The three children in Peter Pan – Wendy, John, and Michael – are famously the Darlings. This goes for JM Barrie’s source book and all movie versions.

The character of Anita has a surname of Darling, but only in one iteration of the story. Per Anita Radcliffe’s bio page on the Disney Character Wiki, her pre-marriage surname is never mentioned in the original Disney animated film. In the 1996 live-action remake starring Glenn Close, Anita is given the hyphenated surname of Campbell-Green before she meets and marries Roger Radcliffe. In Cruella, however, she is named Anita Darling as a nod to how Cruella De Vil referred to her in the original animated movie… “Anita, daaarrrrling.”

Based on portrayal, Wendy Darling is anywhere from 12 to 16 years old, John is a few years younger, and Michael is younger still, as young as 5 years old. The belief is that the bulk of the story is set at around the time the play originally debuted on stage (December 1904) or the book was published (1911). This timing even works with 1991’s Hook, which features an adult Peter who opted to age as a normal human after he saw how Wendy became old and he subsequently fell in love with and married her granddaughter, Moira. It is meant as a sequel, after all.

Anita Darling is about 25 years old in Cruella as that is the age set for Cruella herself and they went to primary school together. The film is set in “the 1970s,” per Google search. So let’s just say 1978 since the film prominently featured Blondie’s “One Way or Another,” which came out that year. This means Anita was born approximately 1953, give or take a year. 

Given the ages of the Pan Darling children, Anita would likely be a grandchild of one of them, at best. She likely would’ve been a sister to or cousin of Moira Banning from Hook, who is confirmed as Wendy’s granddaughter in the film and was born within a few years of Anita given Moira was about 40 in the 1991-set film.

But why just randomly link two seemingly disparate families that just happen to have the same name? Well, they are both London based families and Disney always has a plan. I doubt they’d allow the writers of Cruella to proceed with the renaming if they wouldn’t be on board with this sort of fan theorizing. They’d demand a rename otherwise, I would think. Continuity across their massive universe is something for which they hire people to work specifically. Several of them. I’ve seen them interviewed in documentaries.

So… solid theory or blowing smoke?

And, no, I don’t include the human fur parents from Lady and the Tramp in my theory despite the mom being known as “Darling” by Lady. The dog assumes their actual names are “Jim Dear” and “Darling” because that’s what she hears them call each other…their human pet names.