Netflix has begun production on the fourth installment of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s true-crime anthology Monster, turning to the 1892 Fall River killings tied to Lizzie Borden and casting Ella Beatty in the title role. The season, now filming in Los Angeles, arrives less than a week after the release of Monster: The Ed Gein Story and marks the franchise’s first chapter centered on a woman at the heart of a notorious case.
Beatty plays Borden, who was tried and acquitted in the axe murders of her father, Andrew, and stepmother, Abby. Charlie Hunnam, who led Season 3 as Ed Gein, returns to portray Andrew Borden. The cast also includes Rebecca Hall as Abby Borden, Billie Lourd as Lizzie’s sister Emma, Vicky Krieps in the household as Bridget Sullivan, and Jessica Barden as Nance O’Neill, a close friend whose relationship with Lizzie drew public scrutiny after the trial. Netflix confirmed cameras are rolling in Los Angeles; a premiere window has not been announced.
The Borden case has remained a fixture of American crime lore for more than a century, in part because of its unresolved status and the contradictions in witness accounts and forensic understanding of the era. Setting the story within Monster signals a wider lens the series has used across previous seasons—interrogating how infamous cases are retold, who gets to define “monstrous,” and how notoriety shapes memory. As with the Dahmer and Menendez seasons, the Borden chapter is expected to balance period detail with character-driven storytelling, contrasting the spare historical record with dramatized private lives.
Hunnam recently described the creative environment on the Gein season as “joyous” despite the darkness of the material, noting that the work felt purposeful even when the subject matter was grim. His shift from Gein to Andrew Borden underscores Monster’s anthology design, in which returning collaborators take on new roles to examine different corners of American crime history. With production underway and a principal ensemble in place, the season will revisit Fall River in 1892—an intimate domestic setting that continues to provoke debate over motive, means, and myth-making.
