Dan MedeirosThe Herald News
Updated Aug. 4, 2026, 2:25 p.m. ET
- The new season of Netflix’s “Monster” series will focus on the 1892 Lizzie Borden case.
- Ella Beatty will star as Lizzie Borden, who was accused and acquitted of killing her father and stepmother.
- The eight-episode season is set to premiere on Netflix on September 17.
- Viewers can expect dark comedy, modern music, and a storyline suggesting a romance between Lizzie and her maid.
Mark your calendars with a blood-red X: the new season of “Monster” telling the Lizzie Borden story is coming to Netflix on Sept. 17.
The fourth series of the Netflix series has been in the works since July 2025, when co-creators Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan announced they were telling a version of Fall River’s infamous Aug. 4, 1892, double-homicide — one of the most shocking and tantalizing unsolved crimes in history.
The eight-episode season will star Ella Beatty as the (allegedly) hatchet-wielding spinster accused and acquitted of killing her father and stepmother in the trial of the century. Beatty is the daughter of legendary Hollywood stars Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.
“I am so excited for viewers to experience our exploration of Lizzie Borden’s story and the questions that her life animates to this day,” said Beatty in a statement from Netflix. “It has been a dream come true to investigate this complicated person’s psychology and to examine an American crime that feels almost mythic in proportion. This season gives us our first female Monster and delves into female rage and repression which I’ve found to feel strikingly relevant, and I cannot wait to share it with the world.”
Who else is in the cast of ‘Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story’?
Also cast are Rebecca Hall as Abby Borden, Vicky Krieps as the Bordens’ maid, Bridget Sullivan, Billie Lourd as Emma Borden, and Jessica Barden as Lizzie’s friend Nance O’Neil.
The film also has two connections to the film “Jungleland,” filmed in Fall River — Charlie Hunnam, who co-starred in that film, plays Andrew Borden, and director Max Winkler is involved in both projects.
What can viewers expect from ‘Monster’?
Netflix has called the Lizzie Borden season of “Monster” the anthology series’ “wildest installment yet.”
In an interview with Vanity Fair published to coincide with the killings’ 134th anniversary, Brennan and cast members said to expect a streak of dark comedy throughout. Like other Murphy projects, expect modern music choices, with needle drops from Kate Bush and indie rockers Wet Leg on the soundtrack.
Hall described the story to Vanity Fair as a Ryan Murphy-esque twist on “Cinderella,” with herself playing the wicked stepmother.
And like the Chloe Sevigny-led 2018 film “Lizzie,” the show evidently also promotes the idea that Lizzie and maid Bridget were having a lesbian fling — and that this could have spurred the crimes.
Are these new twists to the Lizzie Borden story?
Both gleeful gore and anachronistic music have been part of Lizzie Borden pop culture lore before. The 2014 Christina Ricci film “Lizzie Borden Took An Ax” was made for Lifetime TV with high doses of camp, which were ramped up even higher in the spinoff series “The Lizzie Borden Chronicles.”
Even a Lizzie-Bridget lesbian love affair was initially explored in the 1984 novel “Lizzie” by crime writer Evan Hunter.
Was ‘Monster’ filmed in Fall River?
No, filming for the latest season of “Monster” does not appear to have taken place in Fall River.
What are the other ‘Monster’ seasons about?
Previous seasons of “Monster” told the stories of serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, murderer and body-snatcher Ed Gein, and double-murderers Erik and Lyle Menendez.
