Hollywood hasn't unleashed Jason Voorhees on horror movie audiences since 2009. Back then, Jason had mostly been reduced to a Flanderized version of himself in entertaining cash grabs like Jason X and Freddy vs. Jason. (Not to pretend that the early films had that much depth, but they were marginally more creative than "Jason goes to space.") The 2009 reboot, titled simply Friday the 13th, attempted to relaunch the franchise from a fresh slate.
It failed miserably (despite making a killing at the box office) and set the entire franchise back for over a decade. In the years since, Hollywood has struggled to bring Jason back to theaters, mostly due to complex rights issues over the character and his iconic hockey mask. But in 2026, Jason is finally back — sort of.
A new series from A24 and Peacock, titled Crystal Lake after the body of water where Jason drowned as a boy and later emerged as a monster, serves as a prequel, depicting Jason's tragic death and how it pushes his mother, Pamela Voorhees, past the point of no return. Crystal Lake notably does not feature the iconic hockey mask (again, legal issues), and in its place offers a smorgasbord of new plot details to help explain how Jason becomes Jason and Pamela becomes (spoiler alert for a 46-year-old movie) the killer in the original Friday the 13th. Along the way, Crystal Lake introduces so many plot changes and secret backstories that it can be hard to keep up.
Some of it is a lot of fun, but some of it may feel sacrilegious to Jason Voorhees' most diehard fans. Ultimately, the question of whether Crystal Lake needs to exist is a moot one. The show exists because IP management and copyright expiration dates exist; because streaming services that need an endless drip of new content to keep subscribers from unsubscribing exist; because capitalism exists.
Are these good reasons to make a TV series? Nonetheless, I actually think Crystal Lake is a pretty decent show — if you're willing to put all those bigger complaints out of mind for a few hours and enjoy the ride. Crystal Lake was initially announced in 2022 with Bryan Fuller (Hannibal, Pushing Daisies) as showrunner.
In interviews at the time, Fuller explained that moving the franchise from film to streaming essentially freed him from all the complex rights issues that had been bogging Jason Voorhees down. Then, in 2024, Fuller was fired, with reports suggesting A24 wanted to take the story in a different direction. A few months later, Brad Caleb Kane (best known as the lead male singing voice in Disney's animated Aladdin movies) signed on as new showrunner.
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