Netflix’s Monster Series Casts Sons of Anarchy’s Charlie Hunnam as Ed Gein for Season 3

Rebel Moon and Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam has signed on to lead Monster, Netflix’s controversial true-crime series, for its upcoming third season. Hunnam will play notorious serial killer Ed Gein, whose gruesome and over-the-top crimes made him the basis for a number of fictional characters, including Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Norman Bates in Psycho. Gein had a close-but-unhealthy relationship with his mother, who was fiercely religious and instilled in him the belief that women, and the contemporary world more broadly, were inherently corrupt and corrupting. Gein lived with his mother until she died, and became increasingly obsessed with her toward the end of her life. 

The casting news came last night, just ahead of the release of the second season of Monster. The season, which centers on the story of Lyle and Erik Menendez, drops on Netflix today. THR first reported the story.

During his life, Gein was only convicted of two murders, having confessed to both. There are at least seven more murders for which he is considered the prime suspect, and at least some suspicion that Gein may have killed his brother, who died several years before Gein’s crimes were known to have started.

Gein’s notoriety came in large part due to the shocking crime scene found once the police finally figured out that he was a threat: besides the murders themselves, Gein had exhumed bodies from at least nine graves, and had created macabre keepsakes using human skin and bones. Everything from lamps and bowls to belts and masks made from the skin of human faces were found in the residence. Between the mother fixation and the furniture made from human skin, it’s easy to see not only why Gein would go on to inspire horror movies, but exactly how he figures into those specific archetypes.

Netflix’s Monster was greenlit for two additional seasons following the success of last year’s season based on Richard Dahmer, and Murphy and executive producer Ian Brennan decided that the Menéndez brothers — whose case was a tabloid sensation in the 1990s — was their next move. Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez are set to play the brothers, who were convicted of the murder of their parents Jose and Mary Louise. (Javier Bardem and Chloe Sevigny). The brothers were recently featured in a docuseries over at Peacock as well. 

So far, Hunnam is the only actor associated with Monster: Ed Gein. A production start date has not yet been set.