(SPOILERS BELOW FOR THE CRYSTAL LAKE SERIES AIRING ON PEACOCK. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Also, though, it’s like a month old; if you even want to read this article, you’ve undoubtedly watched the show by now.)
First of all, it’s always a good time to remember that I am not a crazy person.
But I did recently watch the entirety of the new Friday The 13th property on Peacock! Being the enormous Jason Universe fan that I am, I have been eager for a new Voorhees entry for ages. Even though this new outing was going to focus on Pamela Voorhees rather than her iconic son, it was still SOMETHING to ingest on the lore, so the wife and I powered our way through it.
So how was it? Up and down. And not in the typical sense of those words when it comes to me–I’m not going to give the series a thorough Ups And Downs look–but in the sense that it was somewhat uneven. At only eight episodes, it should have been fairly direct, but it would follow something of a Good Episode-Bad Episode-Good Episode-Bad Episode pattern as it went along. An extremely strong first entry into the series would lose a little momentum in the next few, but then it would pick back up… it was a rollercoaster of enjoyment. On the whole, I enjoyed the series and am eager for a season two, but it definitely takes some strange detours.
I mean, when we watch a Friday The 13th movie, aren’t we all thinking “I really wonder what happened to Jason’s best friend from his childhood and if she ever joined a hippie commune”? Or “But what was Pamela’s dating and sex life like during all of this”?
I mean, I know I was, at least. But I may have been accused of taking this franchise too seriously to begin with.
But we aren’t here today to discuss the good and bad qualities of Crystal Lake; this article by Bryan already takes care of that! No, we are here today to see how Crystal Lake fits into the Multiple Jasons Theory.
Now, do I expect you all to read the entire 3500 WORD ARTICLE that I linked to in the first non-parenthetical sentence of this article right now?
(Yes)
No, you can read that at your leisure later on. Here… I’ll summarize the key points for you:
-Only the Paramount movies are actually canon for Friday The 13th lore. This is the one continuous story told across Friday The 13th (1980) through Friday The 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan. Everything outside of this is non-canon extraneous enjoyment, specifically Jason Goes To Hell and Jason X, which are fun little movies-within-a-movie (as much as you can accuse Goes To Hell of being “fun”).
-Baghead Jason is not the same actual human being as hockey mask Jason, who MAY OR MAY NOT be a different entity entirely than zombie Jason. Baghead Jason was Pamela Voorhees’ unseen accomplice in the first Friday the 13th movie, actually. Hockey Mask Jason is a much rapey-er madman who also stalks the woods around Camp Crystal Lake. And Zombie Jason is potentially just a random dude whose family paid for a headstone in a public cemetery. POTENTIALLY!
-Where does this leave JASON VOORHEES, the boy who drowned in the lake? Just there: he drowned and died in the lake, and his spirit haunts it still.
NOW. I feel you getting all twitchy if you haven’t read my Multiple Jasons Theory article! But I promise, I reason this all out unimpeachably, and it’s all settled Constitutional law. So CALM DOWN.
Anyway. Where does this leave Crystal Lake? Out of continuity, obviously. It’s not a Paramount movie, and it gets all the established dates and timelines wrong. It’s more about telling its enjoyable story arc than it is with getting facts right. Which is FINE; it’s FINE. I promise, I’m FINE.
I actually think Crystal Lake fits into the Movie-Within-A-Movie principle pretty well, though. In the world of the movies, where the Camp Crystal Lake Killers existed and were incorrectly thought to be Jason Voorhees, this is a series that exists for people to watch. Tommy Jarvis is somewhere settling into his recliner to watch Crystal Lake and going, “I KNEW IT!”.
It’s like a bad writer within the Jason Universe was thinking “How did this mass murderer keep coming back for more in our actual world where it all happened? I KNOW! Cockroach DNA!”.
Because I refuse to believe a good writer in OUR REAL WORLD did that.
(To be fair, though, it’s better than the person who wrote Jason Goes To Hell and thought the only way to kill Jason would be with a Voorhees Family Dagger. Ugh!)
Aside from that, Crystal Lake massacres a lot of Jason lore, if you are passionate about that sort of thing as I CLEARLY AM. As much as I hate the idea that Jason was a high-functioning, normal-albeit-deformed boy, I do actually kind of like the idea of Jason himself being the actual Baghead Jason, and this show almost explains that in something resembling close to a rational way. Except for the weird HGH he clearly took upon drowning. But it backs up everything else, including the fact that he was Pamela’s unseen ally in the first movie!
I actually second guessed myself! Could Jason actually be Jason?! What a concept! My world, she was blown wide open.
But no. Then I remembered that Jason Takes Manhattan clearly confirms that Jason died in Crystal Lake and that his ghost haunts the waters. So WHEW. Close call, Crystal Lake! You almost got me. Hey, it’s not often that Takes Manhattan is the saving grace of the series, so I’LL TAKE IT.
Personally, I’m still waiting for a direct sequel to Takes Manhattan, actually. Continue the actual canon, you cowards! What happened to Jason after he was de-aged (and, uh, brought back to life and no longer zombified) by the toxic sludge in the New York sewer system? Did Rennie take him in? Did he end up in an NYC orphanage? Did he just start roaming and living in the sewers? Did he turn out to still be a killer as a child?
MAN! We could have a real ELEVATED HORROR drama with child Jason–who is intellectually/developmentally disabled, you curs–wrestling with his dark inner desires versus how he is being re-raised. THAT is some A24 shit, right there.
We could have had orphanage Jason killing the other parentless kids who bully him as he grows back into the killer he used to be after Tommy revived that corpse in the graveyard.
Instead, we got Pamela Voorhees banging the county sheriff.
Six of one, half-dozen of the other, I suppose.
So I guess what I’m ultimately saying here is this: Write to Peacock and tell them to hire me for Crystal Lake season 2 so we can go in an entirely new and fascinating direction!
Oh well. What’s done is done. And as I look at the calendar, there’s not another Friday the 13th until August 2027. So I guess that like Jason in the Manhattan sewer, it’s time to slumber (and just work on other articles) for the next several months.
Until next time… take care!
