Diksha Sundriyal
Disney’s ‘Peter Pan & Wendy’ follows the story of a girl who discovers that the world she’d heard about in stories is real. Wendy Darling is about to leave her house and go to boarding school. She is scared of this new step and doesn’t want to grow up. The night she says this to her mother, Peter Pan and Tinkerbell show up in her room and tell her about Neverland, a place where children live without the supervision of adults, go on adventures, and never grow up.
When Wendy and her brothers arrive in Neverland, they are attacked by a ship of pirates, commandeered by a man who has a hook for a hand. Later, Wendy discovers the true connection between Captain Hook and Peter Pan and how he lost his hand. If you want to know what happened between them, here’s what you should know. SPOILERS AHEAD
Peter Pan Cuts Off Hook’s Hand During a Duel
When we first meet Captain Hook in Neverland, he is excited to find out that Peter Pan has returned, which gives the pirate the opportunity to attack and kill the boy. This is also when he discovers that he has a hook in the place of his one hand, and it is because of Peter Pan. The pirate captain and the boy have been at odds with each other for a very long time. Captain Hook wants to kill Peter and is ready to go to any lengths. For Peter, too, the enmity is personal. When he tells Wendy and her brothers to attack the ship, he tells them to leave Hook for him.
From afar, Hook attacks Peter with guns and cannons, but when they are face to face, they duel. Both of them are great at sword-fighting and consider themselves the better fighter. Captain Hook doesn’t lose a chance to point out Peter’s bad form, and in return, Peter teases him with his ability to fly. He is cocky and audacious, and this is one of the reasons why the Captain hates him so.
It is while one of their duels that Peter Pan cuts off Hook’s hand. Considering that he is still a child and doesn’t generally tend to be violent, we assume Peter didn’t do it deliberately. It might have been an accident as Peter tried to show off a new move or teased the Captain. Or, it could have been self-defense, with the Captain coming close to killing Peter and the boy having no other option but to cut off his hand. Assuming that the Captain was originally right-handed, this would have been a massive blow to him because now, he wouldn’t be as good at sword-fighting as he used to be.
From Peter’s perspective, this was probably an unintentional move, but from Hook’s perspective, this was yet another thing that Peter did to destroy his life. The pirate had already lost his mother, his family, and his life back in London when he followed Peter to Neverland. Then, Peter, whom he considered his best friend, banished him from Neverland because he missed his mother. Hook tried going back home but ended up with the pirates.
When he came back, he was treated as an outcast by Peter. It is he who should have gotten the chance to balance the scales by teaching Peter a lesson. Instead, he was turned into a villain with no good memories to help him fly. Losing his hand was the last straw, and if he hadn’t been serious about killing Peter before, he had dedicated himself to the task now.
Because Neverland is an island and Hook is a pirate, we can assume that the fight between him and Peter took place near the water. When Peter cut off the hand, it fell into the water and was eaten by a crocodile. Again, Peter probably didn’t intend for things to go down like this, but from Hook’s perspective, this was yet another way in which Peter ruined his life. The Captain flamed his anger and revenge against Peter, telling and retelling the story of how the boy cut off his hand and fed it to the crocodile.
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