The latest season of Ryan Murphy's anthology series Monster has hit Netflix, zeroing in on Ed Gein, the reclusive Wisconsin farmer whose gruesome acts in the 1950s shocked the nation and fueled some of horror's most enduring tales. Titled Monster: The Ed Gein Story, it dropped on October 3, 2025, and already it's stirring debate over how it portrays the killer's fractured family life and cultural shadow.
Central to Gein's backstory is the mysterious death of his older brother, Henry, in 1944. A brush fire on their isolated farm left Henry dead under suspicious circumstances—burned beyond recognition, with reports of head trauma that raised eyebrows. Authorities ruled it accidental, but whispers persisted that Gein, then 18, might have had a hand in it, fueled by their domineering mother Augusta's favoritism toward Henry. The series, starring Charlie Hunnam as the soft-spoken yet sinister Gein, leans into this tension, suggesting a boiling resentment without outright confirming fratricide. Indeed, historians still debate it; no concrete evidence ever pinned Gein for the killing, though his later confessions hinted at buried rage.
Gein's mother, Augusta, looms large in the narrative, played with chilling intensity by Laurie Metcalf. Her fanatical religious fervor and control over her sons shaped Gein's warped psyche, isolating him after her 1945 death. This isolation spiraled into grave-robbing and murders, including hardware store owner Bernice Worden in 1957. That's how they caught him: a missing person report led police to his ramshackle farmhouse, where they found Worden's body in a shed, gutted like a deer, amid a horror show of human relics—shrunken heads, furniture from skin. Lesley Manville embodies Worden, adding raw humanity to the victim's side.
The show doesn't shy from Gein's pop culture ripple. Tom Hollander slips into Alfred Hitchcock's skin, capturing how the director drew from Gein's depravities for Psycho's Norman Bates. Other nods go to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and even Mindhunter's early profiling episodes, where Gein archetypes helped define the FBI's monster hunts. Hunnam's transformation—meek farmer by day, ghoul by night—has critics praising its unease, though some call the series' voyeurism exploitative.
Moreover, the ensemble rounds out with Olivia Williams as Hitchcock's wife Alma Reville, weaving in how Gein's story bled into Tinseltown. Yet for all its flair, the real question lingers: how much does retelling these atrocities illuminate, and how much does it just feed our fascination?