Spoilers follow for the first episode of Crystal Lake, which debuts on Peacock on October 15!
The cast and creator of Crystal Lake showed up at New York Comic Con this week to prep fans for the launch of their Friday the 13th sequel series’ next week. That included a panel discussion, a Camp Crystal Lake activation experience, and a screening of the first episode of the show. I also got a chance to talk to the group about the long-awaited return to the hunting grounds of Jason Voorhees… and his mom Pamela. Don’t forget about Pamela!
We’ll have a full season review of Crystal Lake in a few days, but for now I’m going to break down the biggest points from Episode 1, as well as some thoughts from showrunner Brad Caleb Kane, star Linda Cardellini, and the other cast members who were in attendance.
So let’s take a swim in the lake…!
Don’t Mess With Pamela Voorhees
Right out of the gate, the episode gives us Linda Cardellini’s Pamela covered in blood, leaning over a bathroom sink and staring at herself in the mirror. She finds a human tooth embedded in one of her knuckles and says to herself, “What did you do…?”
Of course, we know from 1980’s original Friday the 13th movie that Pam has some slicing and dicing skills. For while her son Jason is the main slasher of the franchise, it was actually Pam who was the killer in that first film, having gone mad after her son drowned (or seemed to drown – more on that in a second) at Camp Crystal.
What becomes clear as the first episode of Crystal Lake proceeds is that while this version of Pam isn’t insane (or perhaps, isn’t insane yet), she definitely is capable of violence.
“There’s a switch,” the actress, who just won an Emmy for the HBO series DTF St. Louis, tells me. “If you flip it with her, there’s no going back. It’s almost like she doesn’t even understand what she’s doing. If someone flips that switch, there’s a loss of control for her. In a way, she’s looking for control and then she loses it at the same time. That’s the dangerous dance there.”
“I like to think there’s nobody more dangerous than a mother whose child is threatened,” adds Brad Caleb Kane.
“Also, it’s somebody you don’t expect,” continues Cardellini. “I think that’s part of it that I really enjoyed – is that here’s this person who you can kind of relate to, but there’s a massive rage underneath there that, if you tap into it and start to open that Pandora’s box, you can’t put that genie back in the bottle.”
Adds the showrunner: “At a certain point, maybe it also feels a little good to let that genie happen.”
Jason Lives! And He’s a Cute Little Kid
Everyone knows Jason Voorhees’ origin story, right? It’s like required reading in schools these days, isn’t it? But what’s interesting about the master of hockey mask couture is that we’ve never really seen much of his childhood, despite his appearing in 12 movies (-ish – he’s actually dead in the fifth film) to date, and decades of various ancillary media. Yes, we know he was deformed in some way, and that though believed drowned, the adult Jason took over the teenager-killing duties at Camp Crystal after his mother died in the first film.
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