By Irshad Khan 
Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story is the third installment in Netflix’s true crime anthology series, focusing on the Wisconsin murderer who inspired Norman Bates, Leatherface, and Buffalo Bill. Released on October 3, 2025, this eight-episode season has sparked intense controversy for its graphic depictions and questionable attempts to humanize one of America’s most notorious killers. While Charlie Hunnam delivers a chilling performance, critics remain divided on whether the series serves any purpose beyond exploitation.
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Critical Reception: Graphic, Disturbing, and Divisive
Monster: The Ed Gein Story has received mixed-to-negative reviews from critics who acknowledge its technical craftsmanship while questioning its ethical foundations. Variety called it “an overly graphic rehashing” that presents a “perplexing, graphic, and seemingly infinite recounting” of Gein’s crimes. Roger Ebert’s site criticized the series for explicitly recreating crimes “in ways that feel shallow and useless,” while USA Today questioned the creators’ intentions in “attempting to elicit sympathy for Gein,” asking “What purpose does this serve for us, the viewers?”
The Hollywood Reporter described the series as “Netflix’s Trashy Takedown of True Crime and Those Who Love It,” noting that it “seeks to leave nothing to the imagination, yet simultaneously criticizes viewers for fixating on and growing desensitized to horrors.” TIME Magazine observed that the series “layers hypocrisy as well as sanctimony over the grubby, tedious nihilism” of previous Monster installments, with a season that “hates its audience most of all.” Despite the overwhelmingly negative critical consensus, the Hindustan Times awarded the series 3 stars, praising it as a “compelling but unsettling watch” with performances that elevate the material.
Charlie Hunnam’s Transformation as Ed Gein
Charlie Hunnam underwent a dramatic physical and psychological transformation to portray the notorious killer. The former Sons of Anarchy star lost over 30 pounds to capture Gein’s slender physique, telling Netflix Tudum: “The more I immersed myself in learning about Ed, the clearer it became how vast the gap was between my real-life persona and who Ed was.” Critics universally praised Hunnam’s “terrifyingly committed performance,” with the Hindustan Times noting he “disappears into the role, capturing Ed’s frailty and menace with an unsettling realism.”
The Hollywood Reporter observed that if viewers can “overlook the similarity between Charlie Hunnam’s portrayal of Ed Gein and Glen Powell’s performance-within-a-performance as the titular character in Chad Powers, Hunnam delivers a terrifyingly committed performance, embodying Gein’s haunted, wandering gaze, voice, and remarkably sculpted physique.” Hunnam portrays Gein as a “ruggedly handsome man with a voice as soft as a whisper,” struggling with the oppressive religious terror imposed by his domineering mother while harboring forbidden desires and voyeuristic tendencies.
Supporting Cast and Cultural Figures
Laurie Metcalf delivers a powerhouse performance as Augusta Gein, Ed’s cruel and malevolent mother whose religious fanaticism and psychological abuse shaped her son’s disturbed psyche. Metcalf “passionately berates wanton harlots” in a role that makes “the mother-son dynamic both oppressive and compelling,” according to the Hindustan Times. The series depicts Augusta’s suffocating influence on Ed, raising him in an environment of “religious terror and disdain for women” that warped his understanding of sexuality and human connection.
Tom Hollander appears as legendary filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock, who would later immortalize Gein through the character of Norman Bates in Psycho. The series depicts Gein sharing his voyeuristic tendencies with Hitchcock, creating a meta-commentary on how Gein’s crimes would inspire American horror cinema. Suzanna Son plays Adeline Watkins, a fictional character described as “a captivating outsider in the community” who becomes Ed’s romantic interest after his mother’s death and allegedly inspires his crimes by giving him a comic book about “The Bitch of Buchenwald,” Ilse Koch.
Vicky Krieps portrays Ilse Koch in flashbacks, Lesley Manville plays hardware store owner Bernice Worden (one of Gein’s confirmed victims), Addison Rae appears as Evelyn Hartley (a real missing person falsely connected to Gein), and Olivia Williams rounds out the ensemble cast. The series features numerous other real-life figures including Charles Manson in a “bizarre, hallucinatory musical number where Gein, on his deathbed, is celebrated by other real and fictional killers” as the “Godfather” of the serial killer genre.
Fact vs. Fiction: Dramatic Liberties and Historical Inaccuracies
Rolling Stone conducted an extensive fact-check revealing that Monster: The Ed Gein Story takes substantial liberties with historical truth. While Gein confessed to killing only two women—bartender Mary Hogan and hardware store owner Bernice Worden—the series depicts him murdering numerous others including his brother Henry, babysitter Evelyn Hartley, and various hunters. The QU Chronicle noted: “From the beginning, ‘Monster’ turns every rumor about Gein into truth,” criticizing the show for depicting crimes “for which he was never convicted of, but heavily suspected of.”
The character of Adeline Watkins appears to be entirely fictional, as does the suggestion that she inspired Gein’s crimes through true crime comic books. The series also fabricates events like Gein receiving letters from mass murderer Richard Speck and assisting in the capture of Ted Bundy—neither of which occurred. Rolling Stone notes that “all other murders depicted in Monster are fabricated, dramatized to illustrate his influence on American horror culture,” with the show placing “the ‘real’ Ed” into “scenarios pulled directly from the films he would go on to inspire, such as Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
The Ethics of True Crime Entertainment
Monster: The Ed Gein Story has reignited debates about the ethics of true crime entertainment and the “Netflixication of real pain.” TIME Magazine observed that around the halfway point, Gein “stares into the camera and warns: ‘You shouldn’t be watching this,'” a moment that “encapsulates the creators’ attitude towards the millions who devour this kind of entertainment.” The series attempts to critique viewers for their “collective obsession” with serial killers while simultaneously delivering exactly the kind of graphic content that feeds that obsession.
USA Today’s reviewer wrote: “I questioned the creators’ intentions in attempting to elicit sympathy for Gein. What purpose does this serve for us, the viewers? After viewing, I had no desire to understand what Gein’s world entailed or why it appeared so warped; I merely wanted to escape it.” The reviewer ultimately “found myself unable to continue watching the series” due to its disturbing content. The Hollywood Reporter summarized the contradiction: “We are the monsters, and Monster is catering to these monsters while ridiculing them in the process.”
Cultural Legacy and Influence
Despite its controversial execution, the series does explore Gein’s undeniable influence on American horror and popular culture. The New York Times noted that Gein “inspired fictional killers like Norman Bates and Leatherface,” with his crimes unfolding “in the decade leading up to his arrest in 1957, a post-war era now often viewed nostalgically by many conservatives.” American Studies professor Adam Golub told the Times that Gein embodies “the dissonance of 1950s American life—shiny postwar affluence contrasted with the looming shadow of World War II.”
The series acknowledges Gein’s impact on works ranging from Psycho to The Silence of the Lambs to Mindhunter, examining how “Gein transformed the American perception of serial killers and sociopaths.” Showrunner Ian Brennan explained to Netflix: “Ed Gein is relatively unknown. You take the facts and the events that transpired and then endeavor to delve into his psyche to ascertain, ‘If this is accurate, what else might be true?'” However, critics argue the series prioritizes “narrative twists over emotional depth” and sensational exploitation over genuine psychological insight.