Monster: The Ed Gein Story has become the lowest-scored entry in the series so far, a big miss with a fictionalized account of one of the most famous killers in history. It felt like one that should rise above the rest, but despite a good performance from Charlie Hunnam, the whole series is weirdly sympathetic to the killer, something that keeps happening with this anthology.
But yes, there is a season 4 of Monster, which was greenlit before season 3 with Ed Gein ever aired. Season 4 of Monster will be The Lizzie Borden Story, switching from male killers for the first time, and no longer covering a serial killer like Dahmer and Gein. Rather, this will be like the Menendez season, where they killed their parents, as Borden did. This, however, was way back in 1892, a big departure for the series.
As for a release date, we’ll have to see. Here are the gaps between the three seasons so far:
- The Jeffrey Dahmer Story – September 21, 2022
- The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story – September 19, 2024
- The Ed Gein Story – October 3, 2025
That’s a big range between 1 and 2 years, so who knows where Borden might fall there. If they’ve figured out how to make these faster, and Netflix has now made this well-watched series a priority, it may be closer to a year again.
In June 1893 Lizzie Borden stood trial, later acquitted, for killing her father and stepmother with an ax.
Bettmann Archive
Who exactly was Lizzie Borden, and what did she do? Well, she killed her father and mother with an axe in Massachusetts. She was tried and acquitted, but clearly Ryan Murphy is running with the idea that she did it. I mean, she did it.
There is a lot of recorded information about these murders, but Ryan Murphy is well known for fictionalizing much of these stories, with Ed Gein probably going further than any of the previous ones. Lyle and Erik Menendez were upset about the way they were portrayed, saying Murphy added sequences that did not happen in real life that made them look bad (they are still trying to appeal and get out of prison).
There are, of course, a seemingly endless amount of killers that could be used in future seasons of Monster, and given that this series, no matter its reviews, is so popular, it’s easy to see it covering figures like John Wayne Gacy, The Green River Killer, Aileen Wuornos and Ted Bundy, where Bundy was featured near the end of The Ed Gein Story with a hallucinated storyline about how Gein helped catch him.
We’ll see how Lizzie Borden goes, possibly within the year, and if the quality of the show can improve from this Ed Gein outing.
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