Spoilers for Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story follow. Netflix’s drama makes Lizzie Borden and Bridget Sullivan lovers, a major creative addition rather than a settled fact of the 1892 case. The change gives the household story an intimate emotional center, but viewers should not mistake the show’s relationship for historical proof.
That distinction is central to the season’s approach. Netflix has marketed Monster as scripted drama, and its official cast guide identifies Vicky Krieps’ Bridget as the housekeeper whose arrival draws Lizzie into a relationship. The historical record is much thinner than the series’ confident dramatic version.
- Release date: September 17, 2026
- Series: Season 4 of Monster
- Genre: Historical crime drama
- Streaming on: Netflix
The romance is a dramatic interpretation
The show turns Lizzie and Bridget’s bond into a secret romance within the Borden home. That gives the title character a relationship through which the series can explore isolation, class and desire, but it also moves beyond what is documented about the two women.
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Bridget, often called Maggie in the drama, was the Bordens’ live-in maid. Her presence during the murders makes her important to the historical case. It does not independently establish the relationship Netflix depicts. The responsible way to read these scenes is as the series’ interpretation of a notorious story.
The change raises the stakes inside the house
By placing a romance at the center of Lizzie’s home life, the series makes the Borden household feel less like a collection of famous case-file names. Bridget is no longer only a witness or employee in the background. She becomes someone whose closeness to Lizzie gives every family conflict another private consequence.
That choice also sharpens the power imbalance the story is already built around. Lizzie is a member of the family; Bridget works in the house. A relationship does not erase that gap. The drama uses it to make the household’s rules, pressures and silences matter before the crime becomes the defining event.
It also gives Bridget a fuller dramatic function than a historical outline alone could supply. Whether that emotional expansion feels persuasive is a matter of interpretation, but it is plainly a choice by the writers rather than a conclusion supplied by the record.
Nance O’Neil belongs to a different chapter
The romance plot should not be confused with Lizzie’s later real-life friendship with actor Nance O’Neil, played here by Jessica Barden. Accounts of Lizzie’s post-trial life have long connected the friendship with her split from Emma, but that later association is separate from Netflix’s invented Lizzie-Bridget relationship.
Netflix’s change is useful because it tells viewers what kind of story this is: an interpretation of history, not a documentary verdict. Does the romance deepen the drama’s version of Lizzie, or make the real case harder to see clearly? Share your view in the comments.
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