Monster Season 2: Netflix Casts Leads for Ryan Murphy’s Dahmer Follow-Up

Ryan Murphy’s anticipated second season of Monster, a series that will center on the Menendez Brothers murder, has cast its leads. Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez will play Erik and Lyle Hernandez, brothers who were convicted of killing their parents in 1996. While the first season of Monster drew fire from critics for glamorizing the murders of Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez killings are a bit less controversial — although certainly no less high-profile, having given the OJ Simpson trial a run for its money as the most-covered big-money murder trial of the 1990s.

Deadline first broke the story. Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story will be the next installment in the franchise, and one of the last big projects for Murphy at Netflix, having recently revealed that he plans to leave the streamer and set up shop with Disney at the end of his current contract.

On August 20, 1989, José and Mary Menéndez were killed in their Beverly Hills home, with their sons calling 911 to report that someone had killed their parents, as they claimed they were out that evening seeing Tim Burton’s Batman. In the months after the murders, the brothers lived relatively affluent lifestyles, thanks to the inheritance from their parents, which partially contributed to authorities believing the brothers were the only ones with a motive for the murders. Erik would go on to confess his crimes to his psychologist in 1990, leading to the pair’s arrest.

The trial of the Menéndez brothers revealed that the pair had been physically, emotionally, and sexually abused by their parents over the course of years, leading to the night of their murder, in which the brothers claimed they feared for their own lives. The brothers were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for their crimes in 1996, a process which took two trials, since the first ended in a deadlocked jury.

Between the salacious details of the crimes, the televised trial, and growing infatuation the public held for cable TV, the trial and the brothers themselves became a major staple of pop culture in the early ’90s. Last year’s Monster was a major event for Netflix, topping its most-watched charts for weeks, and star Evan Peters earned various awards for his portrayal of Dahmer. The controversies largely centered around what some audiences felt was an exploitative and humanizing portrayal of Dahmer, with victims’ families expressing their disappointment with Netflix and Murphy for the series’ existence. With Season 2 focusing on one specific crime, it would seem more likely that the series will spend just as much time exploring the public’s obsession with the crimes as the crimes themselves.