Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story

Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is the second season of the American biographical crime drama anthology television series Monster, created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan for Netflix. The season centers on the 1989 parricides of José (Javier Bardem) and Kitty Menendez (Chloë Sevigny), who were killed by their sons, Lyle (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) and Erik (Cooper Koch). It incorporates the Rashomon effect by presenting the story from multiple perspectives, with the brothers' viewpoint serving as the central narrative.
It is the second season in the Monster anthology series, following Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Having initially ordered the program in 2020 as a limited series, Netflix announced in 2022 that it had been renewed as an anthology series, with two further editions based on the lives of "other monstrous figures". The second season, which focuses on the Menendez brothers, was announced to be in development on May 1, 2023.
Upon its premiere on September 19, 2024, the season received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the performances (particularly those of Bardem and Koch), the fifth episode, cinematography, and score but criticized its runtime, inconsistent tone, and overtly sexualized approach. It was denounced by Erik Menendez and his relatives for its inaccuracies and Lyle's portrayal, and it further garnered controversy for implying an incestuous relationship between the Menendez brothers. It achieved global commercial success, debuting as the number-one series on Netflix worldwide and the most-viewed streaming content on the Nielsen Streaming Chart. At the 82nd Golden Globe Awards, the season earned three nominations: Best Limited or Anthology Series or Television Film, Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film for Koch, and Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film for Bardem.
A third season, titled The Original Monster, is currently in production, starring Charlie Hunnam as murderer and graverobber Ed Gein.
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story chronicles the case of the real-life brothers convicted in 1996 for the murders of their parents, José and Kitty Menendez. While the prosecution argued they were seeking to inherit their family fortune, the brothers claimed—and remain adamant to this day, as they serve life sentences without the possibility of parole—that their actions stemmed out of fear from a lifetime of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.
Monster was initially ordered as a limited series based on the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. On November 7, 2022, Netflix announced that it had been renewed as an anthology series based on famous convicted killers. On May 1, 2023, it was confirmed the second season, titled Monsters, would focus on Lyle and Erik Menendez, brothers convicted of the 1989 murders of their parents in Beverly Hills, California. Showrunners Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan revealed that the project was inspired by the popularity of the case on TikTok and Instagram, where content creators have sparked a movement to free the brothers.
In June 2023, Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez were cast as Erik and Lyle Menendez, respectively. In January 2024, Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny joined the cast as José and Kitty, respectively, with Nathan Lane being cast as journalist Dominick Dunne. In February, Ari Graynor joined as Erik's defense attorney, Leslie Abramson. Leslie Grossman was added that same month as Judalon Smyth.
Production for the season was initially set for September 2023, but was postponed due to the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes. Principal photography took place from March to July 2024 in Los Angeles. Jason McCormick, a frequent collaborator of Murphy, served as the cinematographer for six out of nine episodes.
The editing for "Blame It on the Rain" was structured to highlight both the brutality of the crime and the absurdity of certain scenes in the aftermath. Editor Peggy Tachdjian stated that Murphy wanted the audience to fully grasp the horror of the murders from the start: “One of the things that Ryan [Murphy] said was that he wanted you to feel how awful that moment is, to remember that they’re murderers. [...] It sets up the whole season.”
The murder scene was storyboarded and rehearsed to ensure accuracy, with Tachdjian noting that the production team recreated the crime scene down to specific details, including bowls of ice cream left on the table and a massage table in the background. Multiple VFX passes were used to match the real-life crime scene photos as closely as possible.
Tachdjian’s initial cut of the episode leaned more toward seriousness, but director Carl Franklin encouraged her to incorporate the darkly comedic elements of the case. One notable example is the funeral scene, where Milli Vanilli's "Girl I’m Gonna Miss You" plays. Originally shortened, the sequence was later extended to highlight its awkwardness. “It’s just so good because it’s real,” Tachdjian said.
Julia and Thomas Newman composed the original score. The official soundtrack album was released on various streaming platforms on September 13, 2024, prior to the release of the season.
The red carpet premiere was held at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles on September 17, 2024. Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story was released on Netflix on September 19, 2024.
The season debuted at the number-one spot on Netflix worldwide, garnering 12.3 million views (or 97.5 million hours viewed) within just four days of its release. On its second week, it remained the most-watched series on the platform after earning 19.5 million views (or 153.8 million hours viewed). It received 13.1 million views (or 103.6 million hours viewed) on its third week and 8.7 million views (or 68.6 million hours viewed) on its fourth week. On the Nielsen Streaming Chart, it debuted as the top one streaming content (both for films and television series) with 1.72 billion minutes watched, and had a 40% rise on its second week with 2.4 billion minutes watched, the highest since Bridgerton in June 2024.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 47% of 30 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.0/10. The website's consensus reads: "Well-acted but off-puttingly sordid, Monsters leaves viewers feeling guilty without enough pleasure to compensate." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 47 out of 100 based on 12 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.
Aramide Tinubu of Variety described Monsters as "overlong and exhausting". While she praised the first half and cited the fifth episode ("The Hurt Man") as a "standout", she noted that the season "falls into the deep end" afterward. Tinubu also praised the "outstanding performances", but overall found the season's narrative to be "futile and bizarre". Inkoo Kang of The New Yorker similarly commended the fifth episode as "some of Murphy's most moving and startling work in ages", but the remaining episodes "attempt to reconcile the horror of abuse with the horror of the brothers' retributive violence". In a review for The Hollywood Reporter, Daniel Feinberg described the season as "unjustifiably long", but praised the fifth episode for its "precise" writing and Cooper Koch's performance. Moreover, Feinberg commended Javier Bardem's performance, calling him "terrifying in a performance that's wildly outsized but offers enough subtlety to position his howling patriarch as both a chilling villain and as a victim himself".
Writing for The Hindu, Pallavi Keswani criticized the season as "a sensational mess, so occupied with the ornamentation of facts that it loses the plot halfway through". Similarly, Kayleigh Donaldson of TheWrap described it as "an overlong slog that never commits to the ideas it sets up" and feels "something giddily salacious rather than a portrait of familial trauma". Donaldson further noted that, despite dealing with sensitive topics such as sexual assault and child abuse, it becomes "hugely misguided" for focusing on "sensuality, with the brothers both forever in Speedos and shot as though the series was a perfume ad".
The season received backlash for implying an incestuous relationship between the Menendez brothers. Writing for The Hollywood Reporter, Kevin Dolak specified some of the scenes with incest innuendos: "In the second episode, this includes the brothers briefly kissing after Lyle has placed his hands on Erik's neck; later in the same sequence, Lyle is seen cutting in on Erik while he's dancing with a woman at a party in their room at the Hotel Bel-Air, then wiping cocaine from his nose and sticking his thumb in his brother's mouth. Later, in an episode seven sequence that is pretty clearly telegraphed as a moment of fantasy, mother Kitty Menendez ascends a staircase to find her sons showering together." Nicole Vassell from Glamour described the incestuous portrayal as "a jarring addition to a story that is already tough to stomach". In an article for TheWrap, Kayleigh Donaldson stated that the brothers' "co-dependency stemming from their father's molestations [...] are spun into a forbidden romance of sorts". Viewers have also accused it of sensationalizing the brothers' abuse and turning it into a "fictitious relationship".
Trial expert and journalist Robert Rand, author of the 2018 book The Menendez Murders, labeled the incest allegations as "fantasy" and pointed out that there was no credible evidence to support such claims. He explained that while some rumors circulated during the trial, they were baseless, and the series distorted the brothers' relationship for dramatic effect. Lyle Menendez also testified at his trial that he never had a sexual relationship with his brother. In response, Murphy defended the incestuous depiction as an "obligation for storytellers", stating, "What the show is doing is presenting the points of view and theories from so many people who were involved in the case. Dominick Dunne wrote several articles talking about that theory." Vanity Fair clarified that Dunne never suggested such a theory in his reporting for the publication.
On September 20, 2024, Erik Menendez released a statement through his wife's, Tammi Menendez, X account, stating:
Addressing Erik's response, showrunner Ryan Murphy explained, "There were four people involved in that— two of them are dead, and two of them are alive with their point of view. But what about the parents? We had an obligation as storytellers to also try and put in their perspective based on our research, which we did." In a different interview, he mentioned that he has no interest in meeting the Menendez brothers, but expressed his belief that a new trial could be possible. Nathan Lane, who portrayed Dominick Dunne, added, "[Erik] hasn't seen the show. He's just criticizing it and condemning it without ever having seen it, so one has to take that with a grain of salt." Meanwhile, Nicholas Alexander Chavez, who played Lyle Menendez, responded to Erik with "sympathy and empathy", but clarified that "the show aims to fill out a lot more details than just the courtroom scenes".
Reflecting on Erik's criticism, Cooper Koch, who portrayed him, said, "It definitely affected me and it made me feel things. [...] I understand how difficult it would be to have the worst part of your life be televised for millions of people to see. It's so exposing. I understand how he feels and I stand by him." Koch voiced his support for the brothers and their claims of sexual abuse, revealing that he discussed Erik's criticisms with him during their meeting at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility. During this visit, Koch also met Lyle and over 30 other inmates as part of a prison reform meeting led by Kim Kardashian. Despite Erik's criticism of the series, he praised Koch's performance, stating, "I've heard nothing but great things about [Koch] and about episode five, and that [he's] going to win an Emmy. And I hope that [he does]."
On February 20, 2025, during an interview with TMZ, Lyle Menendez stated that he and Erik are grateful that the series shed light on child abuse. He also praised Koch and Chavez for their performances, calling Koch "pretty extraordinary."
On September 25, 2024, Lyle and Erik Menendez's family and relatives issued a statement regarding the season, describing it as "a phobic, gross, anachronistic, serial episodic nightmare". They added, "Our family has been victimized by this grotesque shockadrama. [...] Perhaps, after all, Monsters is all about Ryan Murphy." In defense, Murphy claimed that Monsters is "the best thing that's happened to [the Menendez brothers] in 30 years", referring to the renewed public interest in their case following the season's commercial success.
On March 4, 2025, 15-year-old Reed R. Gelinskey was arrested and subsequently charged with first-degree intentional homicide for the death of his mother in Caledonia, Wisconsin. Gelinskey stated that he developed the plan to kill his parents after watching the "shotgun scene" from the series.
At Monsters' red carpet premiere in Los Angeles, Murphy announced that the third season of the anthology series will center on Ed Gein, with Charlie Hunnam starring as the serial killer. On October 4, it was confirmed that the season would be titled The Original Monster, exploring Ed Gein's life as the first "celebrity serial killer" and examining how true crime evolved into a pop culture phenomenon.
Murphy expressed his interest in extending the season with "one or two episodes". He stated, "It's been discussed. [...] Everyone has been interested in that. I think everyone wants to see how this story ends because this story is not over." However, he noted that this would depend on whether Koch and Chavez, who play Erik and Lyle, respectively, agree to reprise their roles. When asked whether he would return, Koch replied, "I don't know, I don't think so. I think we told the story and [...] I think it's good where it is now."