Netflix brings the infamous Lizzie Borden story to Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s “Monster” anthology series this September.
Mark your calendars with a blood-red X: The new season of “Monster” telling the Lizzie Borden story is coming to Netflix on Sept. 17.
The fourth installment of the Netflix series has been in the works since July 2025, when co-creators Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan announced they were telling a version of the infamous 1892 double homicide in Fall River, Massachusetts − one of the most shocking and tantalizing crimes in history.
The eight-episode season will star Ella Beatty as the (allegedly) hatchet-wielding spinster accused and acquitted of killing her father and stepmother in the trial of the century. Beatty is the daughter of Hollywood icons Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.
In a statement from Netflix, Beatty hailed the role as an opportunity “to investigate this complicated person’s psychology and to examine an American crime that feels almost mythic in proportion. This season gives us our first female Monster and delves into female rage and repression which I’ve found to feel strikingly relevant, and I cannot wait to share it with the world.”
Who else is in the cast of ‘Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story’?
Also cast are Charlie Hunnam as Andrew Borden; Rebecca Hall as Abby Borden; Vicky Krieps as the Bordens’ maid, Bridget Sullivan; Billie Lourd as Emma Borden; and Jessica Barden as Lizzie’s friend Nance O’Neil.
What can viewers expect from ‘Monster’?
In an interview with Vanity Fair published to coincide with the 134th anniversary of the crime, Brennan and cast members teased a streak of dark comedy throughout. Like other Murphy projects, expect modern music choices, with needle drops from Kate Bush and indie rockers Wet Leg on the soundtrack.
Hall described the story to Vanity Fair as a Ryan Murphy-esque twist on “Cinderella,” with herself playing the wicked stepmother.
And like the Chloe Sevigny-led 2018 film “Lizzie,” the show evidently also promotes the idea that Lizzie and maid Bridget were having a fling − and that this could have spurred the crimes.
Are these new twists to the Lizzie Borden story?
Both gleeful gore and anachronistic music have been part of Lizzie Borden pop-culture lore before. The 2014 Christina Ricci film “Lizzie Borden Took an Ax” on Lifetime was made with high doses of camp, which were ramped up even higher in the spinoff series “The Lizzie Borden Chronicles.”
Even a Lizzie-Bridget love affair was initially explored in the 1984 novel “Lizzie” by crime writer Evan Hunter.
What are the other ‘Monster’ seasons about?
Previous seasons of “Monster” told the stories of serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, murderer and body-snatcher Ed Gein, and double murderers Erik and Lyle Menendez.