Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story release date and what to expect
David White
Ryan Murphy’s anthology has done Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers and Ed Gein. Next it goes back to 1892 and a house in Fall River, Massachusetts. Here is the confirmed date, who is in it, and what makes this instalment a different proposition from the three before it.
When does Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story come out?
Season 4 arrives on Netflix on Thursday 17 September 2026. That date comes from Netflix’s own announcement on Tudum, published alongside the teaser trailer and first look photos.
Netflix drops new titles at midnight Pacific, which is 8am in the UK. So if you are in Britain, the whole thing is available before your first coffee on the Thursday.
Every previous Monster season has landed complete rather than in weekly episodes, so plan for a full season sitting there on day one rather than a release schedule to keep track of.
Who is in it?
Ella Beatty plays Lizzie Borden. The rest of the announced cast includes Vicky Krieps, Rebecca Hall, Billie Lourd and Jessica Barden.
That follows Monster: The Ed Gein Story, which picked up seven nominations at the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2026, including for Charlie Hunnam’s performance and Laurie Metcalf as his mother. The anthology has become a reliable awards fixture, which is worth knowing if you like watching things before everyone else does.
What is the story?
Lizzie Borden was accused of murdering her father and stepmother with an axe at the family home in Fall River in August 1892. She was tried the following year and acquitted. Nobody else was ever charged.
That last detail is what separates this season from the ones before it. The Dahmer, Menendez and Gein instalments all dealt with cases where the facts of who did what were established, and the drama came from the why and the aftermath. Here the central question was never settled by a court, and the nursery rhyme that most people know the case through was wrong about the number of blows and, arguably, about everything else.
Expect a season that is less about reconstruction and more about a town, a household and a woman that the public had already convicted before the trial started.
Do you need to watch the other seasons first?
No. Monster is an anthology: each season is a separate case with a separate cast, and nothing carries over except the creators and the house style.
You can start here. If you want the others, the running order so far is Dahmer, then the Menendez brothers, then Ed Gein, and now Borden.
Keeping track of it
Anthologies are the format most likely to leave you unsure whether you have actually finished a season, because there is no ongoing plot pulling you through. A tracker fixes that: mark episodes as you go, see at a glance where you stopped, and get a nudge when something you follow returns.
TrackShows does exactly that. Follow the show before 17 September and it appears on your On Next screen the morning it lands. If you want the alert on your phone rather than having to look, episode notifications cover how that works. Once you have watched it through, it moves to your completed shows list rather than cluttering up what is still active.
New to tracking altogether? How to track TV shows is the short version, and the features page covers what the app does.
The short version
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is on Netflix from Thursday 17 September 2026, 8am UK time, with Ella Beatty in the title role. No prior seasons required. Follow it now and you will not have to remember the date.