Why Color Green is Important in Monster: The Ed Gein Story — And What It Really Means

Netflix has a new Monster season, and this time it is Ed Gein. Beyond the usual true-crime chill, the show leans hard on one visual obsession that keeps popping up like a bad omen: green. It is not subtle, and that is kind of the point.

• Name: Monster: The Ed Gein Story
• Creators: Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan
• Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Suzanna Son, Vicky Krieps, Laurie Metcalf, Tom Hollander
• Rotten Tomatoes: 19%
• Streaming: Netflix

The show is basically color-coding Ed Gein's brain

Fans have been trading theories on Instagram about why the series keeps bathing key moments in green. The show never spells it out, but it is everywhere: a kettle of tea, car headlights, Bernice's blood, even Ed's underwear — all reading as green through his eyes. There is literally an episode called 'Green.' If you did not notice it the first time, you will once it is pointed out.

The read that makes the most sense tracks back to his mother, Augusta. She drilled into him that women like Bernice were impure. So when Ed 'sees' Bernice's blood as green, it is his warped filter at work: she is tainted, and killing her is, in his mind, a twisted kind of cleansing. Later, once he is in treatment, he swaps into a brown sweater. It is a small wardrobe shift that quietly signals he is stepping out of his mother's shadow, at least symbolically.

Bottom line: green becomes the show's shorthand for rot and moral corrosion — the visual echo of a mind that cannot tell the difference between reality and the story it has built to survive.

Charlie Hunnam went deep on the mother-son dynamic

Charlie Hunnam, who plays Gein, did the heavy-lift prep and came away convinced that Augusta was the axis of everything. He told Tudum that Gein lived in near-total isolation and built his entire identity around what his mother demanded. Hunnam says Ed did not have an authentic voice; he put on a performance for her because that is what kept him safe.

"He was this bizarre guy that lived in his own world, in his own reality, in total isolation with only one other point of contact," Hunnam told Tudum, adding that Augusta's resentment shaped him. "It wasn't an authentic voice that lived in him. It was this persona, it was this character that he was playing because his mother desperately wanted a daughter, and she was given a son. In her more hostile, vile moments, she would tell him, 'I should have castrated you at birth.'"

In Hunnam's read, the mannerisms and the meek, boyish posture are a mask — Ed acting out who he thinks Augusta wants, which spirals into who he becomes.

The finale almost had a very different title — and ending

Ryan Murphy says the last episode (the one that ended up being called 'The Godfather') originally carried the title 'Momma's Boy' and was set to double down even harder on the Augusta angle. He told Tudum they scrapped that plan and pivoted to something styled after 'All That Jazz,' reframing the climax around Gein's influence on later killers.

Murphy points to the grim legacy: men like Richard Speck and Ted Bundy who, for all the wrong reasons, fixated on Gein. The final cut leans into that — Ed imagines the serial killers he inspired, then reunites with Augusta in death, where she tells him he has made a name for himself. It is a bleak curtain call, but it fits the show's thesis about notoriety and the rot it spreads.

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