Monster: The Ed Gein Story Episode 2 recap revisited: Ed crosses the line between madness and reality

The third season of Netflix’s crime docuseries Monster, titled Monster: The Ed Gein Story, dropped on October 3, 2025.

The storyline is centered on Ed Gein, the notorious Wisconsin murderer and grave robber, whose actions contributed to the horror film genre and would be the harbinger of introducing death back onto the screen. The Monster is an anthology series, where a different narrative of well-known criminals is presented each season.

The first season featured the story of Jeffrey Dahmer, and the second featured the Menendez Brothers. Now, in the latest third season of the anthology series, the story of Ed Gein is featured.

Created by Ian Brennan and Ryan Murphy, the Netflix series dramatizes actual criminals by integrating the real facts and the cultural commentary through narratives. Monster: The Ed Gein Story preserves this tradition by dramatizing Gein's deteriorating psyche and his contributions to the horror genre.

In the series, the role of Ed Gein was portrayed by Charlie Hunnam, and all eight episodes were made available by the streaming giant simultaneously.

Monster: The Ed Gein Story Episode 2, Sick as Your Secrets, chronicles the increasingly deteriorating mental health of Ed Gein, his obsession with death, and the blurring of reality and fiction as Hollywood begins the production of the film Psycho, based on his murders.

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Monster: The Ed Gein Story Episode 2 recap

Monster: The Ed Gein Story Episode 2 dives further into the cold darkness of Ed Gein’s mind, tracing the evil transformation that would ultimately make his name the very embodiment of the horrors of America.

The first episode of Monster: The Ed Gein Story shocked the audience with some of Ed’s awful things, like killing his own brother and trying to bring his mother back to life in a horrible way.

The second episode, on the other hand, shows the entire process of how these crazy ideas possessed Ed and spread across the different areas of his life. This darkness, which was brooding within Ed's mind, was now spilled outward, distorting his already shattered relationships and seeping into the core of the Plainfield residents.

In the middle of all this stands Adeline Watkins, a woman whose entrance into Ed’s life became both hope and a tragic turning point. In a town that kept Ed aloof, Adeline was the only soul who showed him kindness. Perhaps she sensed his vulnerability, or maybe she merely saw his loneliness and desired the same connection.

To Adeline, Ed was peculiar but harmless, a man defined by sadness, not bloodlust. But she could never have known the depths of his obsession, or the macabre rituals that were taking over his hidden world. Their friendship was always given on borrowed time, bound for failure by the overpowering influence of Augusta Gein.

Augusta’s lessons, hammered into Ed since the time he was a child, positioned women as seducers and menaces, “Jezebel,” as she would put it, not worthy of her son. Still, Ed craved love and acceptance so much that he defied the lessons ringing in his mind. His desire for love crashed into the gruesome inheritance his mother had bequeathed, and the turmoil brewed inside him was deadly.

With his grip on reality slipping, Ed became increasingly obsessed with Adeline. He fooled himself into believing that, should Adeline ever sit down with his mother, even in her dead form, something would be healed within him.

From this fantasy grew one of the most shocking scenes of Monster: The Ed Gein Story. When Adeline eventually entered the Gein household, the squalor assailed her immediately: the smell of rot, the grime, the oppressive miasmic quality that appeared to linger upon every surface.

Ed’s summons up the stairs seemed harmless until she saw the form seated stiffly in a chair. Initially, she attempted to greet Mrs. Gein, but something broke the illusion of safety. Adeline ran off terrified with the sense that something was eerily not right.

Monster: The Ed Gein Story Episode 2 draws a direct correlation between Adeline’s experience and the production of the film Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock, and suggests the thesis that her story influenced the film’s most iconic scenes, specifically the infamous shower scene.

The story shifts again to Mary Hogan, a woman who unknowingly becomes the object of Ed’s obsession. Mary, a local bartender, shared some similarities to Augusta Gein. For Ed, the lines between mother and victim became blurred in dangerous ways.

His mind, corrupted by stories of Ilse Koch, the Nazi war criminal infamous for making household items from human skin, began to entertain darker thoughts. Ed’s mind was the territory where the forbidden and the ordinary coexisted, and Mary became the next target of his sick fascination and wrath.

The day he snapped, it was sudden and brutal: he accused her of being unworthy of his mother’s memory, then killed her with a gunshot. That wasn't the end of the horror as he took her corpse away, leaving the town in total astonishment. The silent handyman, the strange yet innocent neighbor, had performed an act that others would never guess. The horror of the murder jolted the town’s sense of security and made every resident ponder the true nature of their acquaintances.

Monster: The Ed Gein Story contrasts the reality of Ed Gein with the creative obsessions of Alfred Hitchcock, who was fascinated by the Gein case. Hitchcock and his wife, screenwriter Robert Bloch, unraveled the meaning of Gein's killings. They recognized in Ed not the demon of horror or the classical monster, but something far darker, a human who was depraved because of ordinary suffering and repression.

In the case of Hitchcock, the fear evoked by Gein’s story was the very fact that such a nasty thing could be hidden in a dull-looking person, in a simple place, and in an uninteresting town like any other. This perception was the one that directed Psycho, guiding Hitchcock in picking Anthony Perkins for the role of Norman Bates.

Perkins, who had his own difficulties in life, represented the duality that the director was looking for, a character who was both appealing and terrifying, and whose purity might turn into craziness at any time.

Perkins committed himself to the role, observing the mannerisms of Gein and living within his damaged world. He wore women’s clothing, worked side by side with Hitchcock to have the set evoke the claustrophobic horror of the Gein home, and immersed himself in the role.

The episode of Monster: The Ed Gein Story was so intense, by all accounts, that Perkins literally became ill, sickened by the truth. Hitchcock, though, would not shy away from the darkness, pushing the boundaries of what the audience could stomach. He went against censors, seeking for the viewer to be confronted by an uncomfortable truth: monsters are not always horrific. They lurk behind the most innocent of facades, existing within the hearts of individuals who seem normal.

When Psycho was finally released, the world was shocked. They were not prepared for the graphic depiction of psychological horror, and many exited theaters before the film’s finale, because they could not make sense of what they were watching. Hitchcock wanted not just to terrify, but to provoke, to make his audience question the very nature of evil. Not only did the film radically reform the horror film genre, but the manner in which society framed monstrosity.

Through the lens of Monster: The Ed Gein Story, we are forced to confront an unsettling reality: the most terrifying horrors are not ghosts or supernatural forces, but the capacity for darkness that lies dormant within the human mind. In Episode 2, viewers get the idea of how Ed Gein’s story is a reminder that evil can be banal, lurking just beneath the surface of the everyday, ready to emerge when least expected.

This episode of Monster: The Ed Gein Story leaves viewers not just horrified but irrevocably changed in the way they perceive the world and the people around them.