Ryan Murphy‘s Monster has spotlighted some of the most infamous true crime cases — and sparked backlash along the way.
The first season debuted in 2022 and centered around Evan Peters‘ portrayal of Jeffrey Dahmer. Monster, which also starred Niecy Nash, came under fire after the family of Dahmer’s victims revealed they weren’t consulted for the show.
Peters, meanwhile, opened up about how his mental health was affected after taking in the complicated role. “I’m going to take a little break from darker roles and explore the light,” he told Variety in December 2022. “It would be interesting to me to play something that is a little closer to home, a little more mundane and to explore the details of those kinds of experiences.”
The actor subsequently earned a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy nomination for his portrayal of Dahmer.
“Doing the role, I wanted to give it 120 percent the whole way through, so I brought in a lot of darkness and negativity,” he explained on a panel in November 2022. “It was just having that end goal in sight, knowing when we were going to wrap and finally being able to breathe and let it go and say, ‘OK, now it’s time to bring in the joy and the lightness and watch comedies and romances and go back to St. Louis and see my family and friends and watch Step Brothers.’”
Season 2 faced similar backlash after Erik Menéndez slammed Murphy’s portrayal of him and brother Lyle Menéndez. Murphy, however, stood by his work and even claimed that Monsters created renewed support in the Menéndez case, which ultimately led to a new hearing being ordered by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office.
The show has already been renewed for another season with Charlie Hunnam taking on the role of Ed Gein. Laurie Metcalf has also been cast as Gein’s mother while Tom Hollander will play Alfred Hitchcock and Olivia Williams is starring as Hitchcock’s wife, Alma Reville.
Keep scrolling for a guide to every Monster season — and criminal:
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‘The Jeffrey Dahmer Story’
The limited series, which premiered in 2022, followed Dahmer, who was long known as the Milwaukee Cannibal a.k.a the Milwaukee Monster. Dahmer went on a 13-year killing spree where he murdered and dismembered 17 people — mostly Black men — between 1978 and 1991. He was arrested in 1991 and was sentenced to 16 life sentences. Three years later, Dahmer was murdered by a fellow prisoner at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin, at age 34.
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‘The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story’
Netflix released the follow-up to Monster in 2024. Now titled Monsters, the season chronicled Lyle (Nicholas Chavez) and Erik’s (Cooper Koch) 1989 arrest for the murder of their parents, José (Javier Bardem) and Kitty (Chloë Sevigny). Taking inspiration from footage of the trial and subsequent interviews, Monsters mirrored key moments from Lyle and Erik’s lives before and after they were sentenced to life without parole for shooting their mother and father.
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‘The Original Monster’
The third season of Monster is based on Gein. Nicknamed the “Butcher of Plainfield,” Gein was convicted of one count of first-degree murder and admitted to a second killing in the 1950s. It has been suspected that Gein was involved in multiple other crimes around his Plainfield, Wisconsin, hometown. Gein also admitted to exhuming multiple graves and fashioned grotesque keepsakes out of the bodies. Gein served as the inspiration behind movies such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Psycho.