Spoiler alert: We're discussing the biggest reveals in Peacock's"Friday the 13th" prequel series "Crystal Lake," so turn away now if you haven't watched the whole show.
Jason Voorhees is nearly 50, so now's as good a time as any for the slasher icon to get a detailed backstory.
The new "Friday the 13th" prequel series, "Crystal Lake" (now streaming on Peacock), changes the game for the horror franchise and finally clears up some of the most confusing aspects of its mythology.
For one, the show reveals exactly why the infamous masked killer keeps coming back from the dead in one sequel after another. The lore dump comes in the seventh episode: In an extended flashback to the 1950s, we learn Jason almost didn't survive to childbirth. His mother,
Pamela Voorhees (Linda Cardellini), was told she had a miscarriage, only for another doctor to give a second opinion. She was still pregnant, but Jason was struggling to hang on.
So the powerful company Pamela's husband worked for got her into a clinical trial, where she received experimental treatments to save Jason's life. But unbeknownst to Pamela, the purpose of these treatments, which continued after Jason was born, was for the company to experiment on him as part of a plan to figure out how to make humans capable of surviving nuclear war.
In other words, Jason is essentially a human cockroach. During the experiments, it was discovered that trauma spurs accelerated growth and makes Jason stronger, explaining why he is so indestructible and seems to have superhuman strength in the movies.
Showrunner Brad Caleb Kane tells USA TODAY the backstory explains the "Jason we know today, but grounded in actual things that were happening" at the time.
"This is real-world stuff," he says. "They tested radioactive iron on parents, giving them supplements to see how the radioactive isotopes would affect the fetuses, to see how much radiation these babies could withstand and parents could withstand in the case of nuclear fallout. The government gave the Tuskegee Airmen syphilis to see how that would react on them. So it's not like I pulled this out of thin air."
The season finale also has major implications for "Friday the 13th" lore. In the original movie, Mrs. Voorhees' killings are to get revenge for Jason drowning as a kid. But in the sequel, Jason returns and becomes the killer in every subsequent installment. This raises two key questions that none of the movies totally cleared up: How is it that Mrs. Voorhees didn't know Jason was alive? And did he drown and come back to life, or did he never drown in the first place?
As for the first question, it turns out, she did know. In the finale's closing scenes, set years before the events of the original "Friday the 13th," Pamela reunites with Jason, who wears a bag over his head like in "Friday the 13th Part 2."
This fundamentally alters the way we watch the first movie, seemingly suggesting the Pamela who went on that bloody killing spree didn't truly think her son was dead.
Kane found it implausible, based on what the films establish, that Jason and Pamela would not have crossed paths before the events of the first movie.
"If he really did drown in 1958, and it's 1980 when Pam is murdering all these people, and then she gets murdered, and then we retcon in 'Part II' and say that Jason was actually in those woods for those entire 22 years … are we really telling ourselves that they never saw each other in those 22 years? There's a lot that's hard to believe there."
But "if we have multiple seasons and we get to that first movie at some point, you have to account for her saying my son drowned, and he died in that lake," Kane adds. "I do know a logical way to get to that place for her mentally."
An earlier episode also drastically rewrites history by revealing the killings that started the entire franchise were not initiated by Mrs. Voorhees, as fans have assumed for nearly 50 years.
The opening of 1980's "Friday the 13th" followed the point of view of an unidentified killer, who murders camp counselors Barry and Claudette. The end of the movie then implies the killer from that scene was Mrs. Voorhees.
"Crystal Lake," though, recreates the scene with a major twist: The point of view shot was actually from the perspective of Grace (Gwendolyn Sundstrom), a young girl to whom Pamela became a mother figure. It was Grace who stabbed Barry and Claudette, though she wasn't completely aware of what she was doing because she was on drugs. So Pamela steps in finish off Claudette and cover up what Grace did.
"Obviously, you don't see Pam in the first movie actually committing the murders," Kane notes. "You just assume it's her, because you meet her at the end, and you think that she committed all of those murders. You think that she committed the murder of the counselors because of the things that she said. But she never expressly says that."
As for whether Jason drowned in the lake, the show answers that, too.
"The way we frame it in the show, he drowned, but like pruning a bonsai tree, paradoxically, [it] makes it stronger," Kane says. "Cellular death triggers a process of growth and strength."
But Kane emphasizes he arrived at this answer based on what fit the show, rather than trying to make sense of the franchise's often perplexing lore.
"In the movies, did he drown or did he not drown? I don't know. It's not explained, which is fine," he says. "...I just leaned into, 'What do I want to do for the TV show? How do I explain certain things that are in the movies?' And I just ignored the inconsistencies completely, which you have to do anyway to enjoy these movies. And why not? Why does everything have to make perfect sense? Just enjoy what's there."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jason Voorhees' origin revealed after 46 years in 'Crystal Lake' – Twist explained
