Jason Voorhees: The Slasher Icon Explained

Friday the 13th is one of the biggest and most confusing franchises in the horror movie realm. What started as a standalone slasher flick is now a broad continuity that includes big twists, remakes, secret identities, and space travel.

The new Peacock series, Crystal Lake, is supposed to set up the world of Friday the 13th in a way that makes sense, but that was a tall order from the start. In the end, this explanation involved the Red Scare, secret medical treatments, and Hamish Linklater, and while it may not be the simplest solution, it’s at least a start. But what about the rest of Jason’s story? Here’s everything you need to know about him, broken down movie by movie.

1. Friday the 13th (1980)

Jason is actually barely in the first Friday the 13th movie at all. The real murderer the entire time is Pamela Voorhees, who blames hormonal camp counselors for the accidental drowning of her son. However, in the last few seconds of the movie, inspired by the similar ending of Carrie, we see a still-alive Jason emerge from the lake. So this may be the movie that launched Jason Voorhees, but it didn’t actually depict him.

2. Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

Part 2 is a surprisingly straightforward sequel. This time, Jason is wreaking havoc on a new wave of camp counselors to get revenge for his mother, who in turn was getting revenge for him. It’s another example of the classic horror trope where the final girl manages to calm the villain down by pretending to be his mother.

3. Friday the 13th Part III (1982)

It wasn’t until this movie that Jason started wearing his now-iconic hockey mask. At this point in the franchise, Jason was seemingly unkillable, but there wasn’t really a reason given for why — he just always seemed to recover from whatever fate found him, even getting an axe to the head.

4. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

Spoiler alert: this wasn’t actually the final chapter, but it was intended to be an ending point for the character. This movie opens with Jason waking up in a morgue, doubling down on his “unkillable” identity, but in the end it looked like he was officially gone for good. But unfortunately, as long as there’s Friday the 13th, there’s a Jason, so it wasn’t long until he came back again.

5. Friday the 13th: The New Beginning (1985)

But the franchise chose not to revive Jason just yet. In the fifth movie, Jason only exists as an urban legend, and the murders that occur in it are actually the work of a copycat criminal, much like the perpetrators in most of the Scream movies. By the end, it looked like Tommy, the movie’s protagonist, was actually going to become the next Jason Voorhees himself, but this plotline was abandoned for something a bit more traditional — and ridiculous.

6. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)

This movie went back to the franchise’s roots by literally reanimating the corpse of Jason Voorhees by means of a well-timed lightning strike. Now, he’s a literal zombie who doesn’t just seem unkillable; he is unkillable. This movie ends with Jason chained to the bottom of Crystal Lake itself, but even that isn’t enough to keep him from returning again and again.

7. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)

This is the movie that solidified Zombie Jason as a sci-fi monster, this time pitting him against a telekinetic girl, culminating in him being dragged along the lake bed itself. Believe it or not, this is only the start of Friday the 13th going off the rails — it’s only downhill from here.

8. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

In this movie, Jason (still a zombie) manages to board a cruise ship traveling to New York and eventually runs rampant in the City That Never Sleeps. With no telekinetic character to fight him, he’s actually eventually subdued by a wave of toxic sludge, but that doesn’t manage to do him in, though he does take on his childhood form briefly.

9. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

Once again, this was not, in fact, the Final Friday, but it is a new level of strange plots for this franchise. This time, it’s revealed that Jason just isn’t a random superpowered being. He’s actually a host for a slug-like alien parasite that can jump from body to body. And just in case that wasn’t enough, the final seconds of this movie introduce Freddy Krueger, setting up a crossover later.

10. Jason X (2002)

This movie celebrated the milestone of the tenth movie with this Hail Mary of a sci-fi twist, which revealed that Jason was cryogenically frozen for centuries, enhanced into a cyborg with nanites, and then set loose on the crew of a space station. Technically, this is the latest version of Jason we’ve seen on screen, so this is his ultimate fate, but we’ve still got a few movies to go.

11. Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

It wouldn’t be a classic horror franchise without the crossover episode, and Freddy vs. Jason brought together two resilient serial villains and pitted them against each other. But for a while, Jason was actually being manipulated by Freddy. So at least mentally, Mr. Krueger does have the upper hand, but Jason does emerge in the final moments carrying Freddy’s severed head.

12. Friday the 13th (2009)

The true test of a horror franchise’s success is whether or not it can be rebooted and still enjoy similar success to the original. For a while, it seemed like this 2009 movie was going to be the reboot Friday the 13th needed, and it even did decently well at the box office. Unfortunately, this was the last theatrically released Friday the 13th movie, so this didn’t kick off a new era for Jason Voorhees. However, with Crystal Lake now rewriting his origin story, anything is possible.

Friday the 13th and its sequels are streaming on Paramount+. Crystal Lake streams on Peacock.