Netflix's Monster Maps 10 Seasons as Season 4 Turns to Lizzie Borden

Q: Why did the creators of Monster abandon a modern assassination to blend Lizzie Borden with a medieval blood countess?

They dropped the Luigi Mangione/Brian Thompson idea because, by Ian Brennan’s account, it was simply too recent and too murky to sustain a full *Monster* season. He said the case was still “unknown and esoteric,” not yet fully understood, and lacked the narrative gravity they look for in a story that asks viewers to spend eight or more hours inside a killer’s world. Lizzie Borden offered the opposite: a famous case with historical distance, cultural familiarity, and enough unresolved gaps to permit dramatization. Brennan has said that once Ryan Murphy suggested Borden, the concept “immediately clicked,” in part because it opened a new thematic lane for the anthology: its first female central figure and a story centered less on a whodunit than on female rage, repression, and the constraints placed on women in the 19th century. That is why the season also folds in Elizabeth Báthory, the early modern Hungarian “blood countess,” and later Aileen Wuornos. Brennan described the structure as a “triptych” of women killers across eras. Báthory is not there for historical linkage to Borden in a literal sense, but to let the series connect different periods of female violence and mythmaking. Vicky Krieps’ Báthory scenes, presented in fantasy flashbacks, help move the show beyond a conventional period courtroom drama and frame Borden as part of a longer story about how women’s rage is feared, stylized and remembered.

3 articles · Updated · Hollywood Reporter · Sep 18

Ian Brennan said Netflix's now-streaming season 4, "Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story," emerged after he and Ryan Murphy dropped a Luigi Mangione-based idea and quickly locked onto Borden.
Eight episodes followed once Murphy proposed the 1892 axe-murder case, which Brennan said offered a stronger frame for exploring female rage than a newer, less familiar crime.
Ella Beatty becomes the anthology's first female lead as Borden, with Sarah Paulson appearing in episode 4 as Aileen Wuornos and Vicky Krieps also playing Elizabeth Bathory in flashbacks.
Brennan said he and Murphy aim for 10 Monster seasons total, but still juggle three possible subjects for the next installment and often abandon ideas that fail to sustain 7 to 10 hours of storytelling.