Picture Credit: AHSZone / MonsterNetflixBR
Ryan Murphy, fresh off his Emmy nominations from last week, appeared today on the Gavin Newsom podcast for a 36-minute chat that covered a variety of his projects and topics. Murphy made a few mentions of Netflix throughout, including a release window for Monster season 3, which he revealed would be available on Netflix in October 2025.
Covering the Ed Gein, also known as The Butcher of Plainfield, production on the new season got underway late last year and continued into the Spring of this year. Created by Ian Brennan and Murphy, the third installment follows DAHMER in 2022 and The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story in 2024. The former still occupies the fourth slot on Netflix’s all-time biggest launches with 115.60M views in its first 91 days.
The prolific creator, who has now returned to his Disney deal, reflected on the unexpected global success of the Netflix show, which is by far his most successful project during his tenure with the streaming service. “I was very surprised that it became such a lightning rod literally within a day,” he said, recalling how quickly Dahmer turned into a phenomenon. Even with the follow-up on the Menendez brothers, Murphy admitted he wasn’t sure it would resonate the same way. “Menendez, I always thought was smaller because it was a Rashomon story… why, not who done it. I was surprised it became such a lightning rod.”
Murphy explained that the series taps into a larger question that fascinates him. “The thing about that show that I love is it asks the question, are monsters made or are they born?” For the Menendez brothers, he came to believe they were “made” by their environment.
On the flipside, with the upcoming show covering Ed Gein, it’s more complex. “If you think about Season 3, which is coming up where Charlie Hunnam plays Ed Gein… this was a person who was mentally ill, an undiagnosed schizophrenic his entire life. Not until it was too late, when he was in prison, was he diagnosed. So it really is sort of a story about mental health and awareness. I’m not in it for the blood. I’m in it for the question: what made them?”
Murphy also credited his longtime collaborators for bringing the series to life, especially writer Ian Brennan. “Ian Brennan, who does all of the Monster scripts, is one of the most brilliant, if not the most brilliant writer I’ve ever worked with,” he said.
The October release date for Monster season 3 comes as a bit of a surprise given that Deadline reported earlier in the year that the project’s release had been delayed to 2026 (Netflix declined to comment when we reached out).
Elsewhere, pre-production is set to begin on season 4 of the show, which has been revealed in recent weeks (although not confirmed by Netflix) to be a retelling of the Lizzie Borden murders from the late 1800s. That’s set to get into production this September, if all goes well in Los Angeles, presumably for a 2026 release.
Also in the conversation, Murphy discussed his extensive slate of shows at Disney, including a new sci-fi series called The Beauty and a new limited series about JFK and Carolyn Bessette, set for release on Valentine’s Day in 2026.
No word on the future of his other Netflix projects he had initially set up or anything on the future of The Watcher, but we’d suggest not getting your hopes up.
We’ve got more on Monster season 3 (which has been referred to as Monster: Ed Gein and Monster Ed Gein: The Original Monster) in our full preview for the upcoming season.
