Pamela Voorhees may be at the center of Peacock’s upcoming Crystal Lake, but don’t expect the Friday the 13th prequel series to shy away from the franchise’s signature carnage.

Set before the events of the original Friday the 13th, Crystal Lake explores the history of Pamela Voorhees and her young son, Jason, digging deeper into the mythology surrounding the Voorhees family than the movies ever have.

But with the series spending its early episodes focused on Pamela, her grief, and the mysterious history of Crystal Lake, fans may wonder when the bloodshed begins.

According to showrunner Brad Caleb Kane, the answer is simple: Pamela eventually goes “full Friday the 13th.”

Speaking during a recent panel, Kane teased what fans can expect as the season unfolds.

“You watch the first four episodes, and you go, ‘Okay. They are telling a story, and there’s a little bit of paranoid conspiracy thriller here, and it’s a psychological devolution or evolution, however you want to put it; but where’s Friday the 13th?’”

Then comes the payoff.

“Pam goes full Friday the 13th in this season, and you will see it,” Kane promised.

He added that the series will eventually deliver the kind of brutal kills longtime fans have been waiting for.

“There are a series of kills that are everything the movies do, and, hopefully, it will satisfy the real hunt hack-and-slash fans, too; we build to it, but it’s coming.”

Still, Crystal Lake isn’t simply trying to recreate the formula of the classic slasher films.

Kane explained that one of the biggest challenges was finding a way to tell a Friday the 13th story without simply making another Friday the 13th movie.

“I think the biggest conceptual issue was people know what to expect from a Friday the 13th, or at least they know what a Friday the 13th movie should be,” Kane said. “Teens go out to a place, they are having sex and doing drugs, and then they are hunted by Mrs. Voorhees or Jason in the subsequent films.”

“But, thankfully, we weren’t making a Friday the 13th movie,” he continued. “They are going to make another Friday the 13th movie, which I’m sure will be Friday the 13th to the max; but this was called Crystal Lake, and we were doing a story about the town and a prequel about Jason’s mom.”

That freedom allowed Kane and his team to expand the franchise in new directions while still embracing its roots.

“We could build it however we wanted,” the showrunner explained.

As a longtime fan himself, Kane wanted to combine the elements that made him fall in love with Friday the 13th with the broader themes and filmmaking influences he discovered later in life.

“I kind of knew what I wanted to see as a grown-up Friday the 13th fan, as somebody who these movies opened doors for me and opened my eyes and I was thrilled watching them with thousand-seaters full of people yelling at the screen,” he said.

“But I also grew up a little bit and became interested in other films and other themes in films, and I wanted to bring all of that cinema love to my love for Friday the 13th.”

Kane was also given plenty of freedom to pepper the series with nods to the original movies.

“So I was really given carte blanche, but I wanted also to honor the fans of those original movies and myself as an original fan of those movies by giving as many Easter eggs as made sense within the context of this story as possible,” he said. “And I think we did that a lot. We re-create things, which I won’t spoil here.”

What Is ‘Crystal Lake’ About?

The series follows Pamela Voorhees, a single mother still struggling with the devastating loss of her young son, Jason, who drowned in Crystal Lake nearly a year earlier.

When two strangers arrive at Pam’s doorstep investigating her past, a disturbing chain of events begins to unfold. Before long, the residents of Crystal Lake are left asking a terrifying question:

Who is Pamela Voorhees?

Linda Cardellini stars as Pamela, a woman who abandoned a singing career to care for her special-needs son before tragedy sends her life down a much darker path.

Callum Vinson (Chucky) plays young Jason Voorhees.

All episodes of Crystal Lake premiere October 15 on Peacock.