CRYSTAL LAKE Creator Explains Why He Changed Jason Voorhees' Origin: "Nothing Is Consistent in the Canon Anyway"

Jason Voorhees has had one of the strangest histories in horror, so why not make it even crazier? That's pretty much the thinking behind the big changes to Jason's origin story in Peacock's Friday the 13th prequel series Crystal Lake, and creator Brad Caleb Kane thinks the franchise's messy continuity gave him plenty of room to play around.

The series doesn't just explore how Pamela Voorhees became the murderous mother we met in the original 1980 slasher classic. It also offers a completely new explanation for Jason's physical deformities and seemingly unstoppable strength. This time, his condition is connected to some silly government experiments.

Speaking with GamesRadar+, Kane explained why he felt comfortable changing such a major part of Friday the 13th mythology.

"I mean, the canon itself is pretty inconsistent and pretty wonky, and there was no real origin set in stone. There were sort of certain things said in the movies, and then in the novelization for part two, they talk about Jason's interiority, and they talk about him crawling out of the lake, and surviving in the woods off of this and that. But when you marry it with the actual time period of the movies, it doesn't quite match up."

Jason has gone from a supposedly drowned child to a hulking killer living in the woods, eventually becoming an undead monster who can survive just about anything. The movies haven't exactly followed a consistent set of rules when it comes to explaining how any of that works.

Kane saw those contradictions as an opportunity to give Jason a new backstory rather than trying to make every previous detail fit together.

The writer-director adds: "So it felt like you could mash it around a little bit. It felt malleable, and it felt like fresh snow that we could play with and have some invention there. Nothing is consistent in the canon anyway, so why not go back and play with it at all?"

Linda Cardellini stars as Pamela Voorhees, a single mother raising her sickly young son Jason in a small town. While the series follows Pamela's transformation into the killer fans know, it also reveals that Jason's childhood was far more disturbing than anyone realized.

In the penultimate episode, the story jumps back to the late 1950s during the Nuclear Arms Race. After nearly suffering a miscarriage, Pamela is taken by her husband to a specialist facility called Bellflower, where doctors conduct experimental treatments on her unborn child as part of a secret program known as Project Argonaut.

Years later, Pamela discovers the horrifying truth. Bellflower has been using Jason as a test subject, attempting to create a mutated human capable of surviving extreme conditions, including a nuclear explosion, with cockroach DNA.

Those experiments are responsible for Jason's physical deformities and ongoing health problems. He's essentially been engineered to become an indestructible military weapon.

Once Pamela discovers what's happening to her son, she rescues him from the facility, and the two escape to Crystal Lake in hopes of living a normal life.

Of course, this is Friday the 13th, so that happy ending isn't going to happen. Two men from Bellflower eventually arrive at Pamela's door, and things take a deadly turn.

It's a pretty wild departure from Jason's established movie history. In the original films, his physical deformities are associated with hydrocephalus, a real medical condition involving an abnormal buildup of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain.

His extraordinary strength, however, has always been harder to explain. Earlier films suggested his years surviving alone in the wilderness might account for some of his abilities, while later sequels fully embraced the supernatural side of the character.

Crystal Lake takes a different approach by connecting Jason's physical condition and superhuman abilities to scientific experimentation. Instead of simply being a mysterious killer who somehow keeps coming back, Jason is essentially a government-created monster.

It's an interesting direction for the franchise, especially since Jason's mysterious nature has always been part of what makes him frightening. Giving him a concrete origin changes how we look at the character, but it also adds another tragic element to Pamela's story.

She isn't just a mother trying to protect her son from a cruel world. She's fighting to save him from the people who turned him into a weapon.

Whether longtime Friday the 13th fans embrace this version of Jason is another question. Some will probably appreciate finally getting an explanation for his abilities, while others may prefer the mystery surrounding the hockey-masked killer.

Personally, I think it's a pretty crazy idea, but I can appreciate the attempt to do something different with a character we've been watching slaughter people for decades.

After all, when your franchise has already sent Jason to Manhattan, brought him back from the dead, and launched him into space, a secret government experiment doesn't seem that far-fetched.

Crystal Lake is now streaming on Peacock in the US.