In true franchise fashion, Crystal Lake wears its references on its sleeve.
The new series from A24 follows single mother Pamela Voorhees (Linda Cardellini) roughly eight years before she exacts revenge for the negligent death of her disabled son Jason (Callum Vinson). Though designed as a prequel to Sean S. Cunningham’s 1980 film Friday the 13th, episode titles nod to later installments.
Of the first season’s eight chapter titles, more than half use the subtitles of popular sequels. Part 2, Part III (gotta love those conflicting numerical conventions), A New Beginning, The New Blood, and The Final Chapter all honor the winding path of F13 lore.
Set mostly in 1972, Crystal Lake chronicles the initial tragedy at the titular camp, and series creator Brad Caleb Kane has gone to remarkable lengths to recreate the look and feel of Cunningham’s original world.
Warning: spoilers ahead.
The Original Film Lives On
We see a roving hippie wander into town, mirroring the movements of Annie (Robbi Morgan), a would-be counselor turned victim. Grace (Gwendolyn Sundstrom), the only friend of a pre-murderous Jason, makes a long trek through the woods to an ominous structure, reminiscent of a path traveled in Friday the 13th Part 2.
A flashback shows the wide-eyed kids exploring what will eventually become known as “Jason’s Shack,” noticing ingredients for a moonshine still. This is possibly a sly reference to the 2024 video game The Curse of Camp Moonshine: Friday the 13th.
Kane’s first season concludes with a chilling recreation of the fireside tale Paul Holt (John Furey) uses to frighten his counselors-in-training. At a climactic moment in season one, Pamela dons a light blue cable-knit sweater identical to the one Betsy Palmer wears when she’s bested by the series’ first final girl, Alice (Adrienne King). Cardellini even recites some of Palmer’s infamous monologue as the delusional killer drifts in and out of reality. A redux of Harry Manfredini’s iconic score also features the cryptic “ki ki ki ma ma ma” sound effects that have become F13’s calling card.
Another sequence nods to the iconic ending of Cunningham’s film. Episode two begins with Kane’s Pamela serenely rowing a canoe out to the middle of Crystal Lake, hoping to finally locate her missing son. Sheriff Levon Brooks (William Catlett) pulls up in a police car, just like the officers who will later come to rescue Alice. But from shore, neither can protect these unsuspecting women from the rotting corpses that emerge from the lake.
Perhaps even more exciting is a fun recreation of the opening kill. Cunnigham’s film begins with a group of counselors sitting around the fire and singing camp songs. When one song ends, Claudette (Debra S. Hayes) hands off the guitar she was playing and follows her boyfriend Barry (Willie Adams) up into the loft. As they start to kiss, an unseen figure surprises the young lovers by stabbing them to death in what we later learn is revenge for their neglectful role in Jason’s death.
Not only does Crystal Lake give us backstories for the irresponsible Barry (Phoenix Parnevik) and Claudette (Danielle Kotch), but we get to see this exciting scene recreated with impressive detail. Episode five features the ominous fireside singalong and the resulting double homicide, complete with a surprising killer reveal. Kane also nods to this disturbing cold open with his own title sequence design. As his Pamela desperately swims out to save her child, we see her come back up for air. Director Michael Lennox zooms in on the rictus of her harrowing scream before recreating Cunnigham’s broken glass title card.
Familiar Franchise Faces Return to Crystal Lake
In addition to this nostalgic table setting, Kane’s series reunites us with familiar faces and locations from the original franchise. We get to spend time with “Crazy Ralph” (Nick Cordileone), a veteran who lives on the outskirts of town. We first meet this lurking harbinger as he warns us about Camp Crystal Lake.
“It’s got a death curse,” the older Ralph (Walt Gorney) shouts to Annie as she hitches a ride to her doom. But like the younger Pamela, Kane’s Ralph is surprisingly sympathetic. More than just a drunken kook, he’s been traumatized by his time at war and hallucinates dead bodies littered throughout the woods as a symptom of his PTSD.
Kane builds out Ralph’s character in connection with the man’s original antagonist. In Cunningham’s version of events, the doomed counselors are warned about Ralph by a Crystal Lake cop known as Officer Dorf (Ron Millkie). Kane draws upon the comedy of this brief scene by introducing us to a younger Deputy Dorf (Cameron Scoggins) who is eager to please Sheriff Brooks. Kane’s bumbling Dorf and sensitive Ralph serve as secondary foils, and their strange feud becomes a red herring for a more mysterious killing spree.
As we first meet John Christy (Brian J. Carter) and his wife Kay (Nancy Nagrant), we catch a fleeting glimpse of their son Steve (Dan Thompson). Fans of the 1980 film will remember an older Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer) and his neckerchief as he flirts with Alice while repairing the camp. When Kane’s Pamela realizes they mean to reopen the facility just one year after Jason’s death, she screams that she thought they were her friends, a fun nod to Palmer’s original introduction. When Alice first meets the surprising killer, Mrs. Voorhees insists that she can be trusted because she is “a friend of the Christys.”
Sharp-eared viewers will notice a brief mention of an off-screen character named Noah Feldman, a nod to the actor Corey Feldman, who plays the young Tommy Jarvis in Joseph Zito’s Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. Kane’s Pamela also grows close to a woman named Trish, likely named for Tommy’s older sister Trish Jarvis, played by Kimberly Beck in the fan-favorite film. Hoping to escape town for a while, Pamela follows another friend to a self-help conference at a resort called Packanack Lodge, referencing Paul’s training camp for counselors in Friday the 13th Part 2.
We’re also treated to a counselor promising “Crystal Lake memories” as campers eagerly run around, nodding to Daniel Farrands’s Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th. A brief mention of the late Dolly Parton is a timely reference to “Sail Away, Little Sparrow,” a country song that can be heard in the background of Cunningham’s film.
Harry Manfredini wrote the original tune when the studio could not afford to license one of Parton’s songs. Of course, we learn that this new iteration of Crystal Lake was founded by the fictional Lieutenant Hodder McKane, a name clearly meant to honor Kane Hodder, the most famous actor to don Jason’s iconic hockey mask.
Homages to the Franchise’s Most Iconic Deaths
Other Easter eggs are more subtle, representing poignant moments from the landmark 1980 film. After a shocking cold open, we flash back to the last day of Jason’s life as Pamela works in the camp cafeteria. Noticing a snake hiding behind supplies, we watch her eye a nearby knife. But moments later, we see her release the creature unharmed from within a lidded pot. The next summer, Pamela will find a second snake but take a much more ruthless approach, chopping off its head with another blade.
Meant to show how tragedy has transformed the grieving mother, this pair of scenes also references one of the most upsetting moments in franchise history. Cunningham’s original film features a scene in which Alice finds a snake in her bunk. Calling the rest of the counselors in, they similarly hack the snake in two. However, unlike Friday the 13th, no animals were harmed in the making of Crystal Lake.
In another nearby kitchen, Sheriff Brooks stores grisly evidence in his fridge until the coroner’s office opens on Monday morning. His sister Brianna (Devin Kessler) discovers this bag — filled with mangled human remains — as she prepares to make him a cup of tea. This parallels the shocking demise of the franchise’s first final girl. After surviving her time at Crystal Lake, Alice is making her own cup of tea in an apartment far away from the doomed nature camp. Just moments before her own violent end, Alice finds Mrs. Voorhees’ decapitated head stuffed inside her own icebox.
Kane also recreates several iconic death sequences from later franchise installments. When a hippie wanders into Jason’s clutches, she finds herself caught in a bear trap just moments before a mysterious killer returns for his prey. This mirrors an upsetting early death in Marcus Nispel’s Friday the 13th remake, in which Richie (Ben Feldman) waits to die after becoming ensnared in a similar trap. The film’s survivors also manage to defeat Jason (Derek Mears) by wrapping a similar trap around the killer’s neck.
During a drug-laden orgy scene, Pamela attacks a couple having sex on the ground, mirroring the gruesome deaths of Tina (Deborah Voorhees) and Eddie (John Robert Dixon) in Danny Steinmann’s Friday the 13th: A New Beginning — though there are several other mid-coital kills that occur throughout the slasher series.
Another of Kane’s violent mothers dies by falling face-first into an industrial fryer, closely resembling the death by liquid nitrogen in James Isaac’s Jason X. And the climactic murder of Jason’s long-lost father, finally introduced in Kane’s series, recreates the eye-popping crushed skull seen in Steve Miner’s Friday the 13th: Part III.
Baghead Jason and Other Visual Callbacks
In addition to these grisly homages, Kane leans into a familiar visual motif. Fans of Jason lore know that the brutish killer doesn’t don his iconic hockey mask until the third film. In the second, he wears a burlap sack to hide his face, a creature design commonly known as Baghead Jason. Pamela finds herself haunted by images of this menacing silhouette twice in Kane’s eight-episode arc.
After her first major machete kill, she attempts to keep blood from spilling onto her floor by wrapping the victim’s head in a plastic bag. But blood pours out of the severe scalp wound, quickly obscuring any facial features. Even worse, this bag-headed victim sits back up, blindly stumbling in for another attack. When the bag tears open, a torrent of blood pours onto the screaming woman’s face.
In an expository flashback that sets up this kill, we watch a younger Pamela frantically search for Jason after breaking into Project Argonaut, a shadowy project referencing the Jason of Greek mythology. Within this torturous facility, she finds several children trapped in machines that look like massive iron lungs. One unfortunate son has his face obscured completely by a thick, black bag and can only scream when Pamela tries to help.
Crystal Lake Gives Spin on Jason’s Classic Origin
Not only does this introduce Project Argonaut mastermind Elias Wittering (Hamish Linklater) as Jason’s father, but his devious program explains the killer’s own unsinkable legacy. Hoping to develop human resistance to a nuclear threat, Elias has been infusing his son with superior strength. Thanks to these torturous tests, Jason has become nearly impossible to kill.
What’s more, each moment of physical trauma simply causes the child to grow bigger and stronger. Not only does this explain how Jason has continued to revive through twelve films, but we now know how he survive drowning in Crystal Lake to begin with.
In addition to this fascinating franchise lore, Jason fans will most likely be moved by a bittersweet explanation for Jason’s ability to thrive in the woods. Hoping to comfort her outcast son, Pamela has been taking the boy on extensive camping trips and teaching him outdoor survival skills. Shortly before his apparent death, we watch the child tear into a box full of camping gear, including a thick outdoor survival guide.
But it’s another gift he finds in the box that will become his signature weapon. Finally feeling powerful, a young and naive Jason raises his brand new machete, declaring that “the woods are mine!” Pamela will echo this statement in the first season’s poignant finale, after mother and son have been transformed into the bloodthirsty killers we’ve come to love.
