Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Cast and Characters

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

For years, Abe Portman has told stories to his grandson Jake about his childhood battling monsters and spending World War II living at Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children at Cairnholm, Wales. The home's children and their headmistress, Miss Alma Peregrine, possess paranormal abilities and are known as "Peculiars". In response to a phone call, Jake goes to Abe's house only to find him dying with his eyes removed. Abe tells Jake to go to "the loop of September 3, 1943" and that "the bird" will tell him everything. Jake then sees a monster from Abe's stories in the bushes that quickly disappears.

Following advice from his psychiatrist, Dr. Golan, and by a letter from Miss Peregrine to Abe, Jake travels to Cairnholm with his father Frank to investigate the children's home, learning that it was destroyed during a Luftwaffe raid. Upon entering the house, Jake is surprisingly welcomed by some of the children from Abe's stories. They take him through a portal in a cave, and he emerges in the year 1943 when the house was still intact. Miss Peregrine greets him and explains that she belongs to a class of female Peculiars named "Ymbrynes" who can transform into birds (in Miss Peregrine's case, a peregrine falcon) and manipulate time. To avoid persecution, she and the children hide from the outside world in a time loop she created, accessible only to Peculiars and set to September 3, 1943. This time loop allows them to live the same day repeatedly and avoid aging as long as they stay inside of it.

Jake is introduced to the rest of the children, including aerokinetic Emma Bloom, to whom he is attracted (as Abe was). Jake learns that he himself is a Peculiar and, like Abe, has the ability to see the invisible monsters from Abe's stories, "Hollowgasts" (or "Hollows"). Hollows are disfigured Peculiar scientists that killed an Ymbryne in a failed experiment to become immortal by harvesting her powers. Led by shapeshifter Mr. Barron, they hunt Peculiars (mostly children) to consume their eyeballs. These eyeballs allow them to become "Wights" with regained visible human form, but with milky-white eyes.

A wounded Ymbryne, Miss Avocet, arrives and explains that Barron raided her January 2016 time loop at Blackpool, England, killed her children, and was trying to repeat his failed experiment by using more Ymbrynes. Jake realized earlier that a Hollow could be in the island after he sees eyeless sheep corpses in the present. Worried, Miss Peregrine decides to move out with her children and Miss Avocet. Jake returns to 2016 and realizes the Hollow is even closer after another victim was killed, so he goes back to the cave to warn his friends. However, he is followed by another visitor on the island, an ornithologist named John Lamont who reveals himself to be Mr. Barron.

Barron reveals that he was about to gain Miss Peregrine's loop from Abe, but his hungry Hollow companion Mr. Malthus (the one on the island) killed him before he could. Barron then posed as Dr. Golan and encouraged Jake to go to the island so he could find the loop. Using Jake as a hostage at the children's home, Barron forces Miss Peregrine to trap herself in bird form and takes her to Blackpool, leaving Jake, the other children, and Miss Avocet as prey for Malthus. Malthus arrives and kills Miss Avocet, but Jake and the children escape just as the Luftwaffe bomb is about to destroy the house. Without Miss Peregrine to reset it, the house is destroyed and the loop closes, leaving Jake and the children stuck in 1943, but safe from Malthus, who is killed in the explosion. Rescuing a sunken ocean liner named the "RMS Augusta", they travel to Blackpool and enter its January 2016 loop, fight Barron's Wight and Hollow allies, and rescue Miss Peregrine and other captive Ymbrynes. Barron disguises himself as Jake, hoping to confuse the children who have come to finish him off. When the last remaining Hollow arrives, Jake is able to avoid it as it kills Barron and then kill it.

Before the time loop closes, Emma tells Jake that because of Miss Peregrine's injury in the battle, the children will live in 1943 and that they will handle the Hollows. Jake says goodbye to them as they exit and return to their ship in 1943, while he stays in his year of 2016. He travels back to Florida and relates his adventures to his grandfather, who is alive and well. Abe gives Jake a map of international time loops and money from different countries and urges him to seek out Emma. After spending months searching, Jake is finally reunited with her and the other children in 1943. Emma and Jake kiss. Along with the children, Miss Peregrine starts traveling with the Augusta.