WARNING: This article contains spoilers from Monster: The Ed Gein Story
Netflix's popular series, Monster, has made a gripping comeback with its third season, this time focusing on the life of infamous serial killer and body snatcher Ed Gein (portrayed by Charlie Hunnam), according to the Manchester Evening News.
The programme features real-life figures, including Nazi war criminal Ilse Koch (Vicky Krieps) and Psycho star Anthony Perkins (Joey Pollari), among others.
Gein, known as the Butcher of Plainfield and the Plainfield Ghoul, was a notorious American serial killer and grave robber. His gruesome exploits are believed to have inspired numerous subsequent killers and Hollywood horror films, including The Silence of the Lambs, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Psycho.
The latest series, which debuted on 3 October, delves into various aspects of Gein's life and his horrific crimes, reports
Penned by the show's co-creator, Ian Brennan, the series takes viewers back to the 1950s when Gein began his reign of terror in rural Wisconsin.
Hunnam plays Gein, a seemingly mild-mannered loner with an unhealthy obsession for his mother, residing on a run-down farm where solitude and psychosis ultimately lead him to commit unthinkable acts.
Behind closed doors, his fixation with his mother Augusta (played by Laurie Metcalf) intensifies, and the deadly combination of isolation and mental illness gives birth to a merciless predator.
Gein's appalling crimes, once exposed, served as a terrifying template for real-life monsters, prompting director Alfred Hitchcock (portrayed by Tom Hollander) to craft his thriller Psycho.
The series also explores Gein's connection with Adeline Watkins (Suzanna Son), a neighbour and occasional romantic partner - she even helps him with a grave robbery at one stage.
Nevertheless, it has left audiences baffled over whether Gein murdered his supposed girlfriend, Adeline, in the programme.
No, Gein didn't kill Adeline, despite the show placing her in danger multiple times throughout the eight-episode drama.
Like numerous characters in the programme, Adeline was indeed a real person, and there is evidence indicating that the duo did maintain a two-decade relationship - though Adeline herself has disputed this assertion.
Irrespective of whether they were romantically linked or not, it appears certain that Gein could not have murdered Adeline, as she remained alive when he was arrested and imprisoned.
After Gein's arrest for the murder of Bernice Worden, a 58 year old hardware shop owner from Plainfield, Adeline told the Minneapolis Tribune that Gein was "good and kind and sweet," that they had enjoyed a 20-year romance, and that he had proposed to her but she had refused - "but not because there was anything wrong with him. It was something wrong with me."
She also mentioned that he was "so nice about doing things I wanted to do that sometimes I felt I was taking advantage of him."
However, in a subsequent newspaper interview a few days later in 1957, Watkins refuted some of the quotes attributed to her in the previous interview, conceding only that she had accompanied Gein to the theatre on a few occasions.
Intriguingly, in Monster: The Ed Gein Story, the writers contemplated the notion of making Adeline merely a product of Gein's imagination, similar to numerous scenes portrayed in the programme, to mirror his tenuous grasp on reality.
Co-creators Brennan and Ryan Murphy even deliberated whether to disclose in the finale that Adeline wasn't genuine, but ultimately chose against it.
Brennan said: "We talked about that a lot. To me, she is real."
But lead Hunnam told Netflix he felt differently and explained: "My interpretation was that she's in a large part a fantasy of Ed's.
"He finds, whether in reality or in his mind, this sort of kindred spirit with Adeline, somebody who can relate and to understand these primal urges and instincts that he has."
The final scene between Gein and Adeline depicts him pressing her to carry on his killings, but she refuses and abandons him in the asylum.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story is streaming on Netflix now
