Sweet Tooth: Why Gus Can Talk (& Other Hybrids Can’t)

In Netflix’s post-apocalyptic fairy tale Sweet Tooth, young deer-boy Gus surprises a lot of people with his ability to speak – but why can’t the other hybrid children talk? In fact, as the show gradually reveals, there are other hybrid children who can talk, and Gus’s chattiness is probably down to nurture rather than nature.

Towards the end of Sweet Tooth season 1 it’s revealed that Gus’s origins are slightly different from the rest of the hybrid children, which is also why he’s older than the rest of them: he was the firstborn. The range of hybrids taken in by Aimee Eden at the zoo also demonstrate that these special children have varying balances of animal and human features. Some, like Wendy, only have a few animal features, like ears and noses. Then there’s Bobby, who is mostly groundhog but has a few human characteristics. Interestingly, despite being mostly animal in appearance, Bobby can also speak – albeit with a limited vocabulary.

So, if Gus is not the only hybrid that can speak, why have most people never met a hybrid who can talk? Part of the reason is that many people in Sweet Tooth‘s world may not have met a hybrid at all. These animal-human children are hunted down and either exterminated on sight, or captured and experimented upon, so by being near humans for long enough to strike up a conversation they’d already be putting themselves in danger. But non-verbal hybrids can also be explained by the fact that many of them were orphaned in The Great Crumble, and were never socialized by human parents or taught how to speak, like Gus was.

Wendy, for example, was left in Aimee’s care when she was still a baby, and speaks fluently and with ease – even learning sign language in order to communicate with the non-verbal hybrid children. Gus says his first word, “Pubba,” while still a very young baby, suggesting his language skills are even more advanced than human children his age. His deer attributes could actually explain this. Because deer don’t build nests or dens, fawns have to be ready to move very quickly after they’re born. They’re born with their eyes open, can stand unaided within minutes of being born, and walk within hours.

The hybrids’ animal features also made it possible for the children to survive in the wild from a very early age. While Gus and Tommy are staying at the Yellowstone visitor’s centre, Rusty tells them that he once saw a bobcat girl in the woods. The hybrids’ independence and adaptability mean that, as Bear believes, they could represent the future of humanity – a future without industrialization, mass consumption, and destruction of the environment. In that future, the ability to speak human languages may not be so essential.

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Hannah Shaw-Williams
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Hannah has been with Screen Rant since 2013, covering news, features, movie premieres, Comic-Con and more! You can follow her on Twitter @HSW3K

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