Spoilers for Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story Episode 5 follow. Netflix’s drama has Lizzie and Maggie carry out Andrew Borden’s murder together: Maggie takes the opening chop, then Lizzie joins the attack. The sequence completes the show’s invented two-person explanation for the Borden killings.
The episode should be read as a scripted interpretation. Netflix’s ending guide says the series extrapolates from the idea that Lizzie and Maggie were close and that Maggie may have been involved. It does not claim that its staging resolves the historical case.
- Release date: September 17, 2026
- Episode: Season 1, Episode 5
- Genre: Historical crime drama
- Streaming on: Netflix
Maggie begins the second killing
After the series devotes Episode 4 to Abby’s death, Episode 5 turns to Andrew. Netflix identifies Maggie as taking the opening chop at Andrew, while Lizzie follows through. The division of action is deliberate: it presents the pair as collaborators, not as a killer and a bystander.
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The show also connects Andrew to Maggie’s earlier exploitative relationship with him. That gives the episode a motive the historical record cannot definitively supply and folds the second murder into the emotional logic the season has constructed between the two women.
The sequence makes partnership its answer
Lizzie and Maggie’s shared role is the core change in the drama’s account. The series does not leave the audience with an unknowable perpetrator or a courtroom mystery. It offers a clear answer inside its own narrative, using their alliance to explain how the household’s violence becomes a coordinated act.
That certainty is also why the episode needs the preceding build-up. Abby’s killing has already committed both women to the plan. Andrew’s return turns that commitment into the moment where they have to act together rather than continue imagining an escape from the Borden home.
The sequence also explains why the drama divides the two attacks between episodes. Episode 5 is not replaying the same event. It asks what happens when the first act of violence has made a second one seem inevitable, even as the characters confront its human cost.
That escalation gives the hour a grim sense of finality.
The final answer remains Netflix’s, not history’s
The historical Lizzie Borden was acquitted, and no court established that she and Bridget Sullivan killed Andrew and Abby. The series’ choice to place Maggie in the room and give her the first blow belongs to this dramatization, including its speculative romance and its invented emotional context.
That separation does not make the episode’s scene less important as storytelling. It tells viewers exactly what this Monster season believes happened, while preserving the distinction between a television conclusion and an unresolved historical record. Does the show’s certainty make its ending more powerful? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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