Crystal Lake Premiere Recap: Pamela Voorhees' Prequel Gets Off To A Gory Start — But What Is She Hiding From?

In the opening seconds of Peacock's "Friday the 13th" prequel "Crystal Lake," Linda Cardellini's Pamela Voorhees is drenched in dark red blood. Not only that, but she has a human tooth lodged into her right knuckle. It's grotesque, it'll make you wince, and it tees up exactly what's in store once things really get cooking at camp. 

The series' eight episodes (all of which are now available to stream; read our review here or watch the trailer) bridge the gap between a highly traumatic accident and the events of the first movie, which revealed that a psychotic Pamela was the culprit of the camp's horrific 1980 slayings. But after that hellish and disgusting cold open, we flash back nine months. Pamela's young son, Jason (sans hockey mask), is alive, but we all know what's coming: He's about to drown in Crystal Lake after his camp counselor takes her eyes off the campers for a few short minutes. Pam, who works in the camp's kitchen, is on site when the boy drowns, but by the time she swims out, he has sunk below the surface and seemingly disappeared. She screams his name in distress, but we all know the truth: His body will never be found. Jason isn't coming back.

Back in the present (1972, that is), Pamela can't stop thinking about her missing and presumedly dead son. As she once again stands on the dock of the lake, Sheriff Levon Brooks is called to drive the grieving woman home. He tries to get her to rejoin her community, to take her mind off of her tremendous sadness, but she's hesitant. Finally, he convinces her to attend the Founder's Day picnic, only she freaks out at the kids swimming in the lake after finding out that the camp will soon reopen. "Why would you bring me here with these people?" she asks Levon before storming away.

In more flashbacks, we see Pam giving her son a pill after he has trouble sleeping. He suffers from bad headaches, likely due to his apparent hydrocephalus. In another scene, the boy drops to the floor in the home's kitchen and immediately seizures. Pamela races to his side to give him more medicine. Whether he has a serious health issue or some other sort of trauma, we don't know, but even though the boy seems normal enough (despite his enlarged noggin), something is definitely wrong here.

When Pam arrives back home, two men claiming to be state police ask to speak with her. Inside, they tell her they think they might have found Jason's body and they'd like her come identify him. After one of the men makes a rude comment about Jason (calling him "a kid like that"), Pam's on high alert. She agrees to go with them, but excuses herself to the bathroom first. As she eyes an exit through the bathroom window, one of the men preps a syringe. The definitely-not-state-police bust through the door, but before one of the goons can stick her with the drug, she stabs him in the leg with a pair of scissors, and in the subsequent struggle, slices the guy's throat open. (Bring on the blood!)

She struggles to get away from the other man, who throws her into a closet. But that's where she finds the machete she bought Jason months ago as part of his camping prep. After the man calls her "Mrs. Wittering," he asks her what the people of her nice town would think if they knew "what you and Jason really were." She tells him to go to hell before slicing part of his face off and finishing him off with a head shot. In the dead man's wallet, she finds a newspaper clipping reporting Jason's death. A handwritten note on the page says "Wittering?" then below, "Argonaut?" As Pam is remembering some traumatic past event, we see a long hallway with a yellow door at the end. The door reads "Argonaut." She calls a woman named Nora and says, "They found me." 

Before she can move the bodies, Levon knocks on the door, but she pretends to not be home. After Levon's car drives away, the second dead guy turns out to be not-so-dead after all. He falls on top of her, spilling a cascade of thick, crimson blood all over her face. (Where are my fellow gorehounds at?) She then gets on top of him and pummels the guy's head with her fists to finish him off... for good, this time! 

After a nice long bath, she takes the bodies to the middle of the woods, rubbing them with honey and tuna fish. (Yum!) As she's dragging them close to a cave, she comes nose to nose with a mean looking bear, but as she hoped, the bear's attention turns toward the delicious dead bodies lying on the ground. Goodbye evidence?

Just then, fireworks from the Founder's Day celebration explode in the sky. Pamela looks down to see she's holding hands with her son. She smiles. But when the camera pans back, we see her extended arm with her hand reaching out, but nobody's beside her to hold it.

What did you think of the first "Crystal Lake" episode? Grade it below, then hit the comments!