Netflix’s Chilling New True Crime Series is an Instant Streaming Hit

A new true-crime series has hit Netflix, and it is an instant streaming hit. This should not surprise Netflix subscribers, as the streaming service has become the home to some of the best true-crime series over the last decade. With everything from the crazed American Murder, The Tinder Swindler, and Unknown Number: The High School Catfish to the famous true-crime doc stories like The Menendez Brothers, Amanda Knox, Making a Murderer, and Sean Combs: The Reckoning, the streamer has something for all true-crime fans. The latest true-crime hit once again ties social media to murder, and it was a massive hit.

The new Netflix true-crime documentary series is called The TikTok Killer, and FlixPatrol revealed it shot straight to the top 3 on Netflix’s most-watched TV shows instantly. The only two shows that rank higher are The Dinosaurs and Bridgerton, which have been on the streamer for 97 days now.

What to Expect from The TikTok Killer

This isn’t the first time that a true-crime documentary has shown the often dangerous effects of social media. There have been some intense documentaries about catfishing over the years, where people use social media to pretend to be someone they are not. Of course, The Tinder Swindler had a man who scammed women out of around $10 million using that service. Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing looked directly at a mother who used her kids to swindle people out of money. Scamanda was a documentary about a woman who used social media to pretend to have cancer to get money from concerned people online.

However, The TikTok Murders, as the title suggests, is about something worse than scamming people out of money. This documentary series is about a woman’s sudden disappearance and how it ties into TikTok. In 2023, 42-year-old Ester Estepa disappeared in Spain. Her family and loved ones launched their own investigation. Ester’s mother then contacted someone on TikTok about some evidence. Eventually, Ester’s body was found in 2024 in a remote area of Spain.

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However, while some documentaries show the terrible effects of social media, this one uses it to show an archive of the true story. Thanks to TikTok, investigators used it to reconstruct her last moments, and then they found travel content creator José Jurado Montilla, who documented his journeys through Spain. Like many modern-day true-crime documentary series, this story has not ended yet, as the trial is still ongoing, but this is more about the loss of a woman and the fight to find out what happened to her.

Whether The TikTok Killer becomes as iconic as other Netflix true-crime documentaries or not, its instant success shows society’s desire to see more of these terrible real-life events. While they are often tragic and devastating, they also provide closure for the people left behind, and it is watching these people finally learn what happened to their loved ones that makes them so successful for Netflix.

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