Netflix’s true-crime machine is humming again, and this time the axe is metaphorical — mostly. Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, the fourth chapter in Ryan Murphy’s anthology franchise, premiered on September 17 and has spent the better part of a week parked at No. 1 on the U.S. TV chart. FlixPatrol data says it held the crown through the weekend, even as critics lined up with tomatoes that never quite ripened.
The numbers are the kind Hollywood PR teams dream about and Rotten Tomatoes staffers dread. A 44% critics score (average 4.7/10 from roughly 16 reviews) and a Metacritic 47 sit beside a global viewing surge that knocked Guy Ritchie’s returning The Gentlemen and several reality juggernauts down a peg. Charlie Hunnam — last seen in the anthology as Ed Gein — is back as Andrew Borden; Ella Beatty leads as Lizzie; Rebecca Hall, Vicky Krieps, Jessica Barden, Billie Lourd, and Sarah Paulson round out a stacked Fall River ensemble. All eight episodes dropped at once, which is exactly how binge culture likes its Victorian murder mysteries served.
Showrunner Ian Brennan has framed the season as a study of misogyny, class, and the impossible expectations hung on women in the 1890s — with the alleged housemaid–mistress relationship between Lizzie and Bridget Sullivan doing a lot of the thematic heavy lifting. It is also the first Monster installment centered on an alleged female perpetrator, a deliberate pivot after Dahmer, the Menendez brothers, and Gein. Whether that framing lands as progressive or exploitative depends on which review you open first.
Here is the awkward truth the charts keep repeating: audiences are not waiting for consensus. The franchise’s audience scores have been sliding — this season’s Popcornmeter chatter is already the coldest in the series — and yet the clicks keep coming. That is not a mystery if you have watched the last decade of streaming. True crime is comfort food with a body count. A recognizable brand, a famous name in the title, and a weekend with nothing else on the calendar will outmuscle a mid-40s Tomatometer every time.
Production details only add to the industrial feel. Announced in mid-2025, shot in Los Angeles from September 2025 through March 2026, and delivered with Murphy-typical casting fireworks (Paulson as Aileen Wuornos in a nested appearance), the season was engineered for conversation. It got one. Social feeds split between “finally, a woman at the center of the story” and “this is the weakest Monster yet,” which is, commercially speaking, free advertising.
Does a No. 1 ranking redeem a 44% score? Of course not — and Netflix does not need it to. The platform measures success in completed-view equivalents and chart days, not in Metacritic medians. For Murphy & Co., another season greenlit on vibes alone would not be shocking. For everyone else, The Lizzie Borden Story is a reminder that in 2026 the critic–audience gap is not a bug in the system. It is the business model.
If you have already finished the binge and still want Fall River lore, the historical record is messier than any eight-episode arc. Lizzie Borden was acquitted in 1893; the case never fully closed in the public imagination. Netflix did not invent that hunger. It just put a camera on it, again, and watched the algorithm do the rest.