Raised By Wolves: How A Stephen King Easter Egg Connects To Season 1
In Raised by Wolves, Campion is the name of both Mother's creator and her child, but it's also the name of a character at the center of the Superflu pandemic in Stephen King's novel, The Stand. This Easter egg draws some interesting parallels between the two storylines, both featuring the last survivors of humanity attempting to build a better world from the ruins of destroyed civilizations.
Raised by Wolves is centered around Mother, an android once programmed to kill, who is reprogrammed by a man named Campion Sturges to raise human children on a distant planet. Raised by Wolves season 1 begins with Mother taking part in the synthetic "birthing" of several children, one of which she names Campion after her creator. All throughout season 1, it's implied that Campion is special somehow, yet his place in the rebuilding of human civilization has yet to be revealed.
In The Stand, a young man named Charles Campion is stationed at a weapons research facility in California when an accident causes a virus known as the Superflu to breach the facility. Although Campion does the right thing and presses the necessary buttons to lock down the facility, a mechanical error leaves a door open for him to escape. In a split decision, Campion decides to make a run for it, escaping the facility in the middle of the night with his wife and baby daughter. Unfortunately, he's already been exposed to the virus and ends up spreading it across the country as he drives through Nevada and ends up in Arnette, Texas where he—his wife and daughter already dead—dies. Interestingly, Charles Campion's well-intentioned escape that ends up killing billions of people mirrors Campion Sturges's good intentions gone awry.
Campion is an unusual—but not unheard of—name that's notable because it's similar to "champion." In Raised by Wolves, Mother's child named Campion appears destined for great things. He seems born to be a leader, either for a new colony of atheists or possibly as the foretold Mithraic prophet. However, given the complexity of the conflict between the atheists and the Mithraic, there are no pure-of-heart leaders, and bloodshed seems inevitable. It's likely that as Campion grows up, he'll end up doing terrible things despite his best intentions.
Charles Campion in Stephen King's The Stand is patient zero for the Superflu pandemic. He acts on his human instincts to survive and ends up causing the spread of a virus that kills most of the population. He doesn't mean to cause harm, but he's unable to help himself.
It's very possible that Campion in Raised by Wolves will act in a similar capacity. He will make decisions in the seasons to come based on what he feels is the right thing to do, and end up hurting others as a result. He may even inadvertently end up restarting the war between the atheists and the Mithraic. Also, it's interesting to note that Campion, as the only human born on Kepler-22B, appears to have certain natural immunities to things found on the planet that the others do not, such as his immunity to the carbos radiation. There's also the possibility of the existence of an infectious virus that may be responsible for the voices certain characters are hearing. In this way, the name Campion is an easter egg referencing Stephen King's The Stand, and may provide some clues for what's to come in future seasons of Raised by Wolves.