You’d be hard-pressed to find a horror mascot more iconic than Friday the 13th‘s Jason Voorhees, even if he’s actually taken on multiple looks throughout the course of the franchise. When most people think of the undead slasher, they likely picture him in a tattered jumpsuit wearing a hockey mask and wielding a machete, which is how he appears for much of his screen time. Those less familiar with the figure, though, might not remember that there have been times he wore a burlap sack as a disguise, times he got a space-age upgrade, or that in his very first appearance, he was just a child.
The upcoming Peacock series Crystal Lake will take place before the events of the original 1980 Friday the 13th. A key part of the lore of the franchise is that a young Jason was attending Camp Crystal Lake and, while counselors should have been supervising him, they were doing drugs and having sex, resulting in him drowning. His mother, Pamela Voorhees, then killed off the counselors who tried to reopen the camp years later. Brad Caleb Kane, the show’s showrunner, posted a glimpse of Jason’s look on Instagram but later deleted it. Twitter user @Home_of_Horror managed to share the image on the platform:
Admittedly, this is a relatively obscure look at the character and just hints at how Jason will look in the new series. However, anyone who is a fan of the series knows that this is at least an accurate recreation of his initial appearance in the 1980 Friday the 13th and from subsequent appearances. Adding more excitement is the fact that, before he deleted his post, the photo was captioned, “News coming. Monday. We’re all doomed.”
Unlike other horror franchises, Friday the 13th has a relatively linear mythology, even if that mythology is somewhat outlandish. After Pamela killed counselors in the original movie, Jason became the killer in the second, third, and fourth films, while the fifth movie featured a copycat killer. This didn’t prove popular with fans, with Jason returning to his rightful glory in the sixth film onward.
Given that relatively consistent timeline, this has left us scratching our heads over what a prequel TV show will explore, other than focusing on Linda Cardellini’s Pamela Voorhees. While a TV show like Bates Motel served as both a prequel to Psycho and a modern-day reimagining; by contrast, Crystal Lake is reportedly set in the 1970s. Just how much killing Pamela can get away with while going unnoticed is something we’ll have to wait to find out, or the concept might pivot away from the rest of the franchise and might not solely be about a maniacal murderer.
Crystal Lake is actually the second time we got a Friday the 13th TV show, the first being Friday the 13th: The Series back in the ’80s. That three-season series was a major departure from the source material, though, and was an anthology in which an antique store near Crystal Lake was full of bizarre objects, with each episode exploring a different object’s history.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
