Brad Caleb Kane’s upcoming Friday the 13th prequel series, Crystal Lake, is set to drop all at once on Peacock next week and fans are positively chomping at the bit to get a look at what this show is all about.
The marketing and overall hype for the series has been quite strong. The most trailer notably featured a shot that led to all kinds of online conspiracy theories, and star Linda Cardellini has been praised from the start as a remarkable get for Pamela Voorhees (and she certainly is). But the thing that has undoubtedly elevated all of these efforts is the fact that fans have now waited nearly 20 years to see the world of Friday the 13th return to the screen with new material.
Jason’s look for Crystal Lake
Given that the series takes place in the ‘70s, prior to the events of the first film, many had wondered to what extent Jason will be featured in the show. Kane has confirmed that Jason will be involved in some of the mayhem that happens within the series, revealing that while he doesn’t wear his iconic hockey mask this season, he does wear a mask ,and get his hands dirty.
In speaking to Entertainment Weekly about the iconography of Jason through the years, Kane said, “There is a mask… It might be a different mask than fans are used to, but it will not be a different mask than fans have seen.”
“We show the origin story of the mask, and why it’s there specifically, and it all connects,” Kane added.
In a different franchise, making an entire multi-episode season of television about an iconic movie monster and declining to give him is iconic look might seem kind of ridiculous. But with Friday the 13th, it’s actually pretty par for the course.
Despite the fact that the hockey mask-wearing Jason has now become an intergenerational pop-cultural staple, the character doesn’t actually sport that look in the first Friday the 13th movie, or even in the second one. It wasn’t until the in-3D Friday the 13th Part III that Jason put on the hockey mask for the first time, and despite the fact that that sequel is widely regarded as a weaker installment in the franchise over all, the look stuck and came to define the character.
Prior to the hockey mask, Jason was either seen sans mask (as in the brief flashbacks and dream sequence scares of the first film) or much more notably, with a burlap sack with a single eye-hole (as is his look for the entirety of Friday the 13th Part II).
Given Kane’s comments about Jason wearing a mask that is one “fans have seen,” it seems pretty obvious that this latter option is what a young Jason will sport in the new series. This makes perfect sense as it is both a great look and a fun way to harken back to the roots of the franchise without resorting to busting out the hockey mask just yet.
This is actually the exact approach employed by the 2009 remake, which has Jason wearing the burlap sack for the first act of the film before converting over to the traditional hockey mask. But with Crystal Lake, given that the majority of its story will center around a very young Jason, it sounds like the series is going to integrate the burlap sack in a different way and allow things to build more organically to the hockey mask in future seasons. We’ll all have to wait and see when the show drops next week.
The last project to debut in the Friday the 13th franchise was the 2009 remake, and it made a killing at the box office. But due to legal disputes, numerous false-starts over the years, and headache-inducing behind-the-scenes issues, the series has been radio silent ever since. But now, with Crystal Lake, Jason is finally returning to the screen, albeit in televised form.
Stream all eight episodes of Crystal Lake on Oct. 15.
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