Charlie Hunnam’s most enduring role, Sons of Anarchy, lasted for seven seasons before he was surely weary of inhabiting one character for so long. Still, he made his way back to the small screen in recent years with Apple TV+’s Shantaram and will make another return to the wrong side of the law (with a non-violent twist) in Amazon’s Criminal series.
In contrast, the next series that shall arrive on the Hunnam roster will be incredibly violent. Ryan Murphy and Netflix’s Monster anthology show, which began with Evan Peters as Jeffrey Dahmer and followed up last month with Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez as the Menendez Brothers, will focus on a different murderer for a third season. Hunnam will step into those bloody shoes and (eek) perhaps into a “skin suit,” too. With that gore factor to come acknowledged, let’s talk about what Hunnam will do that will become the subject of countless viewers’ nightmares.
Plot
Hunnam has been tapped to portray Wisconsin-born killer Ed Gein ^^^, also known by the Plainfield Ghoul and Butcher of Plainfield labels. In 1957, Gein confessed to the murder of two people but was suspected of killing several others over the course of a decade. He also allegedly desecrated graves, snatched dead bodies, and then there’s the skin-peeling horror that inspired Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs. For that matter, Gein also inspired the Leatherface character in Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.
Gein, who died in 1984 from lung cancer at a psychiatric hospital in Madison, Wisconsin, was also the subject of a 2023 MGM+ docuseries, Psycho: The Lost Tapes of Ed Gein, which delved into his early life as well as his macabre “house of horrors.” Murphy has given no hints on the narrative form that his dramatization will take in the third season of Monster, but we can expect (as with previous seasons) for the show to continue sparking controversy and probably remain one of the most watched series in Netflix history.
At present, Hunnam has not given interviews about this role, but Ryan Murphy chose to publicly announce his choice for the third-season lead during the recent premiere of the second Monsters season.
Cast
Thus far, Netflix has only addressed the main role of Ed Gein, so we’re looking at Charlie Hunnam, which ain’t so bad. Unfortunately, he will be pretending to commit some of the worst atrocities imaginable.
Release Date
The first two seasons landed close to two years apart with Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story landing in Sept. 2022 and Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Mendendez Story arriving in Sept. 2024. If a pattern exists, then we can guess that Netflix will bring the Ed Gein season of Monster in Sept. 2026.
Trailer
Since it will be awhile before footage emerges, Sons of Anarchy clips present a chance to look back at Hunnam’s most homicidal scenes at Jax Teller. Below, The Godfather-bloodbath-style killing of drug kingpin August Marks isn’t the most brutal Jax Teller act by a long shot (the tattoo removal and the mistakenly targeted revenge for Tara’s murder probably take top prize), but it comes close and has the added visual of Jax disguised as the Grim Reaper.