CRYSTAL LAKE Posters Reveal the First Look at Young Jason Voorhees

Halloween is bringing us back to Crystal Lake, but this time Jason Voorhees isn’t the hockey-mask-wearing killing machine horror fans know and love. He’s just a kid, and the first official posters for Peacock’s upcoming Crystal Lake series have finally revealed our first look at the young Jason.

The eight-episode prequel to the original 1980 horror classic Friday the 13th arrives on Peacock this Halloween season, and the two newly released posters put the focus on the doomed Voorhees family before Camp Crystal Lake became synonymous with machetes, masks, and a ridiculous body count.

Linda Cardellinistars as Pamela Voorhees, Jason’s mother and one of the most important characters in the Friday the 13th franchise. Callum Vinson, who horror fans may recognize from Chucky, takes on the role of young Jason Voorhees.

The posters offer our first official glimpse at Vinson as Jason, giving fans an early taste of what Peacock has planned for this much different chapter of the franchise.

All eight episodes of Crystal Lake will premiere October 15 on Peacock, making this a perfectly timed Halloween binge for Friday the 13th fans.

The story takes place nearly a year after young Jason, described as a sickly child, tragically drowned in the lake. Pamela is now a single mother still consumed by grief over the death of her son. Her life takes another disturbing turn when two strangers show up at her door and begin asking questions about her past.

Their arrival sets off a series of unsettling events throughout Crystal Lake, eventually leaving the people living there with a troubling question: Who exactly is Pamela Voorhees?

Rather than simply recreating the campground slasher scenario with another group of doomed teenagers, the series is digging into Pamela, Jason, and the community that will eventually become the setting for one of horror cinema’s most famous killing grounds.

Brad Caleb Kane, who worked on IT: Welcome to Derry, serves as showrunner, and he recently explained why approaching the franchise through a television prequel gave the creative team considerably more freedom than making another traditional Friday the 13th movie.

Kane said: “I think the biggest conceptual issue was people know what to expect from a Friday the 13th, or at least they know what a Friday the 13th movie should be.

“Teens go out to a place, they are having sex and doing drugs, and then they are hunted by Mrs. Voorhees or Jason in the subsequent films. But, thankfully, we weren’t making a Friday the 13th movie.

“They are going to make another Friday the 13th movie, which I’m sure will be Friday the 13th to the max; but this was called Crystal Lake, and we were doing a story about the town and a prequel about Jason’s mom, and it was really fresh snow.”

That distinction opens up some interesting territory. We already know what Jason eventually becomes, and anyone familiar with the original movie knows Pamela’s place in the mythology. Crystal Lake gets to explore the people they were before everything spiraled into the bloody history fans know so well.

For Kane, that also meant approaching the material as someone who genuinely grew up loving these movies while bringing a broader cinematic perspective to the franchise.

He continued: “We could build it however we wanted. And feeling ownership for the franchise as a long-time fan and a lover of it, truly die-hard lover, I kind of knew what I wanted to see as a grown-up Friday the 13th fan, as somebody who these movies opened doors for me and opened my eyes and I was thrilled watching them with thousand-seaters full of people yelling at the screen.

But I also grew up a little bit and became interested in other films and other themes in films, and I wanted to bring all of that cinema love to my love for Friday the 13th.”

That sounds like a promising way to expand this world. Jason has spent decades as an unstoppable horror icon, but exploring his childhood, Pamela’s grief, and the secrets surrounding the town could give fans a very different perspective on the Voorhees story.

Of course, knowing where this family eventually ends up adds an especially nasty edge to everything. Seeing young Jason before the mask and getting to spend more time with Pamela before the events of the original film could make their familiar story even more tragic.

Crystal Lake premieres with all eight episodes October 15 on Peacock.