Netflix's Monster returned today with the one subject a jury acquitted, and the first reviews split straight down the middle
Ian Brennan's anthology has spent four seasons on men the courts convicted. This one is about a woman a jury let go in 1893 — and the show's own synopsis says she did it anyway. The first reviews arrived an hour apart and could not agree on what they had watched.
Netflix put all eight episodes of Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story online on Thursday, and Ian Brennan's anthology has done something it has not done in four seasons: picked a subject the law let go. Jeffrey Dahmer was convicted. The Menendez brothers were convicted. Ed Gein was found guilty and committed. Lizzie Borden was acquitted by a jury on 20 June 1893, after about an hour and a half of deliberation.
The show is not especially troubled by that. Read the season's own synopsis and it opens with her killing her parents, flatly, as a thing that happened.
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Two reviews, two different shows
The notices landed within an hour of each other and do not describe the same programme. Variety's review ran under the headline "Netflix's Monster Finally Delivers an Outrageously Engaging Season." The Guardian's ran under "it's like Ryan Murphy's new series was written by adolescent boys."
There is no aggregate number to break the tie yet. Checked on Thursday evening, Rotten Tomatoes had one review logged for the season and no Tomatometer at all; Metacritic had no Metascore and zero critic reviews counted. For once the franchise arrives without a verdict attached, which suits this particular story.
The three previous seasons went 57%, then 47%, then 22% with critics. The audience has been steadier than the reviewers throughout: the series averages 42% from critics and 63% from viewers.
The pattern is worth noting on its own. Dahmer arrived in September 2022, the Menendez brothers in September 2024, Ed Gein last October, Lizzie Borden now: Netflix has made a true-crime anthology an autumn fixture, and the scores keep falling.
The casting tells you what kind of season this is
Charlie Hunnam has swapped ends of the axe. Last October he was Ed Gein, the title monster of season three; this time he plays Andrew Borden, the father found on the sitting-room sofa. Ella Beatty takes the lead, with Vicky Krieps as the housemaid Bridget Sullivan, who was in the house that morning and whose testimony carried the trial.
- Ella Beatty — Lizzie Borden.
- Charlie Hunnam — Andrew Borden, the father.
- Rebecca Hall — Abby Borden, the stepmother.
- Vicky Krieps — Bridget Sullivan, the maid; Billie Lourd — Emma, the sister.
And Sarah Paulson turns up as Aileen Wuornos, who was arrested in Florida in 1991 and has no connection to Fall River except the word in the title. The season was shot in Los Angeles between September 2025 and March 2026.
An anthology called Monster has to keep finding monsters. When the archive runs to a woman a jury cleared, the title stops being a description and becomes a slot that has to be filled.
Three separate outlets published "what's real and what isn't" explainers on the same day the season dropped — which is its own review of how the show handles a record. The series page will have a score by the weekend. The 1893 verdict is not going to move.
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