Monster Season 3 is upon us, and with it come the skin-crawling details about the life and crimes of macabre grave robber Ed Gein. Here’s everything we know.
Finally, fellow true-crime enthusiasts, the wait for Netflix’s third installment to their killer anthology series Monster is coming to an end, and I’m on pins and needles about it. Monster: The Ed Gein Story will explore the life and skin-crawling crimes of one of America’s most disturbing figures in criminal history, just in time to kick off the Halloween season.
In 2022, Netflix (and Evan Peters) shocked, horrified, and sucked audiences in with season one of their massive true crime hit, which depicted the life of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer from shy adolescent to human cannibal. Season two focused on the brutal 1989 murders of José and Kitty Menendez by their son, Erik and Lyle.
While the focus of season 3 provides more than enough intrigue to hook viewers into watching, the biggest draw for The Ed Gein Story is the man behind the human-skin mask portraying the macabre monster.
Here’s everything we know about Monster Season 3, The Ed Gein Story.
First, let’s talk about Ed Gein
Ed Gein was a notorious grave robber who murdered two women and had a sick fascination with the female form. Born in Wisconsin in 1906, Edward Theodore Gein came to be known as “The Butcher of Plainfield” in the 1950s after a missing persons investigation led straight to Gein’s and resulted in one of the most macabre discoveries in criminal history. It was so gruesome, in fact, its details scarred the American psyche and redefined the American nightmare.
When hardware store owner Bernice Worden vanished, authorities traced her to Gein’s farm, where they unearthed more than 40 corpses. They also discovered unimaginable horrors, like macabre artifacts fashioned from human remains, including clothing items and furniture constructed out of human bones and body parts, furniture upholstered in skin, human organs in jars, bowls made from skull fragments, and masks made from human faces.
Gein admitted to having an unhealthy fascination with death and the female form, which led him to exhume corpses and harvest body parts, wherein he made masks and suits out of human skin and practiced necrophilia, all in an effort to resurrect his dead mother.
See, he was born into a household defined by religious extremism, cruelty, and ruled by a mother so domineering, her tactics instilled a deep-seated fear of sexuality in him and enforced bizarre isolation. When his father, older brother, and mother had died by 1945, Gein became a lone figure on their isolated, decaying farm, which fueled an unhealthy obsession that ultimately contributed to his psychological demise.
Gein had a profound impact not just on the criminal psychology field but also on popular culture, igniting an obsession with the criminally deviant and the psychology behind their crimes that continues to grow even today. He is, for all intents and purposes, the sole inspiration behind hit horror films Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs and their antagonists.
Who is playing Ed Gein in Monster Season 3?
Best known for his role as Jax Teller on the hit FX crime drama Sons of Anarchy, Charlie Hunnam will be playing our skin-crawling monster.
“I wanted to get as close as possible to who Ed was, to do him justice, and for this thing to feel authentic,” Hunnam says about his portrayal. “This is going to be the really human, tender, unflinching, no-holds-barred exploration of who Ed was and what he did. But who he was being at the center of it, rather than what he did.”
Who else is part of the cast?
In addition to Hunnam, Emmy winner Laurie Metcalf, of Lady Bird, will star in Monster Season 3 as Ed’s mother, Augusta, and Tom Hollander, of Pride and Prejudice, will star as Alfred Hitchcock in a supporting role.
Other cast members include Suzanna Son, of Fear Street: Prom Queen, Vicky Krieps, of Old, Olivia Williams, of An Education, Joey Pollari, of Love, Simon, Tyler Jacob Moore, of Shameless, Charlie Hall, of Monsters, Will Brill, of Fellow Travelers, Mimi Kennedy, of Midnight in Paris, Robin Weigert, of Smile, and Lesley Manville, of Phantom Thread.
What to expect from the Monster Season 3 plot
You should definitely expect to see depictions of Gein’s life and crimes, as well as the horrific contents of his home. That’s a given, so buckle up for grave robbing, necrophilia, dismemberment, and everything that epitomizes the macabre.
Also, seeing as how a core theme of the Monster series is to examine whether monsters are born or made, expect The Ed Gein Story to explore the unsettling possibility—and likely reality—that the titular character’s disturbing actions were a product of his abusive upbringing, bizarre isolation, obsessively co-dependent relationship with his mother, and societal factors, as opposed to an inherent evil.
Also, expect an intimate portrait of a deeply disturbed, mentally ill monster set against a horrific backdrop of haunting criminal activity and prepare to watch his descent into a deepening madness that ultimately leads to the unthinkable.
Monster Season 3 won’t just focus on Ed Gein, though. It’ll also head to Hollywood, where it’ll fold in Alfred Hitchcock (Tom Hollander) as he works on Psycho. In fact, his narration in the beginning of the official teaser makes it seem as though the Master of Suspense is hunting for clues.“
“[This] is the best season of the three,” says co-creator Ian Brennan to Tudum. “I think it’s going to blow people’s socks off.” Brennan wrote every episode of the eight-episode season.
Is there a trailer for Monster: The Ed Gein Story?
Netflix has not yet released an official trailer for Monster Season 3, but you can watch the official teaser below, where you can hear Hitchcock’s curiosity about Gein and see glimpses of Hunnam’s bone-chilling performance.
When does Monster Season 3 come out?
Monster Season 3, The Ed Gein Story, will premiere on Netflix on Friday, October 3, 2025.
