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| Why Is Aileen Wuornos in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story? Netflix’s Strange Connection Explained. |
Aileen Wuornos appears in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story for a reason that has little to do with historical fact and a lot to do with the series’ interest in female rage, violence and the stories women tell themselves to make sense of what they have done. Netflix’s fourth season places Wuornos alongside Lizzie Borden despite the two women being separated by decades, very different lives and entirely different circumstances. In real life, there is no known relationship between them. In the series, however, Lizzie becomes an important figure in how Aileen understands her own story.
The timeline alone makes the fictional connection fairly obvious. Lizzie Borden died in 1927, while Aileen Wuornos was born in 1956, meaning the two women could never have met. Lizzie came from a wealthy Massachusetts family and was accused of killing her father, Andrew Borden, and stepmother, Abby Borden, before being acquitted.
Wuornos, meanwhile, was convicted of killing six men and was executed in 2002. Their cases have little in common beyond the fact that both became notorious figures whose stories have continued to attract public fascination.
That difference is precisely what Monster uses to its advantage. Rather than presenting Aileen as another chapter in Lizzie’s biography, the series connects the women through the idea of female anger and the ways people can interpret violence as an act of resistance. The season imagines Lizzie as having killed Andrew and Abby, then asks what might have driven her towards such an extreme act. Aileen’s storyline raises a similar question, although her circumstances are entirely different.
The connection becomes even more deliberate as Lizzie’s story develops. While staying with Bridget “Maggie” Sullivan, she encounters the story of Elizabeth Bathory, the Hungarian noblewoman whose infamous legend becomes another influence on Lizzie’s increasingly dark imagination. The series uses these stories almost like a chain reaction. Bathory influences Lizzie, Lizzie eventually becomes a figure of fascination for Aileen, and Aileen then interprets Lizzie’s actions through the lens of her own life.
That is where the show’s version of Aileen becomes particularly interesting. She sees Lizzie as someone who, in her interpretation, fought back against people who had mistreated her. Aileen consequently starts to view her own actions through the same framework. The comparison gives her a way to understand herself not simply as someone who killed six men, but as someone who believed she had been fighting back against a world that had repeatedly failed her.
It is also why the series spends time on Aileen’s fascination with the idea that Lizzie got away with it. Lizzie was acquitted and remained free for the rest of her life, while Aileen's story ends very differently.
That contrast becomes one of the more important ideas running through their intertwined stories. For Aileen, Lizzie represents an alternate ending: the woman who committed an act of violence and then walked away from the courtroom.
There is, however, a rather large problem with taking this connection literally. There is no known evidence that Aileen Wuornos was fascinated by Lizzie Borden in real life. The series’ depiction of Aileen staying at the Borden house with her girlfriend Shelby is also fictional. The Borden property existed long before Wuornos was born, but it did not begin operating as a bed-and-breakfast until 1996. By then, Wuornos was already imprisoned.
Her real-life relationship with Tyria Moore also does not match the show's fictionalised version. Wuornos met Moore in 1986, and Wuornos was imprisoned by 1991. So while she could theoretically have known about the Borden house, the particular sequence shown in Monster Season 4 does not have a documented historical basis.
The season is therefore less interested in proving that Aileen knew Lizzie than in asking what happens when one notorious woman becomes a story through which another woman understands herself.
It is a recurring idea within the Monster franchise, which has previously connected historical figures with people living decades later. The third season, for example, drew a parallel between Ed Gein and actor Anthony Perkins, whose work on Psycho was shaped by research into the murderer.
Here, the connection is more intimate. Lizzie is not simply a historical figure Aileen happens to encounter. She becomes part of Aileen’s personal mythology. The series essentially turns Lizzie into a symbol of the life Aileen wishes she could have had after her crimes: freedom, wealth and survival beyond the courtroom.
That also explains the ending. After Aileen is executed, the series gives her a fictional meeting with Lizzie and Maggie on the other side. It is a deliberately constructed conclusion rather than a historical event, bringing together three women whose stories are separated by generations. Lizzie survived her trial and lived freely after her acquittal, while Aileen never received the same outcome. The imagined reunion gives Aileen something history did not: a version of closure.
In my view, this is one of the more intriguing creative choices in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, even if it is also one of the least historically grounded. The show clearly knows these women never belonged in the same timeline, which almost makes the decision more interesting. It is not really saying, “Here is the secret connection nobody knew about.” It is saying, “What if one infamous woman became another infamous woman’s explanation for herself?”
That is a much more interesting question. At times, the symbolism is laid on a little thick, particularly when Lizzie effectively becomes Aileen’s imagined guide into the afterlife. But the contrast between Lizzie’s acquittal and Aileen’s fate gives the storyline a sharp dramatic purpose. History provides the names; Monster provides the rather dark thought experiment.
Ultimately, Aileen Wuornos is in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story because the series wants Lizzie’s story to echo beyond 1892, rather than because the two women had a documented personal connection. The fictional relationship gives the season a way to explore how women accused or convicted of extreme violence can become symbols for one another, particularly when ideas of survival, revenge and freedom become tangled together.
It also gives Aileen a fictional ending that contrasts directly with her real fate. Whether you think the connection adds something meaningful to the season or pushes the symbolism too far, it certainly gives viewers plenty to debate. Did the Lizzie-Aileen storyline work for you, or would the season have been stronger without it?