The Friday the 13th series was never huge on recurring characters. For the most part everyone was killed off so there was obviously no need for redundance. There is one character in particular who wasn’t a throwaway recurrence like that of Alice (parts 1 & 2) or Crazy Ralph (again Parts 1 &2), but a feature character in three consecutive sequels; Tommy Jarvis.
We first meet Tommy Jarvis through Friday the 13th Part 4: The Final Chapter where he is played my Corey Feldman. This would be the start of Feldman being a formidable child star. At that time he had mainly starred in TV, but after this a succession of 3 films; Gremlins, The Goonies and Stand By Me would solidify his status in Hollywood. Tommy Jarvis in The Final Chapter is a precocious 12 year old boy who lives with his mother and sister near Camp Crystal Lake. There’s nothing that remarkable about his character aside from his fascination with special effects, masks and prosthetic devices until the end of the film when he connects the dots that help him to defeat Jason. Once he hacks Jason up hardcore thanks to magical effects by Tom Savini we segue to a hospital scene where Tommy is hugging his sister Trish and from behind her we see Tommy’s face. He has a crazed look on his face and the line to be drawn is that Tommy will become the new Jason, since in fact this was to be the final chapter.
By the time we get to Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning we see that Tommy has not become the new Jason…or has he? Part 5 is called A New Beginning not just for the fact that Part 4 wasn’t the final chapter as promised but because an impression was to be Part 5 starts out, referencing back to the original Tommy Jarvis, from Part 4: The Final Chapter (more like the middle chapter). He is hidden from view in some trees watching two bumblefuck idiots digging Jason out of his grave. As expected, he reanimates! He kills them and walks towards Tommy Jarvis, as soon as he gets to him, the now teenage Tommy Jarvis played by John Shepherd awakens in a van that is traveling along the backroads near Camp Crystal Lake. Years have passed, and Tommy has never really recovered from his time with Jason Voorhees. He is now a troubled teenager who has to take anti-psychotic medicine in order to not go nuts all over again. Tommy is delivered over as a ward of the state to the Pinehurst Halfway House. He learns pretty quickly that he is going to be given shit at any turn, when Reggie “The Reckless”(Shavar Ross), a young boy whose grandfather is the house cook, jumps out of his closet and freaks him out with a fake spider. Tommy has continued on with the special effects/prosthetic work showcased in Part 4 and almost immediately retaliates and freaks Reckless out with a homemade mask. The film has many dream sequences where Tommy is being haunted by Jason, but it is alluded to that he could indeed be Jason himself. It’s made quite unclear til the end of the film. Even at the end there is yet another hospital scene, this one features an injured Tommy appearing to have escaped the hospital only to be hiding behind the door when Pam comes to check on him. He is wearing the mask, and it is still vague as to whether or not Tommy will continue on as it was thought he would after Part 4.
The last appearance of Tommy Jarvis comes to us in the next installment of the franchise, Part 6: Jason Lives. This is to signify to us that Jason has returned after the backlash that fans unleashed in Part 5 when the killer was not Jason at all. This is furthered by the fact that this is the first time we see Jason seem to have invulnerable powers such as his superhuman strength. Tommy Jarvis is this time played by Thom Mathews, at that point most famous for his role of Freddy in Return of The Living Dead. This is the one exposure we have to Tommy where there is no real fear that he is the crazed maniac. There is much talk of what bad news he is and the trouble he will bring, but he himself is quite docile really. At the end Tommy once again defeats Jason. We never see Tommy as a character in the series again.
Even though technically it is the same character throughout these three films it’s not. He goes through a deep character arc. He starts as a rambunctious pre-teen and follows his path to be a troubled teen unable to let go of the torture he endured by having to fight and kill a maniac and losing his mother in the process. By the end of his time at Camp Crystal Lake, Tommy has proven to be a survivor and even though we know Jason is never really defeated, we know that Tommy can now move on. In all reality though how would one be able to move on from that ordeal? It would be something to get a follow up on Tommy Jarvis now and have him return in a Friday the 13th film. For all the purists who didn’t like the Friday the 13th remake, what about a sequel, or a re-boot, but one that featured a character we have all come to know, that of Tommy Jarvis?
-Kristy Jett
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