Monster’s Bold Pivot: From True Crime Case File to Living Legend
Monster season four, titled Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, is a Ryan Murphy Netflix true crime anthology chapter that dramatizes the infamous 1892 axe murders linked to Lizzie Borden, reframing a sensational unsolved case as a modern tale of female rage, repression, and self-invention for contemporary audiences. That pivot is the real story here. Rather than replaying courtroom transcripts, the new season leans into the nursery rhyme we all know—“Lizzie Borden took an axe…”—and asks why this particular murder became folklore. The teaser’s voiceover, stylized like a children’s chant, signals that Murphy and co-creator Ian Brennan are less interested in strict reconstruction than in myth-making, using Lizzie as a prism for how culture decides who becomes a monster and who becomes an icon. It is a risky, opinionated move, and exactly what this anthology needed.
Casting Lizzie Borden as a Complicated Heroine of Horror
The Lizzie Borden story has been told for more than a century, but Monster season four is determined to give its first female subject a new psychological center. Ella Beatty plays Lizzie not as a flat boogeyman but as a “repressed daughter of a wealthy New England family” trapped in what the synopsis calls a house built on “humiliation and cruelty.” Opposite her, Vicky Krieps’ rebellious maid becomes a co-architect of a fantasy built on sex, power, and revenge. According to Netflix, this dynamic leads to “the fourth and wildest installment yet,” which matters: Monster’s past seasons on Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers, and Ed Gein have often been criticized for treating victims as set dressing. Here, the focus shifts to interiority and rage. Beatty told Tudum that the crime feels “almost mythic in proportion,” and the casting suggests the series wants viewers to question who Lizzie was, not only what she allegedly did.
Teaser, Premiere Date and the Rhymed Promise of Violence
Netflix’s first teaser for Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story arrives with a clear message: this is horror wrapped in a lullaby. Over gory, stylized footage, a voice recites the familiar rhyme, “Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother 40 whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41.” It is gleeful, grisly, and designed to unsettle anyone who grew up hearing that chant as playground entertainment. The season’s eight episodes will stream from September 17, staking out an autumn-adjacent slot that fits Monster’s reputation as chilling binge material. The teaser’s tone—half fairy tale, half true crime—is the clearest sign of the show’s intentions: Monster is not pretending to be a documentary. It is embracing its identity as horror television, while tying that horror to the cultural afterlife of one of America’s most persistent murder myths.
A True Crime Anthology That Rewrites Who a Killer Can Be
Ryan Murphy’s Monster franchise has always been about notorious figures, but the Lizzie Borden story marks a deliberate reorientation. Previous chapters centered on male killers like Dahmer and Ed Gein, with Charlie Hunnam leading The Ed Gein Story before returning here in a new role. Now, Monster enters 19th-century New England and asks how “one young woman changed what the world believed a killer could be… all it took was an axe.” That line from Netflix’s description is more thesis than tease. By putting Lizzie at the heart of a narrative about icon-making, the series acknowledges how sensational true crime can morph into archetype. The murders remain unsolved; Lizzie was tried and acquitted. Instead of chasing answers the record cannot give, Monster examines who society allows to be monstrous, and how gender, class, and media turn a defendant into a legend whose shadow outlives any legal verdict.
Myth, Morality and the Risks of Reimagining Lizzie Borden
The most provocative choice in Monster season four is its willingness to let Lizzie forge her own legend, “shocking, monstrous, and gloriously free.” That framing will divide audiences. Some will see it as overdue recognition of “female rage and repression,” themes Beatty calls strikingly relevant; others will view it as glamorizing an accused killer. Yet this tension is the point of a true crime anthology in 2026: to show how historical crimes become raw material for new stories, and to force us to confront why certain figures are granted mythic status. Murphy and Brennan are not neutral archivists. They are storytellers arguing that the Lizzie Borden story is less about an axe and more about the cage society built around women like her. Whether viewers embrace that argument, Monster’s latest chapter insists that revisiting old horrors is never only about the past.
