Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story — Cast, Episode Recaps and the Ending Explained
Update log (1)
- — This page refused to print a review score on 17 September, on the grounds that six critics is not a sample. Two days later the numbers are worth printing, and they say almost the opposite of the coverage. Read from Rotten Tomatoes at 07:38 UTC and again at 07:49: 54% from 13 critics, 35% from more than 100 audience ratings, identical across both reads. Against the other three Monster seasons — Dahmer 57%, Menendez 47%, Ed Gein 22% — that critics' score is the franchise's second best, three points behind Dahmer and more than double Ed Gein, which is not what headlines about the season being butchered by critics would lead you to expect. The genuine record is on the other meter. Audiences scored the first three seasons above their critics every time, by 25, 10 and 27 points; this season is 19 points below, the first inversion the anthology has had. The 13-review base is still a third of what the other seasons carry and the page says so. The audience figure also moved from 26% to 29% to 35% over roughly a day, which is the evidence that withholding it two days ago was right rather than cautious.
- All eight episodes arrived at once on Netflix on 17 September 2026, rated 18+. Individual episodes run from 39 minutes to 1 hour 3 minutes, and the whole season adds up to 6 hours 32 minutes — with the finale, at 63 minutes, far longer than anything before it in the season.
- Vicky Krieps plays two parts, not one: the Borden family’s maid, and a 16th-century Hungarian countess who turns up in flashback. Sarah Paulson appears as Aileen Wuornos, a subject from a different century entirely.
- This is the fourth Monster season and the first built around a woman. Ian Brennan wrote all eight episodes; Max Winkler directed six and Sarah Adina Smith directed two.
- The season invents a great deal. Where it departs from the documented case it does so in specific, checkable ways, and this page keeps the two apart — everything the show made up sits below the spoiler line.
- 🔴 The reviews are not the story you have been told. At 54% this is the second-best-reviewed season the anthology has had, ahead of Menendez and more than double Ed Gein. What is actually unprecedented is that audiences rate it 19 points below the critics — the first time in four seasons that Monster’s viewers have liked a season less than reviewers did.
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story put all eight episodes on Netflix at once on 17 September 2026, and it is the first season of the anthology to take a subject that a court declined to convict. That creates a problem no previous Monster season had: the show has to decide what happened, and then it has to invent most of it.
This page gives you the cast and what each episode covers first. The ending, and everything the drama made up to get there, sits below a spoiler line further down.
If what you actually want is the 1892 case rather than the series, read the true story of the Fall River murders instead — it covers the morning of 4 August, the trial and the acquittal with nothing about this adaptation in it, so you can go there without being spoiled for either.
Where can I watch Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story?
On Netflix, all eight episodes at once, from 17 September 2026. The season is streaming here and is rated 18+.
Episodes run between 39 minutes and 1 hour 3 minutes. Added up, the season is 6 hours 32 minutes, and the finale is the longest single episode in it by some margin.
Who is in the Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story cast?
Ella Beatty leads. She is the daughter of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, and this is her first leading role in a series.
| Actor | Character |
|---|---|
| Ella Beatty | Lizzie Borden |
| Vicky Krieps | Bridget “Maggie” Sullivan |
| Charlie Hunnam | Andrew Borden |
| Rebecca Hall | Abby Borden |
| Billie Lourd | Emma Borden |
| Jessica Barden | Nance O’Neil |
| Joey Pollari | John Morse |
| Sarah Paulson | Aileen Wuornos |
Krieps plays a second part as well. Alongside the maid she appears as Elizabeth Báthory, the 16th-century Hungarian noblewoman accused of bathing in the blood of young women, in a strand of flashbacks. Brennan has said the point was to draw a line under the idea that these women “weren’t isolated events” — that the season is about a thread running through history rather than one household.
Sarah Paulson’s casting is the other thing worth knowing going in. She plays Aileen Wuornos, the Florida serial killer executed in 2002 — a hundred and ten years after the Borden murders. How the two stories meet is a matter for the spoiler section.
Behind the camera: Ian Brennan wrote all eight episodes. Netflix’s own page credits him as the season’s sole creator, while the anthology as a whole is his and Ryan Murphy’s; Tudum calls him co-creator. Max Winkler directed episodes 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 and 8, and Sarah Adina Smith directed episodes 4 and 6.
⚠️ Full spoilers from this point.
A word on where that line sits. The verdict in the real 1893 trial is 130-year-old public record, and this page treats it as known. What the drama invents — who it says swung the axe, what it does with the household, and how it chooses to finish — is all below.
What happens in each episode?
Eight episodes, in order, with Netflix’s own running times.
- 1. Bloodbath (54m) — Opens on the killings, then reverses into the household that produced them. Lizzie is under the thumb of a sharp-tongued stepmother when a new maid arrives and the floor shifts.
- 2. Strong Kitty (53m) — Lizzie and Maggie grow closer. Abby does something cruel to Lizzie’s flock of doves, and that is the hinge the season turns on.
- 3. Whack Job! (48m) — Uncle John Morse arrives wanting money from Andrew. Maggie is punished, and the two women revise what they are planning.
- 4. R.I.P (Rest in Pestilence) Abby Borden (43m) — The episode opens in 1988 with Aileen Wuornos, then returns to 1892 for the first of the two murders.
- 5. 41 (39m) — Andrew’s turn, and the season’s shortest episode. His past and his marriage come back at him on the worst possible morning.
- 6. Bed and Breakfast (46m) — The cover-up: burnt clothes, a staged alibi, and a statement to police that does not hold.
- 7. The Trial of the Century (46m) — The courtroom, played as a performance, with a coach in the wings.
- 8. Carnival (1h 3m) — The longest episode. It carries Lizzie decades past the trial and then jumps forward again to close on somebody else.
How does Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story end?
Lizzie is acquitted, as the real Lizzie Borden was. The show’s interest is in what she does with the rest of her life, and in who is watching from a century later.
After the trial she and Emma inherit, and Lizzie buys a large house on The Hill in Fall River, names it Maplecroft and begins calling herself Lizbeth. The finale reaches 1908 and shows her having built the thing she wanted: a household where nothing living is afraid of her, full of animals, with an orchard, electric light and indoor plumbing.
She does not get to keep her sister. A falling-out with Emma leaves her alone in the house — which is also what happened, in 1905, after a party Lizzie threw for the actress Nance O’Neil.
Then Maggie comes back. Having married unhappily and left it behind, she returns to Fall River and the two of them live out the rest of their lives together. Brennan’s summary, to Tudum: “In a way, Lizzie has a happy ending.”
Does the show say Lizzie did it?
Yes, without hedging — and it goes further than that.
The season stages both killings on screen, and it makes Maggie a participant in them rather than someone who only helps afterwards. The two of them then burn the bloodied clothes and make sure to be seen washing windows so there is an alibi.
Brennan’s stated reasoning is that the evidence points one way and the acquittal points the other: he has described it as a case where what evidence exists seems to indicate she did it, and said the interesting question is therefore the environment around her. The show’s answer to why is a stifling household — a father with no patience for his daughter, a stepmother who kills her birds, corsets as a physical argument.
One detail the drama keeps deliberately loose: at a dinner party after her acquittal, Lizzie offers her guests three different explanations — a burglar, her uncle, an illegitimate son — before settling on the flattest one, that a stranger simply walked in. It is the one moment the season lets her perform innocence for an audience that includes us.
Why is Aileen Wuornos in a Lizzie Borden show?
Because the season’s argument is that the two belong in the same sentence, and it spends a whole strand making that case.
Wuornos enters in episode 4, in 1988. The show has her fascinated by the Borden case to the point of staying in the Borden house, which by then is a bed and breakfast. Beatty and Paulson share only two scenes in the entire season: one there, and one at the very end.
That end is the series’ last image. Wuornos is executed by lethal injection — the real Aileen Wuornos was, at Florida State Prison on 9 October 2002 — and then her eyes open, and Lizzie and Maggie are waiting for her. Lizzie tells her that all is forgiven and all is understood.
It is the same device Monster used for Ed Gein in its third season, and Brennan has been explicit about why it is pointed at Wuornos rather than Lizzie: Lizzie got away with it and Aileen did not, so the season gives the one who did not the ending it can.
What did the show change about the real case?
A lot, and in one instance it reverses the record rather than embroidering it.
| In the show | In the record |
|---|---|
| Lizzie kills the neighbour Bertha Manchester with a hatchet as a rehearsal before the Borden murders | Bertha Manchester was killed on 30 May 1893 — while Lizzie was in jail awaiting trial. A day labourer, José Correia, was arrested on 5 June, the day Lizzie’s trial opened, and was convicted and sentenced to life |
| Nance O’Neil coaches Lizzie through the trial and helps win the acquittal | Lizzie met O’Neil after the trial. A party she gave for the actress in 1905 is what drove Emma out of Maplecroft for good |
| Maggie is Lizzie’s lover and her accomplice in both murders | Bridget Sullivan was the prosecution’s star witness. She was never charged. She later moved to Anaconda, Montana, worked as a housekeeper, married in 1905 and died in Butte in 1948 |
| Abby is physically cruel to the household | The relationship was strained; there is no evidence of physical abuse |
| Andrew and Maggie have a sexual relationship | Nothing in the record supports it |
| Lizzie and Maggie try to poison the Bordens the day before | The family’s illness is documented as food poisoning from a spoiled meal in hot weather |
| Wuornos stays in Lizzie’s bedroom at the bed and breakfast | Wuornos was arrested in 1991. The Borden house did not open as a bed and breakfast until 1996 |
The Bertha Manchester inversion is the one worth sitting with. In 1893 that murder was an argument for Lizzie — a second axe killing in the same small city while the accused was locked up. The series takes the same crime and hands it to her as practice.
To the show’s credit, Brennan does not pretend otherwise about O’Neil. He has said plainly that Lizzie met the actress after the trial and that writing her into it was a deliberate move to make a dry proceeding playable.
If you want the same comparison run on other Netflix true-crime adaptations, we have done it for A Toxic Love Story and for Facing El Chapo .
What did critics make of it?
Split, and not quietly. Variety’s Aramide Tinubu called it refreshing within the anthology. Liz Shannon Miller at Consequence graded it C− and argued the season never works out what women might actually be angry about. Benji Wilson in the Daily Telegraph gave it three stars and noted how much pleasure it takes in showing what evil looks like. Joel Keller at Decider liked the relative restraint. Karina Adelgaard at Heaven of Horror gave it two and said the performances carried what the rest did not.
Viewers have been harsher than the critics, and the loudest complaint is the one this page has documented: that the season invents a relationship and a body count the record does not support.
The scores, and why they are not the story everyone is telling
When this page went up it would not print a review score, because six critics is not a sample. Two days later there is enough to print, and it does not say what the headlines say.
| Score | Now | On 17 September |
|---|---|---|
| Critics | 54% from 13 reviews | 50% from 6 |
| Audience | 35% from 100+ ratings | not published |
Read from Rotten Tomatoes twice on 20 September, eleven minutes apart, with identical results both times.
🔴 Now put it beside the rest of the anthology, which almost nobody has done.
| Season | Critics | Audience |
|---|---|---|
| Dahmer (2022) | 57% from 30 | 82% from 2,500+ |
| Menendez (2024) | 47% from 30 | 57% from 500+ |
| Ed Gein (2025) | 22% from 41 | 49% from 1,000+ |
| Lizzie Borden (2026) | 54% from 13 | 35% from 100+ |
On the critics’ meter this is the second-best season Monster has had. It is three points behind Dahmer and it is more than double Ed Gein. Every headline about this season being butchered or savaged by critics is pointing at the wrong number.
The record it actually set is on the other meter, and it is sharper than “lowest”. Audiences scored the first three seasons above their critics every single time — by 25 points for Dahmer, 10 for Menendez, 27 for Ed Gein. This season sits 19 points below its critics. That is the first time the anthology has been liked more by reviewers than by the people watching it.
⚠️ One honest caveat, and it is a large one. Thirteen reviews is about a third of what the other three seasons are built on. The comparison above is worth making and it is not yet settled; when the count reaches thirty, the 54% may not survive.
⚠️ And the audience number is still moving. It was reported at 26% and then 29% earlier on 20 September, and read at 35% by mid-morning — nine points in roughly a day. If you saw a figure for this season somewhere else, check when it was written. That movement is also the reason this page held the number back two days ago rather than printing a score built on six opinions.
Netflix says it worked anyway. The company’s own outlet puts the season at 12.2 million views globally in its first three days and at number one in eleven countries. That is Netflix reporting on Netflix, so it is recorded here as the company’s claim rather than as an independent measurement — the same caution this page applies to Tudum elsewhere.
For a very different Netflix season that also dropped all eight episodes in one go, Beauty in Black season 3 ends by withholding five characters’ fates rather than settling them.
The bottom line
Watch it as a drama with a thesis, not as a reconstruction. Ella Beatty and Vicky Krieps are the reason to stay, Krieps in two roles rather than one, and the finale’s last five minutes are genuinely startling if you have not seen what the anthology did with Ed Gein.
Just keep hold of one thing while you watch: a jury heard this case and did not convict, and a second axe murder that the series hands to Lizzie as a rehearsal actually happened while she was sitting in a cell.
How we verified this
✅ Episode titles, running times and the order they play in are taken from Netflix’s own title page, not from a recap site’s reconstruction. The season total quoted here was added up from those eight figures rather than repeated from anywhere.
✅ The link to watch was checked with controls rather than assumed. netflix.com/title/82068293 resolves, while two invented eight-digit ids on the same path return 404 in the same run — so the id is doing work, not just returning a friendly page for anything typed at it.
⚠️ Netflix’s own one-line description of the show states as fact something a court did not. The platform’s logline says Lizzie Borden kills her parents. She was tried and the jury did not convict her. That gap is the reason this page separates what the drama asserts from what the record contains, section by section, rather than retelling the drama as history.
✅ The account of the ending rests on three sources that agree, one of which is the producer’s own. Netflix’s Tudum published a post-mortem by John DiLillo on 18 September carrying direct quotes from Ella Beatty and co-creator Ian Brennan; TVInsider and The Cinemaholic published independent accounts. 🔴 Tudum is Netflix’s own outlet, so it is a record of what the makers say rather than a check on it — every beat attributed to it here also appears in at least one of the other two.
✅ The historical corrections are sourced to the case record, not to the show’s press. Dates, the trial timetable and what became of the people involved come from the documented history of the 1892 Fall River case, and one of them reverses the drama’s chronology outright. Where a correction is also acknowledged by the show’s own co-creator, that is said so in the text.
✅ This page withheld an aggregate score on 17 September and now prints one, and the reason for each decision is the same. Both aggregators were then carrying fewer than ten critic reviews — 50% from six on Rotten Tomatoes, 52 from seven on Metacritic — and a number built on six opinions moves too far, too fast, to publish. It did move: the audience figure was reported at 26%, then 29%, then read at 35% across roughly one day. The scores are printed now because the base has doubled and because two reads eleven minutes apart returned identical figures, not because two days have passed.
✅ The four-season comparison is deliberately single-source. All eight figures — critics and audience for Dahmer, Menendez, Ed Gein and this season — were read from Rotten Tomatoes’ own season pages in one sitting, rather than assembled from articles quoting different aggregators. Four seasons measured on one scale can be compared; four seasons measured on four scales cannot. The review counts are printed with every score for the same reason.
🔴 The comparison contradicts the coverage, and the arithmetic is on the page so you can check it. Headlines describe this season as butchered by critics. Its 54% is the second-highest critics’ score the anthology has recorded, behind Dahmer’s 57% and ahead of Menendez’s 47% and Ed Gein’s 22%. What is genuinely unprecedented is the inversion: audiences scored the first three seasons above their critics by 25, 10 and 27 points, and this season 19 points below.
⚠️ The 13-review base is the weak point and is stated as one. The other three seasons rest on 30, 30 and 41 reviews. The comparison is made anyway, with the counts visible and with the warning that 54% may not survive reaching thirty.
⚠️ Metacritic was not re-read. Its season page returned a 404 on the expected path, so only the Rotten Tomatoes figures are updated, and the Metacritic number quoted above is the 17 September one and is labelled with that date.
⚠️ The viewing figure is Netflix’s own. 12.2 million views in three days and number one in eleven countries come from Tudum, which is Netflix’s outlet. It is attributed as the company’s claim rather than presented as measurement, consistent with how this page treats Tudum elsewhere.
⚠️ The cast table carries no social handles. The site’s TV cast pages normally include them; they are omitted here rather than guessed.