How-To
How to Watch the Monster Anthology in Order
By Jordan A. · · 4 min read
Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan's Monster anthology adds its fourth chapter on September 17, 2026, when Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story drops all eight episodes on Netflix at once. If you are new to the series, or you started somewhere in the middle and want to go back, the good news is that each season stands completely on its own. There is no ongoing plot to track. Still, watching them in release order shows you how the series has grown, so here is the full run and where the new one fits.
Season 1: Dahmer, Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (2022)
The one that started it all. The first installment stars Evan Peters as Jeffrey Dahmer, and it became a genuine phenomenon, a massive hit and the season that made the Monster brand. It is also the most controversial, criticized by some victims' families for revisiting their worst days, and that tension has followed the series ever since. Peters won awards for a performance that is hard to shake. If you want to understand why this anthology is such a big deal, and why it draws as much debate as praise, start here.
Season 2: Monsters, The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (2024)
The second season shifts the formula. Note the title goes plural, Monsters, because this time the story centers on two brothers, Lyle and Erik Menendez, convicted of murdering their parents in Beverly Hills in 1989. It leans harder into the question the whole series circles, whether these people were born evil or made that way, and it arrived just as the real Menendez case was back in the news. It is talkier and more courtroom-driven than the Dahmer season, and it sparked its own round of arguments about sympathy and blame.
Season 3: Monster, The Ed Gein Story (2025)
The third chapter reaches back to the case that inspired half of horror. Charlie Hunnam stars as Ed Gein, the Wisconsin killer whose crimes in the 1950s fed the DNA of Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs. This season is the most explicitly horror-flavored of the run, connecting a real man to the fictional monsters he inspired. Hunnam disappears into the role, and the season plays like a bridge between true crime and the slasher genre it helped birth.
Season 4: Monster, The Lizzie Borden Story (2026)
Which brings us to the new one. Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story tackles the most famous unsolved axe murders in American history, the 1892 killings of Andrew and Abby Borden in Fall River, Massachusetts, and the daughter who was tried and acquitted. Ella Beatty plays Lizzie, with Rebecca Hall and Vicky Krieps among the cast, and Charlie Hunnam returns to the anthology in a new role as Andrew Borden. All eight episodes land September 17. It is the first season to reach back into the nineteenth century, which gives Murphy a very different visual playground than the modern cases.
Does the order actually matter?
Not really, and that is the point. These are self-contained stories with different casts, settings, and eras, so you can jump into whichever case grips you most. If you love a good horror connection, go straight to Ed Gein. If you follow real trials, the Menendez season is the one. If you want the cultural touchstone that started the whole thing, Dahmer is the entry point.
That said, release order does tell a story of its own. You can watch the series figure out what it wants to be, moving from a single infamous killer to a family, to the roots of horror, and now to a century-old mystery. Seen back to back, it becomes a study of how America turns its worst crimes into entertainment, which is a heavier idea than any one season carries alone. We dig into why that appetite keeps growing in our look at the best documentary shows of 2026, which sits right next door to this kind of dramatized true crime.
However you watch, Netflix makes it easy, since all four seasons live in one place. The Lizzie Borden season is a natural starting point for newcomers too, because a nineteenth-century mystery carries less of the raw, recent pain that made the Dahmer season so divisive. You will find all of them near the top of our best Netflix shows of 2026 guide, and the more horror-forward chapters turn up again in our roundup of the best horror shows of 2026.
What each season does differently
Part of what keeps the anthology fresh is that no two seasons play the same. The Dahmer season is claustrophobic and character-driven, built almost entirely around Evan Peters. The Menendez season splits its sympathy and turns into a courtroom argument that never fully resolves. The Ed Gein chapter tilts toward outright horror, treating its subject as the seed of the slasher genre. Now the Lizzie Borden season moves the whole thing into the nineteenth century, trading modern forensics for a period mystery where the verdict was never certain. If you watch them close together, those shifts are the most interesting thing about the run, a single creative team testing how many different shapes one grim idea can take before it wears out.
Want help deciding which case to start with based on what you actually like to watch? BingeNext reads your taste in true crime and horror and points you at the right season. Get show recommendations before you press play.
Topics covered: monster anthology, lizzie borden, ryan murphy, true crime, netflix
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and writes every guide on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu, and he still tests every pick the hard way: by watching it.