The Friday the 13th franchise is going back to the past with Crystal Lake, Peacock’s upcoming series that serves as a prequel to the original feature film. It’s going to finally delve into the mysterious backstory of Jason’s murderous mother, but in the process, it deviates from the established canon of the movie series.
Crystal Lake stars Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees, the mother of Jason Voorhees who turns out to be the killer in the original Friday the 13th. In that film, which is set in 1979, it’s established that Jason died 22 years earlier in the year 1957. However, as seen in the new trailer for Crystal Lake, it’s clear that the prequel story — which starts when young Jason is still alive — is set in the 1970s. Series creator and showrunner Brad Caleb Kane explained that he took these artistic liberties to pay tribute to that era’s pop culture.
The Timeline Has Shifted for Crystal Lake
“I wanted to touch on all the pop-culture artifacts that were tangential to the America from which these movies were born,” Kane told Entertainment Weekly. That includes inspiration from the ABC Afterschool Special, paranoid conspiracy thrillers, the debut of The Feminine Mystique, and “even the martial arts genre, which, if you grew up during that time, was basically a whole personality.”
This move has been generating a lot of discussion in the Friday the 13th fandom. Some are put off by the change, suggesting it feels a lot less like a direct prequel to the original film as a result. Others don’t see the shift in timeline as a problem, as the 2009 remake similarly moved up the time of Jason’s death. Crystal Lake could even be seen as a prequel to that film as opposed to the one from 1980.
Will Crystal Lake Be Canon to the New Jason Universe?
It’s also been posited that this change is part of a larger plan to tie into the new Jason Universe. This new franchise will reportedly include new movies following Jason after his resurrection, possibly in the present day. If going by the original film’s lore, Jason Voorhees would have turned 80 years old this year. If Crystal Lake is going to be treated as canon to the upcoming installments of the Jason Universe, some suggest that it would make more sense to change the timeline a bit.
“I think the premise of setting the show in the 70s instead of the 50s opens up the possibility of having a more modern setting for Jason in the present, since he would be 20 years younger,” as one fan on Reddit theorizes. “I think they are banking on this show being a hit, which could open up more seasons and eventually movies based off of this timeline.”
Crystal Lake debuts on Peacock on Oct. 15, 2026.
- Network
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Peacock
- Showrunner
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Brad Caleb Kane
- Writers
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Brad Caleb Kane
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Linda Cardellini
Pamela Voorhees
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