‘Crystal Lake’ Just Pulled Off a Peacock Feat That Few Originals Have Managed

After nearly 17 years of dormancy, the classic slasher franchise ‘Friday the 13th’ returned this Halloween season, not with a new film, but with a prequel series. It was a long road to get there, and the franchise’s return was far from guaranteed.

The series was first announced back in 2022 and went through a number of high-profile ups and downs, including the loss of original showrunner Bryan Fuller and of Charlize Theron, who was initially tapped to play Pamela Voorhees. Fuller stepped away in early 2024, and the reins were handed to ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ co-showrunner Brad Caleb Kane in August of that year.

With that turbulent history, the real question was whether audiences would show up. According to a new report from Variety, they did in a big way.

‘Crystal Lake’ has generated 1.3 billion minutes watched over its first 11 days, making it the fourth highest scripted original series ever on Peacock. That puts it behind only ‘The Best Man: The Final Chapters,’ ‘All Her Fault,’ and the first season of ‘The Five Star Weekend.’ For a horror prequel that spent years in development limbo, that is an impressive spot on the leaderboard.

The social numbers back it up. The series scored 1.8 billion earned impressions in its first 24 hours and grew to more than 7.6 million video views in its first 11 days, according to figures from Sprout Social. The viewing figure itself comes from internal NBCUniversal numbers.

Part of the appeal is the story itself. The official synopsis explains that Pamela is still grappling with the loss of her young son, Jason, who drowned in the town lake nearly a year earlier. When two strangers arrive at her home to uncover her past, a series of horrifying events begins to unfold.

Linda Cardellini leads as Pamela Voorhees, with Callum Vinson playing a young Jason, and William Catlett, Gwendolyn Sundstrom, Cameron Scoggins and Devin Kessler also starring. The series is set eight years before the original film. The eight-episode run has to establish an ensemble of townsfolk while building toward Pamela’s inevitable descent into madness.

Critics have been warm, if not unanimous, in their praise. TheWrap’s review argued that Cardellini and Catlett mine incredible pathos from the material, even as the show feels wobbly in places. Another review called the series a bumpy ride with notable snags in its theming and excessive subplots, while still crediting Cardellini as an absolute powerhouse.

The consensus on the lead performance seems to have carried over to the scores. The series boasts a 77% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, compared to 48% for the original ‘Friday the 13th,’ the next highest in the franchise. That makes it the most critically admired entry in the franchise’s history, a notable shift for a series long dismissed by reviewers.

The stakes were also high on the production side. A24’s original 2022 plan was an ambitious per-episode budget of around $10 million. A streaming hit helps justify that kind of investment, especially for a brand that has spent so long on the sidelines.

There is also a larger context for the milestone. The ‘Friday the 13th’ franchise has earned over $468 million at the box office despite mixed reviews. The series proves the brand still has pull on streaming, and it gives Peacock a win in a crowded landscape.

Whether ‘Crystal Lake’ can hold onto that momentum remains to be seen. For now, Pamela Voorhees has done what many streaming originals struggle to do: she got people to stay at camp.