The Theory That FIXES The Friday the 13th Timeline...

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Friday the 13th is a horror series that needs no introduction, so I'm not going to do one. Everyone knows Jason, his mom, and his love for killing barely clothed and barely paid actors. But today, I'm going to be discussing something about the Friday the 13th series that never really made sense to me, or to most people for that matter.

[00:00:16]Friday the 13th Part 8 has Jason take to the streets of Manhattan, hunting down our final girl in a sewer. However, he's defeated when a wave of acidic sludge flushes through the sewer tunnel, undoubtedly killing him with the combined power of guardia and hepatitis A. However, despite dying in a sewer in New York, we see Jason alive again in the very next film, Jason goes to hell, looking extremely different, but still recognizably Jason. How did he get back here? How is his body restored? While Jason X does introduce the idea of Jason having some sort of Wolverine-like healing factor, I found that explanation flimsy. Truthfully, there is no canonical reason why Jason reappears like this. However, through the power of [ __ ] anything is possible. Today, I'm explaining more than this plot inconsistency. This theory I'm crafting will solve everything. Every time Jason has come off as strange or out of character, as well as how he's able to come back continually. This theory is one that I will be calling Avatar theory for reasons that'll become apparent soon enough. So, let's begin. Jason goes to hell is both our question and answer for this theory. For those who are unaware of this movie, and really I don't blame you, Jason goes to hell is about Jason trying to be reborn after his body is destroyed. We learn that his soul can compel others to become possessed by him. But his true body can only be restored through his bloodline. To be the Jason he once was, he needs to be born through a Vorhees. And at the time of Jason Goes to Hell, there's three candidates. His halfsister Diana, his niece Jessica, and her daughter Stephanie. As it turns out, Jason's mother, Pamela, had attempted to revive Jason from death using various black magics, not knowing that Jason was actually still alive all these years.

[00:01:53]And one of the books Pamela is shown to have used is the Necronomicon. If you aren't familiar with this book, the Necronomicon originates from the Evil Dead series. It's a book bound in human skin and written in human blood and features spells that bring the dead back to the world of the living, typically resulting in evil spirits possessing living hosts and turning them into deadites. Deadites are like jacked up super zombies. Scary stuff. It was director Adam Marcus' intent to tie the Friday series into Evil Dead formally, something that eventually manifested in the comic series Freddy versus Jason versus Ash. However, the Necronomicon is just a cameo in Jason Goes to Hell. So, why am I bringing it up now? Well, in my opinion, I think it's the key to everything. As I said before, the Necronomicon can bring spirits back to the world of the living. However, it's not as simple as someone turning into a dead eyee. That specifically happens in the Evil Dead series because of the release of Candarian Demons. But what if Pamela used it to resurrect Jason? Now, you might want to stop me right there.

[00:02:47]As I said before, Jason survived his drowning. However, this is never really explained and seems to fly in the face of the original film's ending. In that movie, Pamela is the killer and hears Jason's words in her head, even imitating his voice at times.

[00:03:00]>> Don't let her live.

[00:03:02]>> I won't Jason. The film actually ends with a chair jumper of undead kid Jason jumping out of the water. However, this is considered a hallucination and a dream.

[00:03:12]>> The boy, is he dead, too?

[00:03:15]>> Ma'am, we didn't find any boy.

[00:03:18]>> But I think it still works. I think Jason did actually die all those years ago drowning in Crystal Lake. And I think Pamela did bring Jason back to life through herself. We never get to know much about Pamela, but we know that she loved her son dearly and blamed the counselors for his death. And through Jason goes to hell, we know she experimented with the Necronomicon. I think it worked. Pamela brought Jason back through her own body, having Jason exist inside her as a second voice.

[00:03:45]Jason encouraged Pamela to kill the counselors, angry at his own death. This even explains Pamela's death scene.

[00:03:50]After Pamela's head is cut off, her hands come up and ball into fists of rage. Something that, you know, shouldn't really happen without a head.

[00:03:57]I think this was Jason's spirit expressing his anger at the moment of Pamela's death. And per the rules of Jason goes to hell, we know Jason can possess the body of any vores, alive or dead. So maybe that dream Alice has in the canoe wasn't actually a dream. It was Jason possessing his own body and dragging Alice in. However, Jason isn't strong enough to kill her. This leads to Friday the 13th, part two. Part two never made a ton of sense to me. We're dealing with an adult Jason who is only now making himself known after all these years. What's he been up to? Simple. He didn't exist before now. Jason's spirit needs a new vessel if he wants to be strong enough to get revenge for his mother. And similarly to how Jason's soul passed from host to host and Jason goes to hell. It also passed from kid Jason in the first film to this woodsman character in this film. I always found it odd how Jason supposedly built this shack in part two. It's not something we ever really see him do or would guess he can do. How did he learn this? And how did he build it with no one finding out about it? The simple answer here is that he didn't. Kid Jason found this woodsman living near Crystal Lake and passed his soul into him, taking control of this much larger, stronger body. The woodsman had formerly built the shed, and it was already a known structure there. This isn't something that went completely undiscovered for a while. It's just something that none of the characters knew about. Now, here's the issue. Part two, Jason is still deformed in the same way that kid Jason is. Or is he? because this Jason is only ever seen unmasked in a dream sequence, meaning this could just not be what he looks like. That said, the characters do see Jason unmasked before this happens, which lends further to the idea that this is what he actually looked like. I'm still going to say that since this is a dream, details might be wrong for the sake of the theory. The real problem is between Friday 2 and Friday 3. At the end of Friday 2 into the beginning of Friday 3, we see an injured Jason crawling away, evading authorities. I think this is where we get another body transfer.

[00:05:49]Since not a lot of time passes between part two and part three, we can't reasonably expect Jason to have fully healed that wound that had him crawling away. Lucky for him, there's another body lying in weight. There's a scene in part three that is usually ignored by Friday fans for its bizarre insinuation surrounding Jason as a character, but I cannot avoid it since we're talking about a string of host bodies. The main character of this film, Chris, tells her boyfriend that two years before the events of this movie, she had been attacked by a deformed man in the woods here at Crystal Lake, with the insinuation being that Jason may have taken advantage of her after knocking her unconscious. The film doesn't outright tell us that that's what happened, but it's strongly implied.

[00:06:24]This scene has always been a strange one for Friday fans, as part three is the only film in the series to ascribe any amount of sexuality to Jason's character. However, under Avatar theory, I don't think it's him at all. The attacker in Chris's memory is not Jason.

[00:06:37]He's a different person entirely. A criminal who prayed on her. And with Jason in need of a new body, he happened to stumble across this character. This criminal was as valid a victim as any by Jason's standards. And the fact that he too was deformed like Jason meant that this body would fit like a glove. But now we come across a new problem. What happens between part three and four?

[00:06:57]Jason gets axed in the head at the end of part three and comes back in part four, once again looking different, but definitely meant to be the same character. Well, truth be told, I have an answer and you're not going to like it. After Jason is killed and taken to the morg, I believe his soul once again leaves his body. The ax to his head had severely limited that body's effectiveness. Lucky for Jason, there was another body in the morg, one who had been rotting somewhat, resulting in graying skin, and one who had similarly died by a head trauma. And while I initially wanted to go the lazy route and say that Jason in part three and four is using the same body, it simply doesn't add up. For starters, Jason's part three deformities don't match part four. Part three, Jason's right eye is lower on his face than his left, with much of his deformities also being on his right side. However, in part four, Jason's eyes are pretty level with one another, and his deformities cover much more of his left side. They are frankly still pretty similar, so it's not totally out of the question that these are the same body. But under Avatar theory, this could be another body swap, and Jason just picked a body in the morg that happened to resemble his previous one. And of course, part four ends with this body being definitively killed and Jason's soul seemingly gone. or is it?

[00:08:03]Part five is a strange one because the killer isn't Jason, it's Roy Burns.

[00:08:07]However, under Avatar theory, this movie gets more complicated. We see Tommy Jarvis still has nightmares about killing Jason when he's a teenager and has become something of an ass kicker as he grew up. How did this happen? Did this trauma just make him better at fighting? Things go wrong when a teen is killed at the camp Tommy is staying at, supposedly inspiring the boy's father to then slaughter the remaining teens while copying Jason's MMO. But why would Roy do that? Jason has been long dead at this point. It doesn't make sense unless he was intentionally trying to make people think Jason somehow never died.

[00:08:36]You could argue that Roy wanted to make people think Tommy was the killer. But that doesn't work because Roy didn't leave witnesses. He pretty much killed everyone. Basically, no matter how you spin it, Royy's choice to dress up as a somewhat convincing Jason is either a massive coincidence or something that doesn't make sense from a story standpoint. But let's think about the possession angle. Let's say that in Tommy killing Jason, Jason attached part of his soul to Tommy, resulting in Tommy's violent urges in part five.

[00:09:02]However, once a teenager is killed around Tommy, Jason spies an excellent new host, Roy Burns, now possessing Roy, Jason is back, but after being killed by Tommy once again, returns to attach to him. This explains the ending of part five with Tommy taking up the hockey mask as Jason fully takes over, or at least he tries. I think Jason has tried to control Tommy since he was a kid, but Tommy's willpower against Jason was too strong, preventing him from being fully possessed. In this way, Tommy's possession is more like Pamela's, where Jason influenced the host's actions without directly controlling their body.

[00:09:35]The difference is that Tommy never wanted to go with Jason, so he retains control. Part six is an interesting one.

[00:09:40]At the beginning, I would say Jason is still attached to Tommy, and there's evidence for this all over the first scene. Tommy seems really detached and one of the first lines of the film he says is >> you didn't have to come Oz. This is between me and Jason.

[00:09:54]>> I think in this way he's hinting subtly at Jason directing him towards the graveyard. Tommy's friend brings up how going there now doesn't make any sense since Jason is already dead and Tommy says they're going to destroy his body.

[00:10:05]Keep in mind though that Jason is likely still manipulating him. When Tommy opens the coffin, he's suddenly overcome with the memory of killing Jason, motivating him not to destroy the body, but instead stab it with a metal pole. I think that this is Jason's doing as well, as it doesn't make sense for Tommy to want to do this unless Jason still had some sort of grip on his mind. I think this is the moment Tommy is finally freed from Jason's control as his soul transfers back into the dead body through the pole. If anything, this makes more sense because Tommy's next action is a very casual and light toss of Jason's mask into the coffin. Yeah, [ __ ] you, Jason.

[00:10:40]>> He doesn't seem to possess that aggression anymore. And when he finally goes for the gas, the thing that would totally destroy Jason, that's when Lightning finally strikes and revives Jason through the pole. I think Jason knew this would happen. He'd been long trying to get back here to this grave because he knew he needed a body he could control. Tommy's simply wasn't his to do that. Plus, as a revived corpse, Jason's strength would be exponentially stronger than when he possessed human bodies. The ending of this movie also supports Avatar theory. One of the big pain points of part six is that Tommy finds a book on magic that tells him the only way to kill Jason is to return him to his final resting place, i.e. where he first died. However, going off the cannon of the first four movies, that would be Tommy's living room. Instead though, Jason is sunk into Crystal Lake, which doesn't make sense if he's supposed to have survived that. But under Avatar theory, Jason didn't survive. The lake is his resting place, and the ending makes more sense. Part 7 picks up with Jason still underwater, and I don't think there's any chance that this is a new body, so we'll be skipping this mostly. However, it's worth noting that Jason is defeated in this movie by another undead lake man who drags him into the waters to once again put him to rest. We never see this character again in the series, so it begs the question, what happened to him?

[00:11:51]Well, in my opinion, it's possible that the Jason we see in part 8 is this lake man, John Shepard. At the beginning of part 8, we see electricity once again revive Jason under Crystal Lake. And while it could be the same Jason body as the previous films, the lack of John Shepard down there is equally interesting. On top of that, this Jason has actually healed from the grand majority of damage he sustained while underwater. In the last film, his spine was visible and he was lacking a lot of flesh. However, this new waterlogged body could theoretically be John Shepard's considering that his body did not have the same level of rot as Jason, implying whatever spell he was under kept him relatively preserved. It would also mean that this body, while still dead, wouldn't be under the same binding spell that Jason was under, meaning he could come back with electricity as he already did once before. So, for those keeping track of the body chain, it starts with Pamela Vorhees, then goes to the woodsman, the criminal, and then the morg body. Jason briefly possesses Tommy, then Roy, then back to Tommy once Roy is dead. When Tommy digs up the morg body, Jason finally leaves Tommy and repossesses it. The morg body is then present for two films and part 8 has Jason controlling John Shepard's body from the previous film. But what about part 9? Part 9 implies that this form is Jason's true form, but we haven't seen a body like that yet in the series. What could this mean? Well, I do have some answers. There's a character implied to have existed within Friday continuity that hasn't appeared in a film for one reason or another. Elias Vorhees, Jason's father. Per Jason goes to hell rules, Jason can only be reborn to his true form through a Vorhees. So perhaps between parts eight and nine, Jason's soul managed to find Elias and take him over, mutating his body into the Jason we see in part nine, his truest and strongest form. From there, part 9 of course happens and it ends with Jason being dragged to hell with Freddy Krueger claiming his mask as well. Fun fact that I'm pretty certain I mentioned before on the channel, the actor playing Freddy's arm here is Kane Hodder, making him the only actor to have ever played both Freddy and Jason. I swear I could do a whole video on Kanah because I love his Jason and think he was done super dirty. But let's just continue for now.

[00:13:51]Timeline wise, our next Friday movie is Freddy versus Jason, which again helps our Avatar theory a ton. As Jason revives in this movie due to Freddy's power this time, we see him rising from the ground looking nothing like his old apparently true self. This leads me to believe that Freddy is aware of how Jason's soul works and thus put his soul inside a body buried in Crystal Lake.

[00:14:12]Maybe one of Jason's previous victims.

[00:14:14]He even gave Jason a new hockey mask to replace the old one that was pretty much glued to his face. And this may surprise some of you, but I think this is Jason's final body until the cybernetic upgrade he gets in Jason X, as this corpse and the one scene in Jason X are actually really similar. On top of that, Jason doesn't die at the end of this movie, as we see him walk out of the water with Freddy's head in one hand. And with that, I think I've laid out the entire timeline of Friday the 13th through the Avatar theory, discounting the remake or the new Jason universe since both of those have only shown us one Jason a piece. I will admit this theory is definitely not true. It was never intended. However, I think the best kinds of movie theories are ones that are made simply through watching and trying to rationalize those inconsistencies. Why does Jason move like this or look like this? It's because it's a different body. Avatar Theory isn't meant to be a canonical re-evaluation, but I do think it makes for a fun way to rewatch the series. And if you enjoyed this video, make sure you subscribe and let me know in the comments below. I'm Demuted. Peace.