Created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” is a new true-crime drama series on Netflix. It is the second chapter in the anthology series that began with “The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.” The new season is a fictional retelling of the 1998 murder case where the Menendez brothers killed their parents in their home.
Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch play the brothers, Lyle and Erik, whereas Javier Bardem and Chloe Sevigny play their parents, Jose and Kitty Fernandez. In addition to them, the new chapter stars Ari Graynor, Nathan Lane, Dallas Roberts, Leslie Grossman, Jason Butler Harner, Enrique Muciano, and Michael Gladis in supporting roles.
Spoilers Ahead
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (2024) ‘Netflix’ Recap:
“Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” on Netflix offers a fictionalized account of the 1998 case after Lyle and Erik Menendez murdered their parents, Jose and Kitty. It provides different perspectives on the story based on the known accounts of these events. Please note that the recap details events in the series, not the article writer’s thoughts.
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (2024) Episode 1 ‘Blame It on the Rain’ Recap:
What happens in ‘Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story’?
The Menendez brothers – Lyle (Nicholas Alenxader Chavez) and Erik (Cooper Koch), attend the mass for the death of their parents, Jose (Javier Bardem) and Mary Louise, AKA Kitty (Chloë Sevigny), where the brothers get emotional speaking about their parents. Jose and Kitty did not die by a natural cause but were murdered. At the time, people believed the mafia committed this crime. Lyle goes on with his regular life. However, Erik is restless. So, he decides to meet Dr. Jerome Oziel (Dallas Roberts), his psychologist, to speak about his recent nightmares but, most importantly, about their parents’ murders.
Erik confesses to having killed their parents after seeing a similar incident on TV. He admits that he and Lyle committed parricide. Then, Erik goes into detail to speak about the abuse he and Lyle faced from their parents. He explains how Jose used to humiliate them. In the past, Jose forced Lyle to wear a wig to hide his balding head and often insulted Erik. It ultimately pushed the brothers to take the irretrievable step.
On the night of the murders, they entered their home with shotguns, killed their parents, hid the guns elsewhere, and then went to the cinema for their alibi. Dr. Oziel does not understand how to act in this situation. The doctor tells Erik to call Lyle for a joint session. Then, he calls Judalon (Leslie Grossman), his mistress, to come to his clinic to be a witness for their confession. Lyle flips out upon hearing about Erik’s slip-up and gets angry at Dr. Oziel for letting Judalon listen to them confess.
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (2024) Episode 2 “Spree” Recap:
The second episode shows the aftermath of the murder, along with flashbacks to the brothers’ past. While the cops begin investigating the crime, the brothers remain interested in getting their hands on their parents’ huge estate through the will. Initially, the cops rule out the brothers from the crime. Eventually, they realize their mistake when Erik’s close friend reveals information about Erik’s screenplay, which details a scenario of some children killing their parents.
Lyle and Erik start spending recklessly. During police questioning, they lead the cops to other culprits. After their confession, Dr. Oziel has trouble with Judalon, who gets overbearing. She gets emotional and expects him to treat him as his wife. So, she leaves his house and tells the cops about the brothers’ confession.
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (2024) Episode 3 “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” Recap:
The police arrive at Dr. Oziel’s house to get hold of the tapes with the confession to the Menendez brothers’ crime. Based on this evidence, Lyle is put behind bars. Erik, in Israel at the time, is told to return to the States to face his arrest. The brothers are used to their lavish lifestyle and struggle to make peace with their new environment. Erik fears for his life. Eventually, he gets close with a fellow inmate. The brothers become millionaires, thanks to the provisions in Jose’s will. Yet, they struggle to get out of jail. So, they fired their then-lawyer to hire Leslie Abramson (Ari Graynor), who has dealt with cases of people with notorious backgrounds.
In a courtroom, Abramson is aggressive and never shies away from going into the graphic details of the crimes. While speaking with Erik in jail, she learns something shocking about their past: Lyle sexually abused Erik because Jose abused Lyle since they were kids. Erik did not speak against Lyle because Lyle himself was a victim.
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (2024) Episode 4 “Kill Or Be Killed” Recap:
Before murdering their parents, Lyle and Erik feared their parents were planning to murder them while on a boat trip. That’s why they decided to kill them instead of being killed. Through his confession to Abramson, Lyle admits to the cruelty he has been subjected to in their house. Jose micro-managed Lyle’s life to the point Lyle could not bear it. After Lyle’s issues at an Ivy League school, Jose forced Lyle to work at his company against Lyle’s wishes. Later, Lyle started losing hair due to stress. So, Jose forced him to wear a wig. While Lyle makes a case for himself, Dominick Dunne (Nathan Lane), a famous journalist known for similar criminal cases, speaks against the brothers. It affects their public perception.
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (2024) Episode 5 “The Hurt Man” Recap:
The fifth episode focuses entirely on Erik, who shares a deeply troubling account of the torture and sexual abuse he faced at the hands of his father. Abramson makes Erik open up about Jose’s monstrous side. Erik admits to looking at Lyle as his protector since Jose has been untrustworthy. Jose wanted his boys to be ‘tough men’ and never allowed them to be vulnerable. He also refused to acknowledge Erik’s sexuality since, as a teenager, Erik had a sexual relationship with a man. Hearing that, Leslie also admits her father was a monster. Erik reveals how Kitty was also abused at the hands of his father, forced to check if he has AIDS.
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (2024) Episode 6 “Don’t Dream It’s Over” Recap:
The sixth episode follows events from 1962 in Illinois and covers Jose and Kitty’s relationship since before their marriage. They both faced trouble convincing their parents to accept their union. Jose’s mother did not want an American daughter-in-law, and Kitty’s parents rejected Jose. Despite their differences, the couple got together. However, due to their troubled childhood, they normalized parental trauma in one’s journey.
Kitty admits to having experienced domestic abuse, and Jose recalls his mother being abusive toward his sister. He confronts his mother, but she refuses to acknowledge it or apologize. Jose remains a stereotypical angry man and has an affair, which affects Kitty’s mental health. However, they reunite on the topic of their kids’ splurging and their general ineptitude. Jose keeps refusing Lyle and Erik’s ambitions, forcing his dreams on them and sexually abusing them.
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (2024) Episode 7 “Showtime” Recap:
In the prison, Lyle desperately tries to prove Jose’s domestic and sexual abuse by making his close peers lie about it. Leslie gets a hint of these desperate attempts and stops Lyle. Still, Lyle slips the details to Norma, a journalist, who decides to write a book about them, which backfires on them a while later. Leslie tells Lyle and Erik to compel the jury to sympathize with them.
Prosecutor Dunne shrugs off the brothers’ arguments about abuse and claims their sexually closeted lives forced them to take a drastic step against their parents. Dunne concocts a wild theory of the brothers being in an incestuous relationship. However, during a later trial, he hears Lyle speak about the horrendous abuse he faced and takes his words back.
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (2024) Episode 8 “Seismic Shifts” Recap:
Dr. Oziel’s mistress, Judalon, offers a statement in the courtroom about Oziel and against the brothers that affects the prosecution side. Although on the losing side, Lyle is still delusional. During this time, they become so famous that Lyle believes a film will be made about them. Later, in 1994, Erik fumbled during a court trial and did more harm than good. Eventually, Leslie and Dunne offer their closing statements. It leads to a mistrial.
Six months later, they realize that Leslie’s history of defending infamous criminals affects their case. Besides, Lyle’s confessional conversations with Norma further ruin the defense’s side. The brothers drift apart and are moved to cells farther from each other. OJ Simpson is transferred to the cell next to Erik’s prison cell after his wife’s murder. Erik feels the spotlight on OJ’s case is affecting his & Lyle’s recent rise to fame.
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (2024) ‘Netflix’ Ending Explained:
What is the fate of the Menendez brothers?
The ninth episode of “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” titled “Hang Men” follows the time from the final call in the Menendez brothers’ case. Around this time, OJ Simpson was arrested for killing his wife but eventually let go. Lyle and Erik struggle to find a source of hope. Leslie starts working pro-bono for them. However, the winds do not sway their sides anymore. The witnesses painted a picture contrasting the brothers’ testimonies during the later trial. They paint Jose and Kitty as kind, troubled souls affected by their ruthless, spoiled children. Through them, the jury learns that the brothers spent recklessly after their parents’ death.
The prosecution claims that the brothers were never abused, and Leslie painted a picture based on her past criminal defenses. Both the brothers start losing their minds. We see the jury discuss their case. One of them becomes the devil’s advocate and does not want the brothers to rot in prison for the rest of their lives. Regardless, the final verdict calls the Menendez brothers guilty of their crimes, and they are put behind bars without a possibility of parole. In the end, the Netflix series (this particular season from the anthology series) ends up saying that we’ll never really know what happened in the past of the Menendez family.
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (2024) ‘Netflix’ Review:
“Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” is excruciating, both in a good and a bad way. Good, because that’s what it sets out to be: an unsettling experience. The details are gruesome and graphic, and they will give you the creeps. The show holds its lens for long stretches on the Menendez brothers speaking about their abusive past. It offers the actors Nicholas Chavez and Cooper Koch a chance to prove their acting abilities through overlong takes. They are certainly capable of understanding conflicts as complicated as the ones in the lives of the Menendez family and showing their turmoil. The details are too dreadful to hear, even as a distant witness.
Yet, the same overlong takes become so painful that they work against the show’s favor. The directors clearly understand the value of well-orchestrated drama. So, the scenes are well-directed in isolation. However, the show feels redundant as a unit of about nine episodes, roughly 50 minutes (barring a long, strenuous, yet well-performed 30-minute episode). It relies heavily on the shock value of the terror instead of the reasons behind the terror. It reintroduces the same events repeatedly and depends sickeningly more on dramatizing the situation. So the season does not feel watertight. It is filled with a lot of fluff that could have been easily left out.
The Contradicting Accounts
The second season of this Ryan Murphy anthology series presents different versions of the Menendez stories from the children’s and Jose & Kitty’s perspectives. On one side, it shows Lyle and Erik as ungrateful brats living off their parents’ wealth. On the other hand, it presents Jose and Kitty as monstrous parents who either abused the children or let it happen without any remorse. For someone who does not know anything about these trials, it remains an alarming and provocative display of torture that has nothing substantial to express.
The season primarily relies on the theatrical effect and does not care enough about anything else. It features some clever performers offering sharp performances that will most likely earn them Emmy and Golden Globe nods. However, it is overlong and painfully redundant.
