Crystal Lake Boss Brad Caleb Kane Explains Why Jason & Pam Voorhees Got a New Backstory
The man at the helm of Peacock's smash-hit series settled the "Is Jason a cockroach?" debate once and for all.
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Key Takeaways
- Crystal Lake creator and showrunner Brad Caleb Kane discussed the new backstory Peacock's prequel series revealed, which explains Jason Voorhees' abilities and Pam Voorhees' murderous rage.
- Crystal Lake rewrites Jason and Pamela Voorhees’ origins by introducing Project Argonaut, connecting Jason’s near-immortality and Pamela’s violent protectiveness to corporate experimentation.
- Kane said Jason’s abilities are grounded in speculative but science-inspired concepts like "biomimicry" and real-world radiation experiments, rejecting fan debates that Jason is literally “part cockroach.”
Peacock's Crystal Lake series weaves a new timeline of events leading up to the original Friday the 13th movie. And while the show starring Linda Cardellini as killer mom Pam Voorhees is a prequel at heart, creator and showrunner Brad Caleb Kane wasn't afraid to rewrite history with a new Voorhees family backstory revealed in Episode 7.
In an October interview with TV Line, Kane unpacked the significance behind the retooled Jason Voorhees origin story, and the unfurling of Pam's "healing" rage.
"I think she becomes who she truly is at her core. She leans into her true power," Kane said of where Pam lands at the end of the series. "There's something specifically said in Episode 2 about, if you would just let all of that power inside of you out, wouldn't that be something? And the series really is a journey to that power, to some degree. I think a lot of rage, female rage, any kind of rage, is us suppressing emotions, suppressing things, and then they manifest in unhealthy ways. So maybe her letting out that first initial burst of anger is the first journey to healing."
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Granted, in this case, Pam's "healing" involves a major body count. But the reveal of Project Argonaut goes a long way in explaining her rage, in addition to lending what Kane considers a science-backed new explanation for why Jason can't die.
Brad Caleb Kane says Jason Voorhees' abilities are "based on real science"
Giving Jason a believable backstory was a priority for Kane and the Crystal Lake team, he told TV Line.
"It goes into the themes that I wanted to touch on for the show — the themes based on the decade that we were setting this in and the decade that these movies came out of — of mistrust of institutions and corporate malfeasance, which was a thing that we were just really coming to understand at that time," he explained.
"We all grew up with sugar cereals and all the things that, in our kitchen, were told were fine and part of this healthy breakfast and part of this complete everything. And it was only years later that we learned that it had red dye No. 12 and blue dye No. 6, and these things were all very dangerous for us," he continued. "So I wanted to lean into that. That what was going on behind the scenes at that time was much more treacherous than the mask that these corporations and government and everybody put on themselves to hide those facts."
While Jason's abilities were somewhat hazily explained in a few in the original Friday the 13th films, the concept was crucial to Crystal Lake's storytelling. The new backstory also makes clear that Pam's a justifiably "protective" mother, given everything her son was put through and the fact that they remained a target of Bellflower Chemical.
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"It was necessary within the context of the story we were telling because Pamela and Jason were hiding from someone. Pamela was a protective mother. Why was she so protective? Is it just that her son was different?" Kane told the outlet.
"It felt like there needed to be a little more there that could be specific on the story front and then feed into the thematics of the time that these movies came out of, the time in America. So, we invented something, but it wasn't invented out of whole cloth. It's speculative science, but also not really, because Biomimicry is very much a thing. Searching the natural world for biological processes that we can figure out, and how they can benefit us, either biologically or out in the world. Spiders with their silk for tensile strength."
Jason Voorhees is NOT part cockroach, showrunner says
"It's very reductive to say, Jason is a cockroach. I see that kind of stuff online. It's very reductive," Kane continued, addressing fan discussion. "There were specific studies that can be cited of medical facilities and chemical companies doing radiation experiments on that particular insect during that time for that specific reason, so I wasn't pulling it out of my a--," the Crystal Lake boss continued.
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"He was not [part cockroach]," Kane stressed. "It was replicating a process that was observed in a natural way in these particular creatures. It's Biomimicry, that's essentially what it is, and that is a real science."
Stream all eight episodes of Crystal Lake on Peacock now.
