The most common recurring hero in the Friday the 13th franchise, Tommy Jarvis appeared three times in the series, and was played by three different actors. It now turns out that the producers of the 2009 Friday the 13th reboot planned to bring Jarvis back again, at least in early drafts, before deciding that the character would complicate their new take on the property. And given the long-running legal issues over the Friday franchise, it’s unlikely we’ll see Tommy in an official on-screen capacity for some time, making his absence from the reboot understandable but disappointing in hindsight.
The 2009Â Friday the 13th was produced by Platinum Dunes, part of a wave of slasher reboots during the period. According to an interview from the time, executives Brad Fuller and Andrew Form wanted to bring back Jarvis, but ultimately decided that introducing the character and building up his relationship with Jason was too big a screenplay headache to tackle. As it was, the reboot, as of now the last movie in the franchise, provided an effective return to basics for the horror series.
For those not aware, Tommy Jarvis ranks alongside Halloween‘s Laurie Strode and A Nightmare on Elm Street‘s Nancy Thompson or Alice Johnson as a hero who rises above being slasher fodder to match their pursuers. Jarvis first appeared as a boy played by Corey Feldman in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, who uses an ingenious physical transformation and special effects to unsettle Jason long enough to bring him down.
More unusually for a recurring franchise character, Jarvis was then played by two different actors when returning for Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning and Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives. In the former picture, John Shepherd plays an older, disturbed version of Tommy who gets involved in copycat murders and almost takes on Jason’s mantle. By Part 6, Jarvis is played by Thom Mathews, and spends most of the film trying to make amends for deciding to dig up Jason’s body (not the best idea).
Since then, Tommy has been a popular character in Friday the 13th spinoff media, including the 2017 video game. As a result, it would have made some sense for him to appear in the 2009 reboot, echoing the return of Nancy in the 2010 remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. For now, though, we’ll just have to wait until a breakthrough happens in the dispute over the Friday the 13th rights, at which point we could potentially get a new movie in the vein of David Gordon Green’s Halloween, wherein the original Tommy might return. And who knows, maybe Corey Feldman might be up for reprising his role?
