In the sweltering summer heat of 1892, the sleepy industrial town of Fall River, Massachusetts, became the epicenter of one of history’s most tantalizing enigmas. On August 4, the quiet morning shattered like fragile china when Andrew Jackson Borden and his wife Abby were discovered hacked to death in their modest home at 92 Second Street. The weapon? An axe, wielded with such ferocity that it took nearly 40 blows to end their lives. The prime suspect? Their unassuming 32-year-old daughter, Lizzie Borden, whose name would forever echo through American folklore like a grim nursery rhyme: “Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks…”
Fast-forward 133 years, and the blood-soaked saga is poised for a resurrection on the small screen. Netflix has officially greenlit Monster: The Legend of Lizzie Borden, the latest installment in its acclaimed anthology series that peels back the layers of infamous true-crime tales. Directed by visionary filmmaker Sarah Polley—known for her unflinching dives into human darkness in Women Talking—and starring breakout sensation Kristen Stewart as the enigmatic Lizzie, this eight-episode drama promises to drag viewers into the heart of Victorian-era depravity. Set to premiere in early 2026, the series doesn’t just recount the facts; it dissects the myth, exploring the blurred lines between innocence and insanity in a world that refused to believe a woman could harbor such rage. As Netflix teases, “Some legends are born from blood. This one’s written in it.”
To understand the grip this case still holds on our collective psyche, one must step back into the gaslit shadows of Gilded Age America. Fall River was a mill town buzzing with textile factories, where Irish immigrants toiled alongside Yankee elites in a powder keg of class tensions and repressed Puritan morals. The Bordens epitomized this uneasy divide: Andrew, a thrifty funeral home director and property investor, was a stern patriarch whose miserly ways left his family scraping by in a home starved of comfort. Abby, his second wife and Lizzie’s stepmother, was seen as an interloper, a frumpy figure who clashed with her stepdaughters’ refined airs. Lizzie and her older sister Emma, both spinsters in their thirties, chafed under the roof’s stifling patriarchy, their days filled with church socials, sewing circles, and unspoken resentments.
The murders unfolded with theatrical precision, as if scripted by a vengeful Greek chorus. At around 9 a.m., Abby Borden was upstairs making beds when the intruder—or family member—struck. She was bludgeoned from behind, her skull fractured in a frenzy of overkill that suggested intimate hatred rather than random violence. Andrew returned home from his morning errands shortly after 11 a.m., collapsing into a nap on the sitting room sofa. There, he met his end: ten savage chops to the face and neck, his eyeballs protruding from their sockets in a grotesque tableau. Lizzie, conveniently home alone with a mysterious headache, “discovered” her father’s body upon descending the stairs. Her reaction? A calm summoning of the maid, Bridget Sullivan, with the infamous line: “Come down quick! Father’s dead. Somebody came in and killed him!”
What followed was a maelstrom of suspicion and spectacle. In an era before CSI forensics, investigators pieced together a puzzle riddled with holes. The house showed no signs of forced entry, the axe—tucked innocently in the basement—was flecked with fresh blood and hair, and Lizzie’s alibi crumbled under scrutiny. Why had she burned a dress the day before, claiming it was paint-stained? Why did she attempt to purchase prussic acid (a lethal poison) from a local druggist just days prior? And most damingly, why did her behavior swing from hysteria to icy composure, burning letters from her mother and quibbling over trivialities during police questioning?
The inquest painted Lizzie as a powder keg of repressed fury. Witnesses testified to family discord: Andrew’s favoritism toward his daughters’ ill cousin, Abby’s pilfering of family silver, and Lizzie’s own petty rebellions, like poisoning the family pigeons after her father slaughtered them. The town buzzed with whispers—Lizzie’s “masculine” hobbies of boating and golf, her flirtations with married men, her disdain for her stepmother’s lowly origins. In a society that viewed women as delicate vessels of virtue, Lizzie’s assertiveness branded her a deviant. “She was too modern for her time,” one contemporary observer might have sneered, “a woman who dared to wield power in a man’s world.”
The trial in June 1893 became a media circus, rivaling the sensationalism of today’s true-crime podcasts. Dubbed “the trial of the century,” it drew hordes of gawkers to the New Bedford courthouse, where Lizzie—dressed in ethereal black silk and fanning herself demurely—faced a jury of 12 white men. The prosecution hammered on forensic “evidence”: the axe’s blood spatter, a mysterious “handleless hatchet” found in the basement, and Lizzie’s inconsistent timeline. But the defense, led by shrewd attorney George Robinson, spun a narrative of feminine fragility. They portrayed the Bordens as victims of a lurid intruder, perhaps a vagrant from the mills, and lambasted the all-male police for bungling the crime scene—trampling bloodstains, failing to test for fingerprints (a nascent science then). Lizzie didn’t testify, a strategic silence that let her saintly facade do the talking.
After 15 hours of deliberation, the verdict: not guilty. Gasps echoed through the courtroom as the foreman uttered the words on June 20. Lizzie was acquitted, her supporters erupting in cheers. Yet the acquittal felt hollow, a Pyrrhic victory that cemented her infamy. “Free but forever guilty in the court of public opinion,” as one editorialist quipped. She retreated to a grand new home, “Maplecroft,” funded by a windfall inheritance and public donations, living out her days as a social pariah—hosting literary teas while dodging stares from passersby. Emma eventually fled the scandal, and Lizzie, reinventing herself as a philanthropist and amateur thespian, died in 1927 at 67, her lips sealed by the grave.
The Lizzie Borden legend refused to die. It morphed into cultural catnip: that skipping-rope rhyme taught to schoolchildren, the 1965 musical Lizzie that Broadway-ified the horror, the 2014 indie film with Chloe Sevigny channeling Lizzie’s smoldering rage. Why does this case endure? It’s the perfect storm of true-crime tropes—familial betrayal, gender subversion, and the thrill of ambiguity. Was Lizzie a cold-blooded killer, driven mad by inheritance greed or oedipal rage? Or a scapegoat for a misogynistic era that couldn’t fathom a woman capable of violence without hysteria? Theories abound: some point to a botched abortion gone wrong, others to a cover-up by Andrew’s shady business dealings. Even now, descendants of investigators pore over yellowed ledgers, convinced the axe was just the beginning.
Enter Netflix’s Monster, a series that vows to exhume the bones of this buried beast. Unlike previous adaptations that romanticized the gore, this iteration promises a raw, psychological autopsy. Kristen Stewart, with her signature brooding intensity, embodies Lizzie not as a cartoon villain but a fractured soul—torn between Victorian corsets and burgeoning feminist fire. The ensemble boasts heavy hitters: Frances McDormand as the steely Abby, a woman whose quiet manipulations simmer like a pot about to boil over; Oscar Isaac as Andrew, a tyrannical everyman whose penny-pinching masks deeper cruelties; and newcomer Ayo Edebiri as Bridget the maid, the unsung witness whose Irish outsider status adds layers of class warfare.
Polley’s touch is evident in the teasers: dreamlike flashbacks intercut with stark reenactments, the axe’s shadow looming like a Freudian specter. Episodes will delve into the era’s hypocrisies—temperance movements clashing with bootleg booze, spiritualism seances masking desperate grief. Expect visceral set pieces: the metallic tang of blood in the air, the thud of blows echoing through creaking floorboards. But it’s the quiet horrors that will linger—the stifled sobs behind closed doors, the polite venom of family dinners. “We’re not here to solve the case,” Polley has hinted in interviews. “We’re here to ask why we still need Lizzie to be a monster. What does that say about us?”
In a post-#MeToo landscape, Monster arrives as a timely gut-punch. Lizzie’s story predates modern reckonings, yet it mirrors them: the domestic violence hidden in plain sight, the female rage dismissed as madness, the justice system that acquits the powerful while crucifying the unconventional. As streaming wars rage, Netflix positions this as their prestige crown jewel—a blend of The Crown‘s historical heft and Mindhunter‘s criminal profiling. Early buzz from set leaks suggests it’s unsparing: graphic kills tempered by emotional depth, a soundtrack of haunting folk ballads that twist the nursery rhyme into something operatic.
As production wraps in Toronto’s fog-shrouded studios, anticipation builds like thunder on the horizon. Will Monster vindicate Lizzie, recast her as a proto-feminist avenger striking back against patriarchal chokeholds? Or will it revel in her darkness, proving the rhyme’s brutal poetry? One thing’s certain: when the credits roll on that final episode, viewers won’t just binge—they’ll obsess. In an age of fleeting scandals, Lizzie Borden reminds us that some stains never wash out. Netflix’s revival isn’t just entertainment; it’s an invitation to swing the axe ourselves, hacking through the lies to unearth the woman beneath the legend.
