Monster: The Ed Gein Story

Monster: The Ed Gein Story is the third season of the American biographical crime drama anthology television series Monster, created by Ian Brennan for Netflix. The season focuses on convicted murderer, graverobber, and suspected serial killer Ed Gein, portrayed by Charlie Hunnam. The cast also includes Suzanna Son, Vicky Krieps, Laurie Metcalf, and Tom Hollander. The season incorporates meta commentary on the cultural obsession with true crime, exploring Gein's influence on Hollywood and pop culture.
It is the third installment in the Monster anthology series, following Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. A season based on Ed Gein was announced to be in development on September 14, 2024. It is the first season not helmed by Murphy, with Brennan serving as the sole creator and writer.
Upon its premiere on October 3, 2025, the season received negative reviews and was deemed inferior to its predecessors, with critics panning its meta commentary, subplots, runtime, excessive graphic violence, and factual inaccuracies. While critical responses to Hunnam's performance were divided, he ultimately received nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film, the Actors Award for Outstanding Actor in a Miniseries or Movie, and the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Movie/Miniseries.
A fourth season, based on parricide suspect Lizzie Borden, is currently in production.

Premise

The series explores the life of convicted murderer and body snatcher Ed Gein through allusions to fictional cultural works inspired by his crimes, such as Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs.

Cast and characters

Main

Charlie Hunnam as Ed Gein, a convicted murderer and body snatcher
Suzanna Son as Adeline Watkins, a woman romantically involved with Gein
Vicky Krieps as Ilse Koch, a Nazi war criminal
Laurie Metcalf as Augusta Gein, Ed Gein's mother
Tom Hollander as Alfred Hitchcock, an English film director known for directing the horror film ''Psycho''
Recurring
Robin Weigert as Enid Watkins
Charlie Hall as Deputy Frank Worden, Bernice's son
Tyler Jacob Moore as Sheriff Arthur Schley
Alanna Darby as Christine Jorgensen, an American actress known as the first person to become widely known in the United States for having sex reassignment surgery
Guest
Hudson Oz as Henry Gein, Ed Gein's brother
Nick Carpenter as Daniel Smith
Olivia Williams as Alma Reville, an English screenwriter and film editor, and Hitchcock's wife
Joey Pollari as Anthony Perkins, an American actor known for portraying Norman Bates in Psycho
Mimi Kennedy as Mildred Newman, a psychologist famously known for conducting conversion therapy to Anthony Perkins
Rondi Reed as Mary Hogan, one of Ed Gein's victims
Ethan Sandler as Robert Bloch, an American writer known for writing Psycho
Jackie Kay as Tab Hunter, an American actor and Perkins' boyfriend
Addison Rae as Evelyn Hartley, an American teenager who mysteriously disappeared in 1953
Will Brill as Tobe Hooper, an American filmmaker known for directing and co-writing The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Darin Cooper as George Philip Gein, Ed Gein's father
Lesley Manville as Bernice Worden, a local hardware store owner and Ed Gein's final victim
Rebecca Tilney as Eleanor Adams
Christoph Sanders as Randy, a local farmhand
Elliott Gould as Weegee, a photographer and photojournalist known for his stark black and white street photography in New York City
Linda Reiter as Nurse Roz Mahoney
Meighan Gerachis as Nurse Salty Maguire
Golden Garnick as Ted Levine / Buffalo Bill, an actor who plays the fictional character and main antagonist in The Silence of the Lambs
Brock Powell as Gunnar Hansen / Leatherface, an actor who plays the fictional character and main antagonist in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Tobias Jelinek as Richard Speck, an American mass murderer
Happy Anderson as Jerry Brudos, an American serial killer. Anderson reprises his role from Netflix's Mindhunter.
Sean Carrigan as Robert Ressler, an FBI special agent who coined the term "serial killer"
Caleb Ruminer as John E. Douglas, an FBI special agent and criminal profiler
Episodes

Production

Development

On September 16, 2024, it was announced that the third season of Monster will focus on convicted murderer and suspected serial killer Ed Gein. On October 4, it was confirmed that the season would be titled The Original Monster, exploring Ed Gein's life as the first "celebrity serial killer" and examining how true crime evolved into a pop culture phenomenon. The season was retitled to Monster: ''The Ed Gein Story in August 2025.
It is the first season of the Monster'' anthology series not helmed by Ryan Murphy as a co-creator.

Casting

On September 16, 2024, it was announced that Charlie Hunnam had been cast to portray Gein. On October 15, it was announced that Laurie Metcalf, Tom Hollander, and Olivia Williams had joined the cast, as Augusta Gein, Alfred Hitchcock and Alma Reville, respectively. In February 2025, it was announced that Suzanna Son had been cast as a series regular in an undisclosed role. The full cast was announced in August 2025.

Filming

On October 5, 2024, it was reported that principal photography for the season was scheduled to begin on October 31. On November 23, it was reported that filming had begun earlier that month. In February 2025, it was reported that filming was taking place in Chicago.

Release

The season was released on October 3, 2025, on Netflix.

Reception

Audience viewership

The season debuted at number two on Netflix's global weekly chart, garnering 12.2 million views within three days of its release. It reached the number one spot globally in its second week, with 20.7 million views, surpassing The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story's second-week record of 19.5 million views. However, The Ed Gein Story dropped to 9.5 million views in its third week, below The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story's third-week figure of 13.1 million views. It earned 2.8 million views in its fourth week and stayed on Netflix's Top 10 most-watched English-language shows globally for five weeks, shorter than the seven-week runs of both The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story and The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.

Critical response

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 22% approval rating based on 41 critic reviews. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, gave a score of 28 out of 100 based on 15 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.
In her review for Variety, Aramide Tinubu commends the season for its strong production values, highlighting the "absolutely outstanding performances" of the lead actors and the "classic noir film style" portrayal of 1950s Wisconsin. However, she criticizes the series for its campy tone, excessive graphic violence, and overabundance of subplots, which contribute to a lack of cohesive tone and resolution. Tinubu argues that the show prioritizes Ed Gein's pop culture image over a deeper exploration of his abusive mother–son relationship with Augusta, a theme introduced in the first episode but largely abandoned thereafter. She concludes that this focus "makes Ed Gein mythical again, and in turn strips away the texture and grit that was desperately needed to make the series work."
The Hollywood Reporter's Daniel Fienberg criticized the season as a "tired, overstuffed mess" that squanders Charlie Hunnam's and Laurie Metcalf's performances, while failing to meaningfully engage with the series' meta themes on true crime's cultural legacy. Fienberg questioned the show's decision to depict explicit imagery, noting that it caters to audience demand for "monstrosities" while at the same time mocking their consumption of it. He described the season's narrative as chaotic and its themes as contradictory, lacking the cohesive episodes found in its predecessors such as "The Hurt Man" from Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story and "Silenced" from Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Fienberg concluded that the season "feels like Ryan Murphy's anthology has finally run out of gas," prioritizing spectacle over substance in a way that "honors neither the victims nor the monster it claims to dissect."
Writing for The Age, Craig Mathieson described the season as "dreadful in enough ways to be repellent rather than mere trash," criticizing the selection of "the wrong monster" in Ed Gein, who "had little personality, zero purpose, and provided no real illumination on his crimes." He called it a "garish, wildly unfocused, and fundamentally dishonest attempt to make eight episodes of prestige horror." Mathieson criticized Hunnam's "one-note performance as a mewling weirdo with a high-pitched voice," and dismissed the production's inauthentic period detail as "alternately grim and glossy." He further derided the series' sprawling subplots involving figures like Alfred Hitchcock and Ilse Koch, as well as "ludicrous additions" such as a fictional love interest for Gein and "pointless hallucinations" like him "danc to a record and flirt with a corpse," culminating in a "late, heinous effort to fictitiously rehabilitate" Gein by having him aid in capturing Ted Bundy, which Mathieson deemed "the last of too many egregious errors.
In Vulture, Roxana Hadadi wrote, "Monster tiptoes very close to delivering a thought-provoking argument about the way we use entertainment to avoid taking responsibility for our collective sins of complacency and cultural narcissism. Alas. Like Gein, Monster doesn't know when to stop." Hadadi opined that the fourth episode would have been a fair place for the season to conclude. She concluded, "In the season's back half, neither its overloading of vile desecrations nor maudlin sentimentality adds anything that Monster hadn't already established…We already know how the tale of Ed Gein ends, with commercialization and infamy. What Monster fails to consider is that it's part of the problem."
Similarly, Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave the season 1 and ½ stars out of 4, writing it is ambitious for Murphy and Brennan to explore Ed Gein's influence on pop culture icons like Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to reflect "our current obsession with extreme violence and stories of true crime". He criticized the series for its unfocused execution, prioritizing grotesque shock value over substantive themes, and described it as "connecting dots with crayons" while lacking depth in addressing the impact of violence.
Tallerico also criticized Hunnam's "distracting and unconvincing" performance as a "soft-spoken simpleton" devoid of humanity, along with factual inaccuracies—such as unsubstantiated depictions of Gein's crimes, including a sexual encounter with victim Bernice Worden—and pointless recreations like a graphic Psycho shower scene, questioning, "What is the point of re-creating such a landscape-shifting moment in culture but doing so with a Netflix 2025 degree of 'adults only' shots? Is it a commentary or just provocation?" He concluded that the series "flirts with interesting themes" but is ultimately "content to wear the skin of projects like those without having any sign of a heartbeat," failing as meaningful commentary on pop culture violence.
Drew Burnett Gregory of Autostraddle criticized the "grossly inaccurate" portrayal of Ed Gein as a crossdresser, which she said to be unsupported by historical evidence. She argued that the series’ depiction of Gein wearing women's clothing and idolizing transgender actress Christine Jorgensen perpetuated harmful stereotypes.