Critics Called the New Monster Season Hollow. Twelve Million People Watched Anyway, and I Understand Both Sides

Ryan Murphy's true-crime anthology has now been through four seasons and three very different critical fates. The newest one, about Lizzie Borden, is the clearest proof yet that reviews and viewers aren't even watching the same show.

The Short Answer

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story premiered September 17 and logged roughly 12.1 million views in four days, No. 1 on Netflix's weekly chart, while critics landed mostly on the negative side.

By Gustavo Henrique · About the author

LOS GATOS, CALIF. · SEP 23, 2026 ~6 MIN READ

I'm going to skip the usual opening where I pretend to be surprised. Of course it went to No. 1. Put "Monster" in a Netflix title, drop all eight episodes on a Thursday, and a huge number of people will press play before the first review finishes loading. What interests me is the gap: the season arrived to reviews that ranged from annoyed to openly contemptuous, and the audience showed up anyway, in almost exactly the same numbers as the last two seasons. That's not a fluke. That's a business model.

In Brief

All eight episodes of Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story landed on Netflix September 17. Ella Beatty plays Lizzie, with Charlie Hunnam, Rebecca Hall, Vicky Krieps and Billie Lourd; Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan created it.
It drew about 12.1 million views and 80.1 million hours in its first four days, the most-watched title on Netflix that week across all series and films, and it charted in 89 countries.
Rotten Tomatoes has been sliding: one report on September 22 put it at 42% with critics and 57% with audiences, and the numbers keep moving.

How big is 12 million, really?

Numbers without a yardstick are just noise, so here are the four seasons lined up. I pulled these together from Netflix's own chart reporting and the Rotten Tomatoes figures cited in the coverage below.

Four Seasons, Four Openings

Four-day view totals as reported by Variety, Deadline and TheWrap; critics' scores are snapshots that change. Dahmer's number is a Netflix-calculated equivalent.
Season	Opened	Four-day views	Critics score cited
Dahmer	Opened2022	Four-day viewsAbout 22.3 million	Critics score cited57%
Lyle and Erik Menendez	OpenedSept 2024	Four-day views12.3 million	Critics score citedNot cited in these sources
Ed Gein	OpenedOct 2025	Four-day views12.2 million	Critics score cited22%
Lizzie Borden	OpenedSept 17, 2026	Four-day viewsAbout 12.1 million	Critics score cited42% to 50%, depending on the day

One useful wrinkle from Deadline: Ed Gein premiered on a Friday, so it had one less day to rack up its total than Lizzie Borden did, which makes the new season's opening look a touch softer than it seems. Against the Menendez season, which also debuted on a Thursday, it's basically dead even. Netflix says the franchise has now reached nearly 170 million views across all seasons. The takeaway is simple: after Dahmer's outlier, the anthology has settled into a steady, dependable 12-million-ish opening. I find that steadiness more impressive than any one spike.

What the critics actually said

The reviews weren't uniformly bad, which is worth saying. They were split in a way that tells you a lot about what people want from this show. Here's the range I found, in plain terms:

Variety liked it, calling it an engaging new direction, largely because it centers the anthology's first female killer.
The Hollywood Reporter was harsh, arguing it pretends to say something about women and power without actually doing so.
TIME and The A.V. Club both felt it had nothing fresh to add to a story people already know.
TheWrap called it the anthology's most grueling season, while noting that Beatty's blankness works better than the noise around her.
Reality Blurred couldn't decide whether to recommend it, though it praised the chemistry between Beatty and Krieps.

Notice how many of those complaints are about meaning, not craft. Almost nobody is saying it's badly made. They're saying it doesn't know what it's for.

Why does this franchise keep winning?

12M vs. 42%My Take: The Review-Proof Formula

Here's how I read it. Viewers aren't buying a critique of true crime; they're buying a familiar package: a famous name, a starry cast, a lurid hook, and eight episodes that go down like a binge-able sugar rush. A negative review changes almost nothing because it doesn't attack the thing they came for. The only way critics can hurt this show is if audiences start to feel the formula is stale, and even then, twelve million people is a pretty deep cushion.

Also worth noting: the audience score isn't as rosy as the viewing total implies. Forbes pegged it at 26% on September 18, while a Sept. 22 report had it at 57%. That's a huge swing, which usually just means small early samples. I wouldn't hang a conclusion on either number yet.

There's a counter-story on the same chart that I like more. The YA rowing drama Crew Girl jumped from 5.2 million views in its debut week to 11.3 million in its second and earned a Season 2 renewal. That's real word of mouth, the opposite of a franchise opening. It's a good reminder that Netflix's biggest number isn't always its most interesting one.

Commentary: Gustavo Henrique

The thing that bothers me isn't that the show is lurid. Lurid is the brand. It's that Lizzie Borden was acquitted, and this retelling, according to The Hollywood Reporter, treats her guilt as settled fact while inventing a backstory of abuse and a romance to explain it. TheWrap put the question better than I can: what if you just make up what happened before the axe came down? Invention is fine, historical fiction has always done it. But if you're going to invent, I think you owe the audience a reason beyond shock value.

Still, I'm not here to tell anyone what to watch, and I'm not going to pretend I understand the appeal any better than the twelve million people who pressed play. What I'd say is this: if you're curious, go in knowing the real case is a mystery and the show is a guess. Enjoy the guess for what it is. And if you feel like it's hollow by episode four, you're allowed to say so, along with a lot of professional critics.

HOW WE REPORTED THIS

Viewing figures and review summaries come from the outlets listed below; review-score snapshots change daily and are labeled as such. Opinions are labeled as opinions. See our full editorial methodology.