Today’s post on Crystal Lake (2026) for 31 Days of Halloween is a little bit of a shitpost. I enjoyed Crystal Lake quite a bit, but the new backstory and origins for Friday the 13th‘s Jason Voorhees is the most Vault-Tec coded thing I have seen outside of any Fallout media. It’s amazing.
Spoilers abound, don’t read unless you’ve already caught up with Crystal Lake (if that is your thing).
Oh, and no this is not a movie, but it is a new Friday the 13th project (they still exist) that came out in October. Of course I am going to watch it.
I wasn’t going to let the month go by without watching a new Friday the 13th production. It’s been nearly two decades since our last movie, but now we have a shiny new premium streaming show to tide us over while the complicated legal tangle of the film series continues to play out. While there have been stirrings of a Jason Universe, it’s mostly been a marketing thing, but that isn’t terrible, either. But now, at least, we have a show, Crystal Lake, which ended up being pretty good – it also did something quite bold, which I respect quite a bit.
It also reminded me of Bethesda’s Fallout, the apocalyptic roleplaying shooter franchise which now has its own hit streaming show. Who knew that Jason Voorhees is the product of Vault-Tec?
Spoilers ahead, you’ve been warned.
Atomic Age Anxiety
So there isn’t really a crossover between Crystal Lake and Fallout. It is more thematic than anything. If you have even a cursory experience with Fallout, tell me what you might think about this scenario: imagine a story about a pharmatech company involved with multiple industries attempting to help the human race survive an atomic apocalypse by doing illegal, secretive genetic experimentation involving cockroach genetics and in-utero human experimentation in an Atomic Age setting.
If you think of something like Fallout, you’d be wrong. This is actually Crystal Lake. Jason Voorhees is the product of such an experiment in this new continuity. This backstory is pretty much as simple as that too; Jason’s mother, Pamela, goes in for an experimental procedure due to nearly miscarrying her child. She works with a company called Bellflower Chemical. She finds herself in a conspiracy where the company has found that little Jason may be the solution to their search for human survival and experiments on him. That genetic experimentation makes him an ultimate survivor and has enabled him to grow stronger with traumatic events and deaths, allowing him to survive nearly anything while stripping him of his humanity.
And no, before you go and guess that I hate it – I do not. I think it is a lot of fun and makes for a neat angle to a quality show overall. It’s a fun explanation for why Jason is the way he is. And it is at least something complete and declarative, unlike the hints to him being a Deadite in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. I prefer the Deadite angle, how could I not? But if we’re getting more Friday the 13th material thanks to this new continuity, I am just fine with that as well. If Halloween can have 4 different continuities, it is fine that Friday the 13th has 3 of them.
But yes, the Fallout similarities are hilarious to me and I very much found the thought experiment entertaining. It’s not hard to imagine Vault-Tec somehow creating a nearly immortal killer in an attempt to outlast the apocalypse—and the fact that it involves cockroach DNA is peak Vault-Tec. It isn’t hard to consider this as a storyline in some part of the map wherever the next Fallout game takes place. Given how much of a grab bag Fallout is, anyway, I hope the game makes a nod to Crystal Lake.
Did I ever need an explanation of how Jason ends up so powerful? Absolutely not. Did I need a prequel reboot to give me additional backstory for Pamela Voorhees? Again, absolutely not.
But do I appreciate the risk and overall quality of what Crystal Lake ended up delivering? Absolutely I do.
This has been an installment of Graphic Content; support my writing by joining me on Ko-fi.
