Alex O'Connell in The Mummy: Who He Is and Who Plays Him

Alex O'Connell is the son of the adventurer Rick O'Connell and the scholar Evelyn, and he is the one member of the family who appears at two different ages in the saga. He first appears in the mummy returns, the 2001 sequel directed by Stephen Sommers, where he is a young boy living with his parents in London in 1933. Freddie Boath plays him there, billed seventh.

He is not in the mummy 1999, the film that brings Rick and Evelyn together. In the mummy tomb of the dragon emperor, directed by Rob Cohen and set in 1946, Alex is the grown son who digs up the buried emperor, and Luke Ford takes the role, billed fourth.

That gap of thirteen years between the two film settings is the reason he matters to the series, because Alex is the clock that tells you how much time has passed for the family. If you are working through the saga for the first time, our guide to the mummy movies in order shows where each of his two films sits, and the wider the mummy characters page covers the rest of the O'Connells.

Alex's closest relationships are with his parents, his uncle Jonathan and, in the later film, Lin. His father is rick oconnell, played by Brendan Fraser in both of Alex's films, and the pair share the dagger scene in Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. His mother is Evelyn, who is evelyn the mummy on this site, and she is played by Rachel Weisz in The Mummy Returns and by Maria Bello in Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, after Variety reported in 2007 that Bello had replaced Weisz.

His uncle is jonathan the mummy, Evelyn's reckless brother, played by John Hannah in both films. In The Mummy Returns, Jonathan is one of the people who goes after Alex across the desert, and the two of them later work together to read from the Book of the Dead.

Outside the family, ardeth bay, the Medjai warrior played by Oded Fehr, joins the chase for Alex in The Mummy Returns. In Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Lin (Isabella Leong Lok-Sze) is the character closest to him, and the film gives her a link to the curse of her own. His enemies change with each film: Imhotep and Hafez's cult in 2001, then the emperor played by Jet Li and his general Yang in 2008.

My pick for his best moment is the bracelet in The Mummy Returns (2001), and it could be argued that it is also the best piece of rule making in the series. A single golden band gives a child visions, starts a seven day countdown and puts the whole family on the move. For a creature series, the fear lands because the rule is simple: the curse has a deadline, and it is attached to a kid.

Second, I would pick the Book of the Dead scene at the pyramid, where Alex and Jonathan bring Evelyn back after she is mortally wounded. It is a short scene, but it shows Alex acting rather than being rescued, which is what the series needed from him before the time jump.

Third is the dagger strike in Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008), when Rick and Alex stab the emperor together and destroy his terracotta army. Paradoxically, the adult Alex is the more thinly written of the two (he mostly reacts to the plot), but this one beat pays off the child from 2001. In my opinion, Boath's Alex carries the scares and Ford's Alex carries the family, so if you only have time for one film, start with The Mummy Returns.