A Female ‘Monster’ Redefines the Anthology’s Core
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is the fourth season of Ryan Murphy’s true‑crime anthology, a Netflix series that dramatizes real killers, and it marks a pivotal shift by centering its first female subject, Lizzie Borden, whose alleged axe murders of her father and stepmother in 19th‑century New England have become enduring legend.
This is the boldest gamble the Ryan Murphy anthology series has taken. After three seasons built around men like Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers and Ed Gein, the Monster Lizzie Borden chapter moves the franchise from cataloguing male brutality to examining female rage, repression and desire. Ella Beatty’s casting as Lizzie makes her the first woman to occupy the show’s central ‘Monster’ role, a structural re‑write that forces the series to reconsider how it frames guilt, myth and audience empathy. Premiering September 17 as Netflix Monster season 4, the show is signaling from its first blood‑splattered teaser that it cares less about re‑litigating the crime and more about why this woman became a cultural obsession.
From Axe Blows to Interior Lives: Ella Beatty’s Lizzie
Ella Beatty’s Monster debut reframes Lizzie Borden not as a one‑note nursery‑rhyme villain but as a deeply conflicted protagonist. Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story places her inside a home “built on humiliation and cruelty,” where the repressed daughter of a wealthy family is pushed toward an inner breaking point. The logline’s emphasis on a “fantasy of sex, power, and revenge” makes it clear that this season is less about counting axe blows than charting the emotional weather that might precede them.
Historically, Lizzie was tried and acquitted after being accused of delivering nearly 40 axe blows to her parents; the series leans into the ambiguity that has trailed her for more than a century, asking whether the blood we see on Beatty’s Lizzie belongs to the Bordens, to Lizzie, or to someone else entirely. According to one source, the first Monster season about Jeffrey Dahmer reached 1 billion viewing hours within its first 60 days and earned 13 Emmy nominations, proving the franchise’s ability to turn contested crimes into mass‑consumed mythology. By shifting that lens onto a woman whose innocence or guilt remains unresolved, Netflix Monster season 4 invites viewers to question why some killers become icons while others remain footnotes.
Sapphic Fantasy, Female Rage and a Thematic Breakthrough
The most radical move in Monster Lizzie Borden is not the blood, but the sapphic current that pulses under the story. Lizzie’s relationship with Bridget Sullivan, the family’s live‑in maid played by Vicky Krieps, becomes the emotional spine of the season. The two women, trapped in a house governed by humiliation and cruelty, escape into a shared fantasy where sex, power and revenge feel like the only tools they have left.
For a franchise previously defined by male predator stories, this is a thematic pivot. Female killer true crime has often been treated as a curiosity; here, sapphic desire and simmering rage are not side notes but the engine of the plot. Beatty herself calls it an exploration of “female rage and repression,” describing Lizzie as a “complicated person” whose story feels “almost mythic in proportion.” By foregrounding queerness and patriarchal violence, the Ryan Murphy anthology series is finally interrogating the systems that shape a so‑called monster instead of lingering on the spectacle of the crime.
Prestige True Crime, Recast Ensemble and a New Tone
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story keeps the franchise’s prestige drama DNA while refreshing its cast and creative emphasis. Ryan Murphy co‑creates and executive produces alongside Ian Brennan, while Max Winkler and Sarah Adina Smith direct, blending polished period horror with character‑driven storytelling. The ensemble is stacked: Vicky Krieps as Bridget Sullivan, Rebecca Hall as Abby Borden, Charlie Hunnam as Andrew Borden, Billie Lourd as Emma Borden, and Jessica Barden and Sarah Paulson in supporting roles.
Importantly, the series promises a psychological focus over sensational reenactment. Rather than centering solely on the mechanics of the double murder, Monster Lizzie Borden is “positioning Lizzie’s story around the forces that shaped her before the axe ever entered the picture.” That approach matters for a franchise built on notorious names: Dahmer’s season reached 1 billion viewing hours and 13 Emmy nominations, the Menendez chapter earned 11 nominations, and Ed Gein’s story debuted with 12.2 million views in three days and hit No. 1 in 11 countries. This track record shows that Monster can draw huge audiences; the real test now is whether it can use that scale to tell a more responsible, emotionally honest version of female killer true crime.
Why Lizzie Borden Is the Monster This Franchise Needed
By premiering on September 17 as the first season in the franchise to center a woman, Netflix Monster season 4 arrives as both continuation and course correction. Instead of staying locked in a pattern of male killers reenacted with forensic detail, the show is using Lizzie Borden to ask harder questions about gender, repression and the narratives we build around violence.
Monster Lizzie Borden will not resolve the historical mystery of who swung the axe, and it should not try. Its value lies in showing how an unhappy daughter in a cruel home could be transformed into a myth, a warning and an icon “shocking, monstrous, and gloriously free.” If Monster is going to keep retelling notorious cases, centering complex women, sapphic desire and psychological texture is the most honest way forward—and Lizzie Borden is the right ‘Monster’ to force that evolution.
