'Crystal Lake' Is a Shockingly Good 'Friday the 13th' Prequel Series That Nobody Asked For

Crystal Lake is a surprisingly fun exercise in IP management

Nobody asked for a Friday the 13th prequel show, but I kind of like it

In the years since, Hollywood has struggled to bring Jason back to theaters, mostly due to complex rights issues over the character and his iconic hockey mask. But in 2026, Jason is finally back — sort of. A new series from A24 and Peacock, titled Crystal Lake after the body of water where Jason drowned as a boy and later emerged as a monster, serves as a prequel, depicting Jason's tragic death and how it pushes his mother, Pamela Voorhees, past the point of no return.

Crystal Lake notably does not feature the iconic hockey mask (again, legal issues), and in its place offers a smorgasbord of new plot details to help explain how Jason becomes Jason and Pamela becomes (spoiler alert for a 46-year-old movie) the killer in the original Friday the 13th. Along the way, Crystal Lake introduces so many plot changes and secret backstories that it can be hard to keep up. Some of it is a lot of fun, but some of it may feel sacrilegious to Jason Voorhees' most diehard fans.

Ultimately, the question of whether Crystal Lake needs to exist is a moot one. The show exists because IP management and copyright expiration dates exist; because streaming services that need an endless drip of new content to keep subscribers from unsubscribing exist; because capitalism exists. Are these good reasons to make a TV series? Not really. Nonetheless, I actually think Crystal Lake is a pretty decent show — if you're willing to put all those bigger complaints out of mind for a few hours and enjoy the ride.

Crystal Lake was initially announced in 2022 with Bryan Fuller (Hannibal, Pushing Daisies) as showrunner. In interviews at the time, Fuller explained that moving the franchise from film to streaming essentially freed him from all the complex rights issues that had been bogging Jason Voorhees down. Then, in 2024, Fuller was fired, with reports suggesting A24 wanted to take the story in a different direction. A few months later, Brad Caleb Kane (best known as the lead male singing voice in Disney's animated Aladdin movies) signed on as new showrunner. In 2025, Linda Cardellini (Freaks and Geeks) came aboard as Pamela Voorhees.

That's more behind-the-scenes backstory than I would normally put in a review, but it's important to demonstrate just how much effort went into dragging Crystal Lake across the finish line and reviving the Friday the 13th IP. It's hard to ignore that while watching the show. And while Kane does his best to tell an entertaining story on his own terms, he's often dragged into the muck like a helpless camp counselor trapped in Jason's grasp.

Crystal Lake begins on the day Jason dies, which Kane shifts from 1957 to 1971. We're quickly introduced to the young boy (Callum Vinson) covered in prosthetics that give him a bulging, bald head meant to match the terrifying design from the original film's final scene. The next few scenes go pretty much as you might expect. Jason drowns while the camp counselors who were supposed to be watching him are busy hooking up in a supply shed. Pamela, who lived alone with her son and worked as a cook for the camp, quickly dissolves into a puddle of tears and trauma.

From here, Crystal Lake operates on multiple tracks. There's Pamela's story, which expands in both directions. Flashbacks and exposition dumps slowly reveal where she and Jason came from before arriving in Crystal Lake, while in the present she becomes increasingly erratic and violent. Meanwhile, there's the rest of the town and its inhabitants, which Kane uses to explore life in 1970s small-town America, while also building up a roster of characters for Pamela (and possibly Jason?) to murder in cold blood.

The town of Crystal Lake feels like something out of a Stephen King story, and the Welcome to Derry comparisons feel inevitable. Not only are they both prequel shows to iconic horror movies, but they both rely on a similar trick of including one eye-popping moment of ghoulish violence into each episode to keep viewers coming back for more. For Crystal Lake, a lot of this relies on Pamela killing various people who threaten her or get in her way, turning the character into a villain long before she stalked teenage employees at the summer camp where her son tragically died. Cardellini makes it all feel believable by becoming the most sympathetic serial killer you've ever seen — even when she's murdering innocent people, it's impossible to hate her.

Did Friday the 13th really need a prequel?

Where the show gets really interesting (and also probably controversial among horror fans) is when it attempts to fill in Pamela and Jason's backstory. There's a totally original story here that helps explain some of the biggest unanswered questions in Friday the 13th history, mostly having to do with what Jason's entire deal is. The answers that Crystal Lake offers are intriguing, even if they sometimes seem arbitrary — more like fan fiction than a definitive origin story. One episode, in particular, which Kane shoots like a David Cronenberg thriller, is a standout entry in the series that will likely amaze and offend audiences in equal measure.

If the premise of finally finding out why Jason became Jason and why his mother snapped and killed those teens intrigues you, Crystal Lake is a pretty entertaining attempt at answering those questions. And if the entire exercise offends you on any level, don't worry, we'll probably get yet another Friday the 13th reboot that wipes the slate clean in another decade or so — assuming Hollywood can ever untangle the franchise's complex copyright.

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All eight episodes of Crystal Lake release Oct. 15 on Peacock.