Special guest serial killers. Harrowing sexual violence depicted on camera. Lurid savagery against innocents out of European art films like The Devils or Saló. A woman’s declaration of independence turning into a monstrous display of emotional abuse. And, of course, an axe murder. Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story has grabbed ahold of the hatchet, and it’s taking the biggest swings it can. 

We’ll start where the episode does, with the introduction of Aileen Wuornos (the great Sarah Paulson, a key member of Ryan Murphy’s repertory company). Wuornos is depicted here as a subsistence-level sex worker with a love of music and an explosive temper. When a john (Tobias Jelinek) first rapes her — brutally, with the camera never flinching from Aileen’s pained face — and then threatens to abandon her in the middle of nowhere, she turns on him and guns him down while he’s taking a piss. In the process, she pictures herself as Lizzie Borden, chopping up the man’s genitals.

Indeed, Aileen seems to view Lizzie as a sort of proto-feminist folk hero. She uses Lizzie’s name as an alias, and has her girlfriend (Jessie Lee) read aloud to her from a Lizzie biography. The younger woman grows trepidatious as Aileen gets angrier and angrier with the Bordens for their treatment of their daughter, but they wind up humping each other happily ever after as the lens irises in romantically and cinematically — yet another example of this season of Monster drawing attention to its artificiality.

Back in Lizzie’s time, she too is captivated by tales of a murderess of yore. Teaching herself French, she reads that Elizabeth Báthory was raped by a peasant as a child, giving birth to a newborn who was drowned by her then-handmaidens. (This is some truly extreme content.) The Countess sought revenge when she came into power by capturing and murdering his young daughters. But the rapist himself escaped punishment, leaving her thirst for vengeance unquenched. The sequence is located squarely at the intersection of exploitation and the art house.

Lizzie explains that she looks up to Elizabeth for committing her crimes and getting away with it. And it’s true, only her handmaidens were executed. But Elizabeth herself was either sealed inside a single room or lived under house arrest in her castle for the rest of her life, depending on which accounts you believe. You can already see how slippery these narratives become over time.

Just to review, we now have Aileen Wuornos reading inaccurate stories about Lizzie Borden, who’s reading inaccurate stories about Elizabeth Báthory. You ever get the feeling we’re maybe not getting the true story version of these true stories in this show? You ever get the feeling that’s not even the point?

The episode’s real focus, however, is on another woman entirely: Abby Borden, desperate housewife of Fall River. When a tying-a-knot-in-the-cherry-stem dalliance with her husband’s brother-in-law John Morse proves as unsuited to the task of lifting her spirits as blowing money on fine couture with nowhere to wear it, she realizes she’s had enough. 

She demands a divorce from Andrew…who, surprisingly, grants it, along with her demand for half his fortune, which she has ambiguous plans to spend on becoming a patron of the arts. This way, he says, he can be with the woman he loves: his beloved first wife Sarah, or at least her memory, which he visited every time he and Abby had sex. Badly hurt, yet also capable of seeing how much pain Andrew is in, Abby is robbed of her moment of triumph.

So Lizzie winds up bearing the brunt of her fury. Abby is like an ice dragon during their final real conversation, blasting her with burningly cold disregard that she blames entirely on Lizzie. The younger woman has, at last, had enough, not least because she’d planned to murder Abby later that day. How dare this person accuse Lizzie of being cold and unloving, when she’d had the temerity to get angry at a two-year-old for soiling her diapers? Abby’s a monster, Lizzie says (if not in so many words), and Lizzie’s glad she couldn’t give birth to more monsters of her own. 

So Lizzie attacks the one thing she knows will hurt Abby. After a prolonged Vertigo-style dolly zoom, Lizzie calls Abby’s fainting couch (where Lizzie’s weapon is secretly stored) ugly. A slap, a punch, and then it’s hatchet time.

Lizzie takes off the front of Abby’s nose and cheeks, then calls off Bridget (who true to her promise has sprung into action this time), demanding the satisfaction of this kill herself. A long cat and mouse game follows, until Lizzie tracks her down, corners her, and delivers her famous 40 whacks with ferocious glee. We get a good look at Abby’s completely pulped face, or what’s left of it. “Now she’s quiet,” says an admiring Bridget.

Then the two women run through the trees, bury Lizzie’s bloody clothes along with Abby’s half of Edward’s money, and give Lizzie a milk bath, at which point she declares “Now Father.” 

It’s all completely psychotic and aesthetically excessive. It rules. When confronted by a knotty tangle of sociopolitical/psychosexual issues that have become encapsulated in a “true story,” hacking your way through that knot with the nearest axe is a perfectly acceptable artistic approach. We’re not looking for the accuracy of a medical illustration here, but rather the beauty of seeing the ruptured aorta spray blood through the air onto someone’s Victorian-era corset in slow motion. We’re looking to see big ideas and painful emotions transmuted into gory, glorious imagery — cherry blossoms and mangled faces, intertwined.

Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and theseantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.