Pamela Voorhees (Linda Cardellini) has told her story. She has revealed to Crystal Lake Chief of Police Levon Brooks (William Catlett) and his journalist sister Briana (Devin Kessler) exactly why she and her (believed-to-be-dead) son Jason have been on the run, hiding out from the Bellflower Chemical company. A pair of “fixers” working for the company came looking for them in the first episode and Pam killed them in self-defense before feeding their corpses to a bear. Brooks has figured out that Pam was responsible for those murders, and now he knows why. He understands, especially since some Bellflower representatives also recently tried to kill Briana for digging up their dirt.
Now that we’re in the final episode of the season, it’s time for the “Bellflower is searching for Pam” storyline to reach its peak – and it does when Pam’s husband Elias Whittering (Hamish Linklater), Jason’s father, shows up in Crystal Lake with a group of thugs backing him up.
Showrunner Brad Caleb Kane crafted the story for this episode with Arthur Imperatore, then wrote the teleplay himself. Quyen Tran directed the episode… and unfortunately, I’m left feeling that the Tran-directed episodes are a weak link in the season. I thought Michael Lennox did a good-to-great job with the first three episodes (I just didn’t enjoy the seminar stuff in episode 2), I loved some of the moments Celine Held and Logan George brought to the screen in the next batch of three, but Tran’s first episode, the seventh of the season and the one that’s dedicated entirely to Bellflower flashbacks, was my least favorite of the whole batch, and I think this season finale is a little underwhelming simply because it feels short and rushed.
Elias’s first stop in Crystal Lake is Hartung’s Diner, where local woman Rita (Joy Suprano) and diner owner Trudy (Bernadette Quigley) get weird vibes from him once he starts talking about looking for his “friend” Pamela Voorhees. Elias would have gotten no information from Rita and Trudy, but loudmouth trucker Enos (Daniel Sherman Stewart) thinks Pam needs some cheering up from a friend and goes so far as to give Elias her address.
Good thing the Brooks siblings have already gotten Pam out of her home and have her sitting safely in the local police station. Well, she’s safe there for a little while. Then Elias and his goons come in and Brooks has to confront them while Pam and his sister hide in the basement. It’s a six-to-one standoff, and when guns are drawn, Brooks has five guns pointed at him while he has his gun pointed at Elias.
This is a pretty cool, tense sequence that stretches on for several minutes – and it gets even cooler when Officer Dorf (Cameron Scoggins), who has been informed about the Elias situation by his crush Rita, comes walking into the station and finds himself in the middle of the standoff. Throught the season, we’ve seen Dorf as a pathetic character with something to prove, and this scene finally gives him a chance to prove himself. Every time we’ve seen him throw a shuriken at a target, he has never been able to get the throwing star to stick. But now he pulls out a shuriken and throws it right into a bad guy’s eye. The smile on Dorf’s face when he sees that star stick in its target is a great, hilarious sight.
Then bullets start flying. I won’t give away the fates of everyone involved, but I will say that the situation ends with two of the goons and Elias managing to escape from the police station with Pam as their captive. They shove her into a car and hit the road, heading out of town. And now it starts to feel like we’re being rushed into an ending.
In a moment reminiscent of Friday the 13th Part 2, Jason Voorhees (now played by Jonathan Tison, after Zachary Branch took on the role for the middle stretch of episodes) darts across the road. This nearly causes the car to crash, and Pam takes the opportunity to get out of the vehicle and run into the woods – heading for the crumbling old shack that she knows Jason has been staying in for the last year, ever since his supposed drowning at Camp Crystal Lake.
Jason is now looking a lot like he did in Friday the 13th Part 2, complete with a sack tied over his head – although the sack doesn’t fit quite as well as it did in the 1981 movie, so it looks kind of goofy. Despite the major growth spurt he has undergone in the last year, the sack is too big on him.
It seems just a bit too coincidental that Jason manages to stop the vehicle carrying both of his parents. It’s not like he would have any way of knowing they were in that car. He and Pam doesn’t have a psychic bond, unless you count the way that she felt he was still alive and lurking around the lake because they were “joined at the heart.” But Jason doesn’t seem to be too happy with his mom, for some reason, so I don’t think he’s feeling that heart connection right now.
If Tran or Kane had included a moment where Jason sees this car at the Voorhees house, I could believe that he recognized his father and was on the lookout for this particular vehicle. But there is no such moment in this episode. There’s no indication that Jason knows this car or who’s in it. He just happens to disrupt his parents’ journey. So that feels like a bit of a fumble.
Jason makes quick work of the two thugs. Then it’s time for him to be reunited with his parents at the shack.
The Whittering-Voorhees family reunion does not go well. I’ll just say that we’re given a reason why Elias never showed up in any Jason stories beyond this prequel. Then, there’s a moment that I don’t quite understand. When Pamela apologizes to Jason for not being there to save him when he was drowning, he grabs her by the throat and starts to choke her out. He doesn’t relent until she’s able to get through to him by telling him that she loves him. I don’t understand why Jason is so upset with Pamela. I don’t understand how or why he has become so feral. I don’t like that Kane has him turn against his mother, even for a moment. This two really should be presented as if they are “joined at the heart.” I don’t get what this friction is.
Apparently the explanation is that Jason rose from the lake without memory of anyone in his life and he doesn't remember his mother until this moment, but that doesn't come through very clearly in the show.
Anyway, Jason lets go of his mom. As the season comes to a close, Pam’s mind has completely cracked. She knows Jason is out there. The woods are his and hers, and everyone else needs to stay away. Stay out of the woods. Stay away from the camp. “Town crazy” Ralph (Nick Cordileone) is also aware that Jason is out there, and that Pam has gone off the deep end.
It’s scary and tragic, but the local teens turn the story of Jason Voorhees into a campfire legend. But the legend is true, and I’m very eager to see what’s going to happen next. After all, as the showrunner has said, future seasons of Crystal Lake have an eight-year gap between the end of this season and the beginning of the original Friday the 13th that they could fill in.
Crystal Lake did some things I didn’t like. Some decisions were made that I didn’t agree with. But overall, I really enjoyed the show. It has a great cast, I liked most of the characters, and it was fun to spend so much time in a world directly connected to the early Friday the 13th movies. I like spending time in that world so much that, so far, as of this writing, I have watched the entire season four times. So I really hope we’ll get a season 2.
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