From Nursery Rhyme to Netflix: Why Lizzie Borden Still Haunts Us
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is a Netflix true crime drama that reimagines the infamous 1892 axe murders and the woman accused of killing her father and stepmother, turning a century-old courtroom mystery and playground rhyme into a stylised exploration of gender, power, and the cultural hunger for monstrous legends. This new Lizzie Borden Netflix series arrives as the fourth chapter in Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s Monster anthology, after seasons centred on Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers, and Ed Gein. It is designed not as neutral history but as a deliberately provocative retelling. The show takes as its starting point the jump rope rhyme—“Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks…”—which has kept the case alive in popular imagination while flattening the messy facts behind it. Murphy’s choice to adapt Borden now says less about the past than about our present obsession with true crime drama.
Ella Beatty’s Lizzie Borden and Monster’s First Female ‘Villain’
The sharpest creative swing in this chapter is the casting of Ella Beatty as Lizzie Borden. Beatty, still early in her career and previously seen in Ryan Murphy’s Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, now carries the full weight of an infamous name and a century of speculation. She plays Borden as a 32-year-old Sunday school teacher suspected of delivering nearly 40 axe blows to her parents, only to be acquitted by a jury in 1893. The series leans into Beatty’s own framing of the role: she calls it “a dream come true to investigate this complicated person’s psychology” and to examine “female rage and repression” through Monster’s first woman at the centre. That ambition matters. True crime often freezes female figures as either victims or femme fatales; making Lizzie the titular Monster Ryan Murphy is betting that viewers will engage with a more layered, uncomfortable portrait of what a woman is capable of when pushed to the edge.
A House Built on Humiliation: How Monster Rewrites the Borden Legend
Murphy and Brennan are not content to replay trial transcripts. Their official description of Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story talks about “a wealthy New England family” where a repressed daughter and a “rebellious maid” are trapped in a home built on “humiliation and cruelty,” escaping into “a fantasy of sex, power, and revenge.” That language signals a deliberate shift from whodunnit to psychological Gothic. The unsolved murders become the hinge for a story about how oppression breeds fantasy, and how fantasy can slide into violence. The logline promises that the killings “give birth to an icon who refuses to live imprisoned in a cage, choosing instead to forge her own legend: shocking, monstrous, and gloriously free.” This is a bold, and controversial, move: it risks glamorising a suspected murderer even as it critiques the social conditions that might produce such a figure. The Borden case, once a courtroom drama, is now framed as the origin story of a dark feminist anti-hero.
Building a Prestige True Crime Machine on Netflix
Monster has quietly turned into Ryan Murphy’s most potent true crime machine. The Jeffrey Dahmer Story struck gold in 2022, proving that viewers would binge a stylised, uncomfortable portrait of a serial killer. The anthology continued in 2024 with a season on the Menendez brothers, then moved to Ed Gein, whose portrayal by Charlie Hunnam earned him an Emmy nomination. Now, with the Lizzie Borden Netflix series trailer out and the eight-episode season set to stream on September 17, Murphy and Ian Brennan are clearly constructing a canon of American monstrosity. Casting continuity deepens that project: Hunnam returns as Andrew Borden, the successful but notoriously stingy businessman father, while Rebecca Hall plays stepmother Abby Borden, Vicky Krieps appears as maid Bridget Sullivan, and familiar Murphy collaborators like Billie Lourd, Jessica Barden, Joey Pollari, and Sarah Paulson fill out the ensemble. The message is simple: Monster is now a prestige franchise, not a one-off experiment.
Why Lizzie Borden Is the Perfect (and Problematic) Monster for Our Moment
Lizzie Borden is an inspired, if uneasy, choice for Monster’s next chapter. She sits at the crossroads of gender politics, class resentment, and media mythmaking. The jump rope rhyme has turned her into an almost fictional figure, a chant children repeat without grasping the horror underneath. By centring Ella Beatty’s Lizzie as the first female Monster, the series taps into current conversations about female rage and repression, and how society polices women who refuse to stay quiet. At the same time, there is a moral tightrope here. The real murders remain unsolved; the victims were her father and stepmother; and she was acquitted. Turning that ambiguity into glossy entertainment raises questions about where empathy lies—toward victims, accused, or audience. Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story will likely deepen our fascination with the case, but it should also push viewers to ask why we keep returning to these stories, and whose pain is being turned into legend.
