Peacock and A24 have spent much of the buildup to Crystal Lake emphasizing that this is Pamela Voorhees’ story. But a new quote from creator and showrunner Brad Caleb Kane (It: Welcome to Derry) makes it clear that Jason will get his turn to spill blood.
“All the Jason-as-slasher stuff hits much later in the season. But when it hits, it hits hard,” Kane tells Empire Magazine.
That’s a pretty significant tease for the eight-episode series, which arrives in full on October 15 on Peacock.
Kane also explains why the relationship between Pamela, played by Linda Cardellini (The Curse of La Llorona), and her son is so essential.
“The series is the story of Pam in the immediate aftermath of losing the one person she considers her reason for living,” he says, “so we wanted to explore that relationship and all the love so we’d fully understand how she became the woman we know from the first movie.”
But it’s that promise of slasher Jason that has me reconsidering where this season might end.
As I discussed in our coverage of Pamela’s familiar blue sweater, I’ve been working under the theory that the finale would essentially remake Sean S. Cunningham’s original Friday the 13th. Pamela’s slaughter of the counselors would bring everything full circle and leave the door open for Jason to take over.
Now I’m wondering if we get there sooner.
In the 1980 film, Jason appears as a child during Alice’s ambiguous final scare on the lake. By Friday the 13th Part 2, he’s the adult killer wearing a sack over his head. The new Crystal Lake trailer already appears to show a bag-headed Jason, alongside other glimpses of him in the woods. Kane’s comments suggest those images are teasing a substantial part of the season.
Could Pamela’s massacre happen before the finale, allowing the show to move into Part 2 territory? Or could Jason already be killing in the woods while his mother believes he’s dead?
That second possibility is the one I keep coming back to. Imagine the season following Pamela’s descent while Jason becomes increasingly dangerous somewhere nearby, with their stories finally colliding when he witnesses her death.
To be clear, Part 2 already connects Jason’s rage to his mother’s killing and raises the possibility that he witnessed it. The potential change would be establishing him as a slasher before that happens, then showing how her death pushes him further.
It also leaves a pretty massive question: If Jason survived, why hasn’t he returned to his mother?
That’s where the trailer’s strange hallway imagery and ominous warning about what Pamela and Jason “really were” keep nagging at me. Are we looking at a family secret, something supernatural, or the sci-fi twist I wondered about in our earlier coverage? Maybe they killed Jason’s father?
We don’t know. Kane’s quote doesn’t establish how many years the season covers, whether Jason’s violence overlaps with Pamela’s, or whether his kills will be more extreme than hers. An episode-per-year structure is one possible explanation for an older Jason, but eight episodes alone don’t establish an eight-year timeline.
What Kane does promise is that this story eventually makes room for Jason as a killer. And that could take Crystal Lake well beyond the Pamela origin story we’ve been expecting.
I’m increasingly convinced the series is going to reshape how we look at the Voorhees family. How directly that connects to the existing movies remains to be seen, but if it changes the circumstances surrounding Jason’s survival and first murders, are fans going to be okay with that?
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