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Spoiler and content warning: This preview discusses the publicly known 1892 Borden murders and Netflix’s confirmed premise. It contains references to abuse, repression and violent death but does not reveal the series’ later developments.
Before the axe appears, the house is already dangerous.
That is what unsettles me about Netflix’s version of the Lizzie Borden story. The threat does not begin with a stranger entering the family home. It grows inside rooms where cruelty has become routine and everyone understands the cost of disobedience.
Ella Beatty plays Lizzie, the repressed daughter of a wealthy New England family. She lives under the authority of her father, Andrew, and her stepmother, Abby. Their home provides status and material comfort, but Netflix presents it as a place built on humiliation, control and fear.
Lizzie has nowhere safe to place her anger until she forms a relationship with Bridget “Maggie” Sullivan, the family’s rebellious live-in maid.
The pressure inside the Borden house
Maggie is an outsider, but she sees what the family refuses to name.
Played by Vicky Krieps, she offers Lizzie a different understanding of freedom. Their connection becomes an escape from the rules controlling Lizzie’s body, choices and future.
It also creates another secret inside a house already crowded with resentment.
I do not expect the suspense to come from asking whether a crime will happen. The murders are part of public history, and Netflix’s own premise identifies Lizzie as the killer. The tension lies in watching the pressure build and questioning how much of the story can be trusted.
Lizzie wants release. Maggie encourages rebellion. Andrew and Abby maintain control. Every private grievance moves closer to a public act of violence.
The crime that became a legend
In August 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were killed with an axe in Fall River, Massachusetts. Lizzie was accused and later acquitted.
The murders remain officially unresolved.
That distinction is important because Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is a dramatization, not a documentary reconstruction or final historical judgment. Ella Beatty has described the series’ Lizzie as a fictionalized interpretation created from the available history and the writers’ choices.
The show can explore a theory. It cannot erase the uncertainty that has followed the real case for more than a century.
I will therefore watch the series as a psychological interpretation of Lizzie’s life rather than proof of what occurred inside the Borden home.
The people inside the story
Ella Beatty plays Lizzie, while Vicky Krieps portrays Maggie Sullivan. Charlie Hunnam appears as Andrew Borden, and Rebecca Hall plays Abby Borden.
Billie Lourd portrays Lizzie’s older sister, Emma. Jessica Barden appears as actor Nance O’Neil, one of Lizzie’s friends.
The casting suggests a story interested in more than the moment of murder. It can examine family authority, forbidden intimacy, social reputation and the freedom available to women living inside rigid expectations.
The series is the fourth installment of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s Monster anthology. This is its first season centred on a woman.
What viewers should expect
Netflix classifies the series as TV-MA. The confirmed material involves violent murder, sexual themes, abuse and an oppressive family environment.
The series may be difficult for viewers who prefer true-crime stories that maintain emotional distance from their subjects. This version appears interested in Lizzie’s inner anger and the relationships that may have shaped it.
That approach carries risk. Explaining repression is not the same as excusing murder. The show must preserve that difference if it wants its psychological portrait to feel honest.
It must also remember that Andrew and Abby Borden were real people whose deaths became entertainment, folklore and argument. Stylish images cannot replace careful storytelling.
Flicklevel outlook
I already know where the blood will be found. What I do not know is whose version of Lizzie the series expects me to believe.
That uncertainty is the reason to watch.
If Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story treats Lizzie as a complicated person rather than a slogan about female rage, the familiar case may feel disturbing again. If it turns every cruelty into a simple explanation, the mystery will lose its power.
The series arrives on Netflix on September 17, 2026.
Official source: Netflix Tudum – Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story