Monster: The Ed Gein Story

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 (1960), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

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 and 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 (1974)

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

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 (or 90.6 million hours viewed) within three days of its release. It reached the number one spot globally in its second week, with 20.7 million views (154.2 million hours viewed), 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 (70.5 million hours viewed) 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 (21.2 million hours viewed) 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 (2024) and "Silenced" from Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (2022). 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 (portrayed "as a peeper like Gein") and Ilse Koch, as well as "ludicrous additions" such as a fictional love interest for Gein and "pointless hallucinations" like him "danc[ing] to a record and flirt[ing] 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.