Overview
- The season, which began streaming on Thursday, Sept. 17, released all eight episodes of Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story on Netflix and has drawn immediate press attention.
- Ella Beatty stars as Lizzie Borden and Charlie Hunnam plays Andrew Borden, with both performances and casting choices central to early coverage.
- Charlie Hunnam said creators Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan told him they felt 'more than likely' that Lizzie was responsible, a view he echoed from conversations with them.
- The series pairs Lizzie’s story with figures like Countess Elizabeth Báthory and Aileen Wuornos as thematic touchstones for 'female rage,' and reporting stresses that Wuornos’s appearance is a deliberate fictional device with no reliable historical evidence linking her to the Borden house.
- Critics and features note the season’s broad creative license—invented relationships and cross-era juxtapositions—and place the show within Monster’s history of theatricalized true-crime storytelling that raises ethical questions about dramatizing unresolved or sensitive cases.