As well as exploring Pamela Voorhees ‘ backstory before she became the killer we met in the first Friday the 13th movie, the new prequel series Crystal Lake changes Jason’s origin story. However, creator Brad Caleb Kane says he didn’t see an issue in doing this as the horror franchise messes with canon all of the time.
“I mean, the canon itself is pretty inconsistent and pretty wonky, and there was no real origin set in stone,” says Kane to GamesRadar+. There were sort of certain things said in the movies, and then in the novelization for part two, they talk about Jason’s interiority, and they talk about him crawling out of the lake, and surviving in the woods off of this and that. But when you marry it with the actual time period of the movies, it doesn’t quite match up.”
The writer-director adds: “So it felt like you could mash it around a little bit. It felt malleable, and it felt like fresh snow that we could play with and have some invention there. Nothing is consistent in the canon anyway, so why not go back and play with it at all?”
Starring Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees, Crystal Lake follows the single mother living in a small town with her young, sickly son Jason. The show allows us to see Pam’s descent into madness, but it also offers a deeper dive into the mother-son duo’s dark past. In the penultimate episode, we go back to the late ’50s in the midst of the Nuclear Arms Race. After a near miscarriage, Pam’s husband takes her to a specialist facility known as Bellflower, where they run experimental trials on her fetus as part of ‘Project Argonaut.’
Some years after Jason is born, Pam realizes that the company she has become embroiled in is actually experimenting on her young son, trying to turn him into a mutant being who can withstand anything, including nuclear bombs. The treatments are the reason for Jason’s physical deformity and health issues. After finding out that her son is a military weapon, Pam saves Jason from the facility, and they run away to Crystal Lake, where they attempt to live a normal life. Well, that is until two men from Bellflower show up at her door, and we know how that went.
The series drastically changes Jason’s origin story. In the movies, Jason’s physical deformity is caused by hydrocephalus, a very real medical condition caused by a buildup of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain. However, Jason’s superhuman strength is never really explained. In some movies, Jason’s strength is put down to him living in the woods for so long, and in later sequels, the villain gained supernatural abilities. But Crystal Lake offers an explanation for Jason’s differences. He was quite literally made in a lab, like Frankenstein.
Crystal Lake is out now on Peacock in the US, and on Sky and NOW in the UK from October 19. For more, check out our Crystal Lake review and our Crystal Lake ending explained, and keep up with new TV shows on the way.