Why Boy Kavalier Is Always Barefoot In Alien: Earth

Warning! This article contains SPOILERS for Alien: Earth season 1, episode 6.Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) spends most of his time in Alien: Earth barefoot, and there’s a reason he never wears socks or shoes. Boy Kavalier is the child prodigy behind one of Alien: Earth‘s five main corporations, Prodigy, and one of the most important characters in the cast of Alien: Earth. Despite all the power he has, Kavalier also walks around barefoot.

Not only does he walk around barefoot, Boy Kavalier often flaunts it in front of people. He displays his feet on tables, uses them to hold up a tablet while talking with the leader of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, and types with them on keyboards. It’s an odd detail many fans have noticed, but it’s not just an eccentricity, it’s a core part of Kavalier’s character.

Boy Kavalier Not Wearing Shoes Is An Important Detail For His Character In Alien: Earth

During an interview with Decider, Samuel Blenkin noted that Boy Kavalier’s decision to go barefoot is a crucial part of his personality. He, along with Alien: Earth costume designer Suttirat Larlarb, decided that Boy Kavalier goes barefoot because of his carefree personality and his arrogant but true belief that he owns everything around him.

“I felt like it would be really fun if he was somebody who felt like he could recline and totally relax in whatever way he wanted to on set. So I was just going for that languid kind of physicality.”

“I just started talking to Suttirat Larlarb, who’s the wonderful costume designer for the show, and there was this pajama idea that was being floated around because of Peter Pan. Then we were just having a chat and I think — I don’t want to take full credit for the idea, but just from that conversation — it’s like, well, bare feet. Why would he bother to wear shoes? You know, the guy owns everything, so why would he bother? And that really unlocked the character for me.”

As Blenkin noted, Boy Kavalier’s lack of footwear is a symbol of his arrogance and boredom with people he thinks he’s better than. A legally binding arbitration doesn’t require shoes because it’s beneath him. Kavalier believes that it’s his world and everyone else is just living in it. He feels right at home wherever he goes — mostly because he owns so much of the world — and he has no problem relaxing wherever he is.

It’s also interesting that Blenkin noted that Boy Kavalier being barefoot “unlocked the character” for him. The way Kavalier interacts with the world is so carefree, like there are no consequences for his actions. Being barefoot reflects that carefree attitude: he doesn’t need shoes to protect his feet because he simply doesn’t believe anything bad could happen to him.

Courtesy of FX

In the same interview, Samuel Blenkin also noted that Boy Kavalier’s lack of shoes ties into his obsession with Peter Pan. Alien: Earth has been ripe with allusions and references to Peter Pan. Prodigy’s island is called Neverland, the human-synthetic hybrids are called the Lost Boys and are named after Peter Pan characters, and Kavalier actually reads pages of J.M Barrie’s novel to the Lost Boys at night.

As Blenkin mentioned, the idea for Boy Kavalier’s barefoot look came from the idea of having him dressed in pajamas because of Peter Pan. In the original story, Wendy spends most of the story in her pajamas, as do the rest of the Lost Boys. Pajamas are also deeply associated with childhood, and Peter Pan is a story about children refusing to grow up.

That’s basically Boy Kavalier’s character in a nutshell. He’s a kid who never grew up, because he never had to. He was a child prodigy who now runs one of the most dominant corporations in Alien: Earth, and he’s never been forced to be an adult. He runs through life with the reckless abandon of a child because he’s never faced any consequences for his actions.

Alien: Earth

8/10

Release Date

August 12, 2025

Directors

Dana Gonzales, Ugla Hauksdóttir, Noah Hawley

Writers

Bob DeLaurentis

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