‘Crystal Lake’ Discussion: Tell Us What You Thought of the New ‘Friday the 13th’ Series

All eight episodes of Crystal Lake are now streaming on Peacock. After 17 years without a new Friday the 13th movie, dating back to the 2009 reboot, Jason Voorhees is finally back on our screens.

Now we want to hear from you. Did it deliver, or did it overcomplicate something you already loved?

Consider this our Crystal Lake discussion page. Watch it, come back throughout the weekend, and tell Dread Central and Peacock what worked and what didn’t.

SPOILERS for the entire season follow, including the finale. The comments are open for spoiler discussion, too.

I’ll get us started: I’m incredibly mixed on it, leaning negative. I quite like the look, the aesthetic, and the style. Linda Cardellini is perfectly cast as Pamela Voorhees. She’s wonderful.

But I have problems with the mythology. Big ones.

I don’t understand why Brad Caleb Kane felt the need to explain every single plot hole across more than 45 years of this franchise. The complicated comic book mythology is overabundant and completely unnecessary. This is being presented as a prequel to Friday the 13th, so naturally I’m watching these revelations as things we’re supposed to carry back into those movies.

Before release, Kane pushed back against the Stranger Things comparisons, telling Deadline, “It’s grounded in more reality.”

Really? We’re talking about cockroaches, developing superhumans, and a superhuman child who could survive a nuclear apocalypse, and we’re not entering the fucking Twilight Zone here? Whatever the differences in the actual explanation, I watched this and understood exactly why people were making those Stranger Things comparisons.

For me, this feels like taking the wrong lesson from something like It: Welcome to Derry. Expanding mythology and explaining Jason Voorhees are two very different concepts. I don’t need a scientific explanation for every ridiculous thing that’s happened in a slasher franchise. We’re the people who watch a bad sequel, say, “Okay, well, that sucked,” and put on the next one. The unanswered questions weren’t keeping me up at night.