The next season of this murderous anthology will focus on a killer immortalized by Hollywood
The Ryan Murphy true crime anthology series Monster, which dropped its Menendez Brothers-focused Season 2 on Netflix in September, will return for a third season that's all about Ed Gein, a killer whose pop culture legacy has severely outshone the actual crimes he was convicted of in the 1950s. Gein has been the basis of many horror films, including Psycho and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Because of his outsized impact on Hollywood, Gein might just be a perfect Ryan Murphy subject.
The Ed Gein season will be Season 3 of Monster, after the series previously dramatized the crimes of the Menendez brothers and Jeffrey Dahmer. Season 1 actually featured a brief Ed Gein appearance, with the series floating the idea that Gein might have inspired Dahmer. Now, Murphy and co. get the chance to really dive deeply into this character and how he morphed into the legend that he's become at this point.
Monster Season 3 latest news
While we've known for a while that Charlie Hunnam will play the killer himself, Variety is reporting some big names are joining him: TV legend Laurie Metcalf will play Gein's mother Augusta, Tom Hollander will play Alfred Hitchcock, and Olivia Williams will play Alma Reville, Hitchcock's wife and frequent collaborator.
Including Hitchcock as a character gives us a pretty good sense of the scope of Monster Season 3 — the legendary filmmaker'sPsycho, loosely based on Gein's crimes, was released within three years of Gein's arrest, and so this series is certainly going to explore how Gein's legacy ballooned the way it did.
Monster Season 3 premiere date
After the original Dahmer season premiered in 2022, it took two years for Season 2 to arrive. It may not take that long for Season 3, but Murphy is currently spinning a lot of plates at once with his various ongoing anthology franchises, and that makes it a little hard to make inferences about the timetable on this one. But it's clearly early in development and will take some time to get going. Expect a 2025 or 2026 launch for this one.
Monster Season 3 story and plot
In 1957, Ed Gein was arrested for the murder of Bernice Worden, the owner of a local hardware store in Plainfield, Wisconsin. When the police searched Gein's house, they found all sorts of horrific stuff that had been made from human remains, like chairs covered in human skin, bowls made from human skulls, a belt made of nipples, and so on.
It's that first impression that we remember Gein for, with movies like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre cementing our image of Gein being a long-term butcher and serial killer. In reality, however, Gein was only convicted of two murders. Most of the human remains that he had been using for his arts and crafts projects came from the local graveyard that he had been robbing for years, rather than being trophies from his murder victims. That said, there are a number of other missing persons cases from that time that Gein has been linked to, but a lot of that is simply the result of folks associating every nearby missing persons case from the time to Gein. Nearly 70 years later, it's not easy to parse it all.
The series will clearly have its eye on how Gein's legend came to be, since Alfred Hitchcock will be a character on the show. Psycho, based on a 1959 novel that was inspired by Gein's crimes, was released in theaters during the summer of 1960, less than three years from when Gein was arrested in late 1957 — that's a pretty quick turnaround considering the studio straight up didn't want to make it and forced Hitchcock to self-finance it. So, yes, this new season of a Ryan Murphy series will do a little bit of Hollywood deconstruction. Not the most shocking news, I know.
Monster Season 3 cast and crew
Monster is co-created and co-run by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, who have worked together frequently since they co-created Glee with Brad Falchuk. Brennan has also worked with Murphy on Hollywood, Halston, and Ratched, among others.
As for the cast, we've only got a few names so far. Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam will play the killer himself, Ed Gein, and Laurie Metcalf (Roseanne) will reportedly play his mother. And it appears also that Tom Hollander (The Night Manager) and Olivia Williams (Counterpart) will pop up as Alfred Hitchcock and his collaborator and wife Alma Reville, respectively.
- Charlie Hunnam as Ed Gein
- Laurie Metcalf as Augusta Gein
- Tom Hollander as Alfred Hitchcock
- Olivia Williams as Alma Reville
Where to watch Monster
The first two seasons of Monsterare streaming only on Netflix.