Crystal Lake Creator's Favorite Kill Of The Season Happens In Episode 6 [Exclusive]

This article contains some spoilers for "Crystal Lake."

The "Friday the 13th" franchise has been reappraised and reclaimed over the decades since it began as something perhaps a bit deeper than just a spooky, lurid, ever-changing campfire story about a killer in the woods. That said, even the most intellectual fan of the series must admit that it began life as not much more than a bandwagon jump at the beginning of the slasher boom of the 1980s. In fact, the entire ad campaign for the first "Friday the 13th" revolved around how many kills the movie would feature. This spirit has remained with the franchise ever since, so much so that fans love to rank the movies not just by the films but by the kills themselves – such as this epic list by Slashfilm's own Jacob Hall.

While making "Crystal Lake," creator and showrunner Brad Caleb Kane was only too aware of the importance of outrageous kills to the franchise. When I had the recent opportunity to speak to him about the show, Kane did tell me that he didn't impose a rule on himself or his writers to include a wild kill (or more) per episode, but it seems that things just kind of worked out that way, for each hour of "Crystal Lake" features some good ol' fashioned mayhem. Upon asking Kane if he had a favorite kill of the season, the showrunner revealed that his pick would go to a kill seen towards "the top of Episode 6," titled "Kill Them, Mommy." Kane has his reasons as to why this is his favorite kill, and I must say that the sequence it occurs in is one of the most slasher-rific set pieces in the entire show, so it's a really good choice on his part.

As hinted earlier, there's no shortage of kills to choose from in "Crystal Lake." Within the sequence where Brad Caleb Kane's favorite kill occurs at the beginning of "Kill Them, Mommy," there are several murders threaded throughout that could be contenders. In the set piece, Pamela Voorhees (Linda Cardellini), incensed at the tribe of hippies that inadvertently dosed the adolescent girl Grace (Gwendolyn Sundstrom) with too much acid, visits the tribe's campsite and cleans house. She gets one guy with a knife through his camera lens, and then slaughters a couple mid-coitus (a kill which may be paying homage to the infamous split-by-pole kill in "Jason Goes to Hell"). Yet for Kane, he's most fond of the moment where Pamela relentlessly attacks a girl by stabbing her repeatedly, as he described:

"I think for me, my favorite kill of the season is the first time Linda really locks into accepting who she is and delights in ridding herself of someone. And that actually happens in the top of episode 1:06, the top of Episode 6. [...] It is a stabbing and it is a gleeful stabbing, and it is in her mind completely justified, and it is done Terminator-like over and over and over and over and over again. So that's probably my favorite one."

Indeed, a large portion of the first half of "Crystal Lake" involves Pamela somewhat resisting the murderous nature inside of her, itching to break free, and while it leaks out here and there, it's Episode 6 where it gets fully unleashed. It's a culmination for the character, Cardellini's performance, and the season itself, so it makes sense why Kane would dig it so much.

"Crystal Lake" is streaming on Peacock.