Monster: The Ed Gein Story hits Netflix on October 3, 2025, and the streamer has just given us our first look at the new season of Ryan Murphy’s true crime anthology. As the name suggests, the third season will follow the fictionalized life of notorious murderer Ed Gein (played by Charlie Hunnam), who confessed to killing two women between 1954-1957. Worse than that, his nickname ‘the Butcher of Plainfield’ came from authorities discovering Gein exhumed corpses from local graveyards to make… keepsakes… for himself.
It’s pretty clear that the new season Monster will probably be the most grim and gory, following on from Murphy’s takes on Jeffrey Dahmer and Lyle and Erik Menendez. As Netflix itself tells us: “Monster: The Ed Gein Story tells the story of how one simple man in Plainfield, Wisconsin, became history’s most singular ghoul. He revealed to the world the most horrific truth of all – that monsters aren’t born, they’re made… by us.”
But the streamer also tells us that Gein “became the blueprint for modern horror,” with it being widely reported that he served as inspiration for some of the best horror movies, including Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs. However, it’s worth pointing out that these movies weren’t actually his real life, meaning one of our first-look posters has a factual inaccuracy that’s really bugging me.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story shows the killer as the Texas Chainsaw murderer he apparently wasn’t
Before The Texas Chainsaw Massacre… there was Ed. Charlie Hunnam stars in Monster: The Ed Gein Story. Arriving October 3. pic.twitter.com/TRKpybCiVnAugust 27, 2025
Newsflash, people: Ed Gein didn’t knowingly kill anybody using a chainsaw. At least, not as far as we know. According to EBSCO research, Gein’s first confirmed murder victim Mary Hogan was shot, while second victim Bernice Worden was decapitated and disemboweled beyond the point of establishing a cause of death. While a number of other missing people were linked to Gein, none of them were proved beyond suspicion (and as they were never found, their cause of death cannot be proved).
That doesn’t mean Gein didn’t engage in some gnarly behavior, and that’s putting it mildly. The preserved remains of 15 other women were found on his property, creating ‘masks’ out of human faces and even a full ‘woman suit’, which was thought to be made after his mother died. It’s references from the case like this that make the Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre comparisons clear, but here’s where the lines cross.
Netflix’s marketing for Monster: The Ed Gein Story is obviously being inspired by his influence on said horror movies, but that moves away from how seasons 1 and 2 were structured. Essentially, each season is a dramatization of real life, and in order to do that effectively, scenes need to be accurate. We can suspend belief enough to admit his probably laid his head in his mother’s lap, and he clearly made fleshy masks, but murdering with a chainsaw even though there’s no proof? Gein’s life becomes a parody, not serious drama.
Before The Silence of the Lambs… there was Ed. Charlie Hunnam stars in Monster: The Ed Gein Story. Arriving October 3. pic.twitter.com/BDUKlMiDqcAugust 27, 2025
Of course, I’m not sure how much anybody else is going to care about the semantics. The images are striking and chilling in their own right, moulding Hunnam’s version of Gein into the (pun intended) monster we all believed he was. I have no doubt that Murphy will create a visual spectacle so shocking, we’ll feel like the glory days of American Horror Story‘s early seasons are well and truly back.
Even so, it leaves a sour note. While The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story won me back over after The Jeffrey Dahmer Story went too far in my eyes, I fear The Ed Gein Story has already lost me with its theatrics.