Monster: The Ed Gein Story Offers A Netflix Series Crossover No One Saw Coming

Spoilers for the "Monster: The Ed Gein Story" season finale, "The Godfather," ahead.

Back in 2022, "Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story" became an overnight phenomenon for Netflix, kickstarting a Ryan Murphy entertainment industrial complex based on famous serial killers that's grown more and more popular with every new season (even as the show's reviews have gotten worse and worse). Now, Murphy's latest entry in the anthology series, "Monster: The Ed Gein Story," has focused on arguably the most influential serial killer in history — at least when it comes to his impact on popular culture.

"The Ed Gein Story" tells the tale of Ed Gein (as played by Charlie Hunnam), a horrific murderer who may not be as well-known as Ted Bundy, but whose real-life crimes have inspired virtually every horror movie villain you know. Indeed, Gein helped inspire the primary villains in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," Tobe Hooper's "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," and even Jonathan Demme's "The Silence of the Lambs." Murphy, however, elects to bring his story to the screen by trading in all that horror for, well, intense horniness.

But that's not the only baffling choice the latest "Monster" season makes. In the season finale, "The Godfather," Murphy delivers a bizarre crossover with a beloved canceled Netflix show: "Mindhunter." That's right, the David Fincher series fans have been hoping would return since its second season debuted in 2019 (a whopping six years ago).

Murphy isn't subtle about this, either. In the first 12 minutes of the episode, "The Ed Gein Story" deliberately changes its look to evoke the visual style of "Mindhunter." After that, we jump from Ted Bundy (John T. O'Brien) murdering two women to a scene in a prison, as FBI agents John Douglas (Sean Carrigan) and Robert Ressler (Caleb Ruminer) arrive to interview Jerry "Shoe Fetish Slayer" Brudos (Happy Anderson, reprising his role from "Mindhunter").

It's worth noting that this isn't simply Murphy nodding to another popular Netflix show about serial killers. For one, the series' timelines don't align, and there is little chance Gein interacted with the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit. No, rest assured, this has nothing to do with sticking to what happened in real life. On top of Anderson reprising his "Mindhunter" role, Douglas and Ressler are specifically dressed and styled like Holden Ford and Bill Tench, the FBI agents portrayed by Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany on that series, respectively. (Carrigan, in particular, bears an uncanny resemblance to McCallany as Tench.). "Monster" even casts Megan Ketch as Professor Ann Burgess, who sports pretty much the exact same haircut as Anna Torv's Professor Wendy Carr on "Mindhunter."

The whole thing comes across as Temu "Mindhunter," i.e. a glossy, cheaper version of the real thing. Murphy may be playing in the same world as Fincher's show, but his approach is so vastly different from the latter's that this "crossover" ends up being a distraction. Still, if the popularity of Murphy's sexy serial killer universe leads to "Mindhunter" being revived (either with a third season or the proposed movie trilogy), then maybe it will all be worth it. Maybe.

""Monster: The Ed Gein Story" is now streaming on Netflix.