The 4th season of Monster, created by Ryan Murphy, ranked first with 12.2 million views in its first 4 days of streaming on Netflix. Monster: The Story of Lizzie Borden, which premiered on September 17, came close to the 12.3 million opening of 2024’s Monsters: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendez and the 12.2 million opening of 2025’s Monster: The Story of Ed Gein. However, the Lizzie Borden season reached the same number of views as the Ed Gein production despite being available for one day longer.
The first season, Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, released in 2022, was watched for 196.2 million hours in its first 4 days; according to Netflix’s current measurement, this corresponds to approximately 22.3 million views. The series ranks 7th on the platform’s list of the most-watched English-language productions of all time. The seasons in the series have reached approximately 170 million views in total.
The 4th season, which consists of eight episodes, stars Ella Beatty, with Charlie Hunnam, Rebecca Hall, Billie Lourd and Vicky Krieps also among the cast. The production, which tells the story of Lizzie Borden, who was accused of killing two members of her family in 1892, received 40% from critics and 37% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes.
Why it matters
This result shows that the Monster anthology has retained its significance within Netflix, but that the extraordinary level of momentum created by the first season was not repeated in subsequent productions. The series’ total viewing volume and the first season’s place in the platform’s ranking of English-language productions indicate that the new season’s success cannot be measured solely by its opening figure. Although the Lizzie Borden season reaching similar openings suggests that viewers’ interest in the series has continued, the differing lengths of time it remained available make it difficult to interpret the data directly on an equal basis. By contrast, the low critic and audience scores show that high viewership does not mean the same thing as being well received; the open question is how this divergence will affect the anthology’s subsequent seasons.