Slightly was told by Kirsh to go with Wendy when she looked for Joe in the badly damaged skyscraper in New Siam. Wendy would have rather broken it gently to Joe that she was his sister Marcy, whom he believed to be dead, but Slightly had to blurt it all out. Perhaps it was better that way. A short, sharp shock for Joe and then get on with hunting for the snark xenomorph. Slightly's father had died when he was younger and his mother believed that her son was also dead. This opens him up to being blackmailed by Morrow after meeting him on the Maginot. That and his belief that "everyone needs friends". Morrow wants to steal a xenomorph egg to give to Yutani, but failing that, implanting a face hugger in a human would do as well. Slightly enlists Smee to help him and they try to first get Joe into position to be infected by the face hugger, and when that doesn't work, they use Arthur Sylvia. That does work, but the boys are horrified when the "baby" xenomorph erupts from Arthur's chest and kills him.
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SMEE (Christopher Okafor) Smee is like his best friend Slightly. Two silly boys, not letting their transition into hybrids stop their fun. He's enthusiastic about everything and enjoys being part of "the Lost Boys". Smee acts more like a real child, being intimidated by Morrow and letting Slightly talk him into trying to trap Joe, and then Arthur. We're not told anything about Smee's original family, but he accepts the other hybrids and Kirsh as his new family. There isn't really a lot to say about Smee. He is Slightly's best friend and co-conspirator, and he's a silly boy.
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TOOTLES/ISAAC (Steven DiMarco) Tootles is a quiet, shy boy who is interested in science. He is the oldest of the children, rather aloof and doesn't make any close friends in the hybrid group. Tootles asked Kirsh if he could have another new name, and wanted to be known as Isaac, after Isaac Newton. Kirsh allows it. While in the crashed ship, he and Kirsh study a strange alien creature that "was fauna presenting as flora". Sadly, Isaac's interest in science was his undoing. When Kirsh had to leave Neverland to accompany Atom Reis and Boy Kavalier to a hearing with the CEO of Weyland-Yutani, he tasked Isaac with feeding the alien creatures. Kirsh warns him that, "science is a method, not a suggestion box", but he underestimated how clumsy, though well-meaning, a boy can be. When the door to the feeding slot of the alien flies containment pod is damaged, Isaac enters the pod, and tries to keep the door open with one foot. But a sheep, under the control of T. Ocellus observes, and bangs the wall sharply, causing Isaac to stumble. The door shuts and locks, trapping him with the flies. Unlike the other alien creatures, the flies prefer to dine on inorganic material, and Isaac is a banquet for both of them. Kirsh can only watch on a tablet, helpless, while flying back to Neverland. Worried that Boy Kavalier would want to junk Isaac's body, despite the cost of creating him, Kirsh tries to repair him. Isaac is not present when the children trap the adults in a holding cell.
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