Is this supposed to be a Little Prince reference by Ego?

Question

Ever since I first saw Guardians of the Galaxy 2 I was curious if this scene was a reference to The Little Prince. Essentially in the scene Ego is explaining to the Guardians how he traveled the cosmos looking for life. One scene in the models shows Ego in human form talking to a child in a green jumpsuit on a barren landscape. It might just be me but that barren landscape would fit the astroid home planet of the Little Prince and he is depicted in green clothing both in Ego's model and on the cover of The Little Prince. Plus the three conical rocks behind the child could represent the three volcanoes on the Little Prince's planet. Since The Little Prince is in the top 5 best-selling books perhaps Ego thought this would be a cultural reference Peter Quill would recognize.

Does this child have any special meaning? Is it supposed to represent the Little Prince? If so what is the significance of using the Little Prince in this scene/model?

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Here is a screen shot of Ego with the child:

Here is the cover of The Little Prince taken from Wikipedia:

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Here are some other linkages I saw between Ego and the Little Prince.

• The Little Prince worried his planet would be overrun by baobab trees. Ego's goal is to consume planets using the plants he seeded. This is truly a "catastrophe" the Little Prince would be afraid of. This is somewhat supported by the fact that the sparse vegetation in the model seems to be emanating from Ego's foot.
• Literary critics believe that the Little Prince's rose was inspired by the author's wife, and the other roses in the world as a reference to the author's affairs. Perhaps Peter's mother was Ego's special rose even though he saw roses throughout the galaxy.
• The Little Prince left his rose and his planet to explore the universe. Ego also "left" his planet in order to explore the universe. If we view Peter's mother as Ego's special rose, Ego also left his special rose to explore the galaxy.
• Perhaps the sheep in a box resonated with Ego since he is somewhat like a sheep in a box. His planet's crust surrounds him just like the box surrounds the sheep.

• Here's a quote from Wikipedia:

  The fox desired to be tamed and explained to the prince that the prince's rose was indeed unique and special because she was the object of the prince's love. The fox also explained that, in a way, the prince had tamed the rose, and that this was why the prince was now feeling so responsible for her. The prince then agreed to tame the fox, though the two were sad to have to part ways.

  In some ways this is similar to the arc of Peter, Ego, and Peter's mother. Peter is the fox explaining the specialness of this mother the rose. Ego says he was sad to leave her. Later Ego tries to tame Peter and the two are sad to part ways.

  -Another quote from Wikipedia offers yet another parallel:

  The prince bids an emotional farewell to the narrator and states that if it looks as though he has died, it is only because his body was too heavy to take with him to his planet.

  Ego like the prince uses a familiar form to the locals to interact with them, and doesn't really need his body to travel. Of course we see Ego using a ship but as "a being of pure light" I assume this isn't needed.

Of course all this is pretty weak and circumstantial so maybe I'm grasping at straws...

Answer 1

Absent some specific evident that somebody on the creative team did intend this to be an allusion, I would say that it seems very unlikely.

The cover of Le Petit Prince is pretty iconic, and it differs in some pretty significant ways from the film's scene. The Little Prince's yellow spiky hair is not present; in fact, the child in the memory is wearing a backward's baseball cap. The child with the cap is also carrying a teddy bear, which would not be at all in character for The Little Prince. Finally, there is very little similarity in the surrounding landscape. While the child with the hat and bear is standing at the edge of what might be a crater, the scene lacks any similarity to the Prince's iconic microplanet. There is not the suggestion of a small spherical body, no growing flowers (or baobab trees), no starry background.

In short, nothing in the image, except a child-sized figure and a divot in the ground, are in any way similar to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's famous cover illustration. Without some reason to think that an allusion was intended, I think the theory can be pretty much discounted.