Season three of “Monster,” directed by Max Winkler, follows notorious Wisconsin grave robber and murderer Ed Gein, and was released Oct. 3, 2025. A Gein is most known for making items like masks out of the bodies of women he exhumed. The season explored Gein’s mental sickness by showing his fascination with the taboo activity. Watchers like myself were immediately hooked, never having heard of him before.
“Monster” is an anthology series that explores the motivations and life stories behind a different murderer each season. In the first week it was on Netflix, season three had 20.7 million views. Gein’s gruesome crimes led to inspiration for horror movies such as Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs.
The Graveface museum, just off of River Street in Savannah, Ga., houses the “only public display of authentic artifacts from the Ed Gein case,” according to the museum’s website. In its exhibit on Gein, the first section showcases various fabricated evidence that was purportedly used by him while he committed crimes. The second floor contains true information and evidence, including Bernice Worden’s coroner’s report and a piece of hair that was apparently attached to Gein’s keychain. The museum tour guide said that it was suspected to be his mother’s hair, still attached to a piece of scalp.
Gein, who was also known as the “Butcher of Plainfield,” was caught for the murder of his second victim, Worden, in 1957. He was seen with her before her disappearance and, upon investigation, police found Worden’s body decapitated and disemboweled in Gein’s shed, which led to his arrest. He was convicted and sent to Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and remained there for the rest of his life.
From the very beginning, the show felt dark and sinister. Charlie Hunnam’s phenomenal performance of Gein set the tone of the show. Most scenes with Gein and his mother, Augusta, played by Laurie Metcal, featured her screaming.
The opening scene characterized their complicated relationship as Augusta reprimanded Gein for wearing her undergarment. Despite this, he idolized his mother, which invited viewers to question his psyche.
“Only a mother could love you,” Augusta yelled at Gein repeatedly throughout the show, and indeed, only his mother ever did.
Gein’s character in the show was inspired by famous horror movies as he recreated scenes from, among others, “Psycho” when he kills his girlfriend in the shower with a knife.
While I think it is important to show that Gein’s crimes inspired movies, the execution made the show very confusing and the line between fiction and reality was blurry. As a result, I constantly searched online to fact-check the show.
The show also focused on how horror movies are created, including many scenes where characters in “Monster” played the directors of each movie. In one scene, there was a deep dive exploring Norman Bates, the protagonist of “Psycho,” and his struggles with his sexuality. Perhaps the disorienting nature of the show is meant to mirror Gein’s disorganized thoughts, but the execution left a lot to be desired.
This season of “Monster” used a lot of symbolism to express how Gein thinks and interacts with the world, especially in episode four, “Green.” There was a consistent pattern of the color green throughout the episode, which Harrison Brocklehurst from The Tab said is representative of Gein’s psychosis and belief that what he was doing was correct.
“He believes killing Bernice is purifying her of that poison,” Brocklehurst wrote, which explained why the blood emptying from her head was green in the episode.
The show depicted his schizophrenia by showing him communicating with Ilse Koch, a Nazi commander’s wife, and Christine Jorgensen, a transgender actress who was known as the first person to have sex reassignment surgery, over a radio. However, later scenes showed that he was actually talking to himself. While this detail was well executed, the motif of his obsession with the two women was misleading because there is no evidence that Gein had any connection to these women.
Throughout the show, it was repeatedly implied that he admired Jorgensen, which was most likely raising the question of his gender identity. It was also apparent that he looked up to Koch and took inspiration from her crimes during the Holocaust. Yet that doesn’t justify the director’s jumps between reality and fiction.
The spread of fabricated information is problematic because when something is spread so much, it can become accepted as real. For example, it is said by multiple sources that Gein created a belt of nipples and lampshades fashioned out of skin. However, neither claim has been proven.
Televised true crime can be dangerous to editorialize because it could turn the stories into spectacles and detract from the horror behind the story. Capitalizing on Gein’s story for entertainment desensitizes audiences to the true horror behind the story. The inaccurate depictions of his creations sensationalize his crime, which is offensive to his victims because it feels like his crimes weren’t already gruesome enough to be compelling.
While there were a lot of issues with the disregard for accurate factual information, at the end of the day, the engaging show is properly labeled as a drama and depicts the story in a fictional manner, and I was on the edge of my seat watching.
