Monster: The Ed Gein Story episode 1 introduces us to the titular serial killer of Plainfield, Wisconsin, as he stalks the supposed love of his life, Adeline, as she and her friend, Madison, are checking out how they look in their underwear. Ed gets excited and starts rocking back and forth, causing the floorboards to creak. The girls almost discover Ed, but the creep manages to bolt out of Adeline’s house before anyone can spot him. After getting back home, Ed partakes in some explicit activities whilst wearing his mother’s knickers. Unfortunately, this time he’s unable to get the “job” done before Augusta Gein, Ed’s mother, barges into the room, and finds him in that state. Ed’s mother then drags him into the living room, while he’s still stark naked, and chastises him for his unholy activities. Once that’s over, the topic then swiftly shifts to Ed’s love for Adeline, and Augusta warns him to never be with that woman, or any other woman for that matter. However, a few moments later, we see him meeting with Adeline at the local diner, where they sip on milkshakes and have a casual conversation about what’s being done to the Jews at concentration camps by the Nazis and discuss the work of Ilse Koch, also known as the Witch of Buchenwald, via the pulp magazine written in her honor. Ed was already fascinated by the pictures of dead bodies, but Koch supposedly inspires him on an artistic level. What happens next? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Ed Kills Henry
Ed is busy chopping some firewood at the barn when his brother, Henry, shows up and announces that he is going to marry a girl named Ginny. Ed says that Henry can’t do that, because Ginny has divorced twice, and their mother won’t allow a union with such a woman. Henry replies that he is done listening to their mother, and he hopes that one day Ed will also escape the cage that she has been keeping them in. As Henry tries to explain that their mother is sick in the head, Ed gets angry and doesn’t want to have a discussion on that topic. So, Henry gives Ed a final piece of advice about leaving their mother in the rearview mirror as soon as possible, and he proceeds to leave. That’s when Ed strikes his brother with a piece of chopped wood, and Henry dies on the spot. While transporting the firewood home, Ed imagines Henry getting up, shrugging off the injury on his head, taking back all the ill stuff he has said about their mother, promising that he’ll make amends with her, and then shutting the doors of the barn.
This false conversation warms Ed’s heart, and he resumes his journey to his house. While having dinner, Ed checks with Augusta if Henry has fulfilled the (imaginary) promise that he made, and Augusta says that she hasn’t seen Henry for a whole week. In fact, she disowns Henry as her son because she is sure that he has run away with Ginny. Then she goes on an absolute rant about how her family life has been a complete failure, how she was “defiled” twice by her husband, George Gein, and how she got 2 good-for-nothing sons even though she wanted daughters. Also, she keeps saying the term “only a mother could love you,” which is just another way of saying that he is unworthy of love, but as a mother, since she is sort of obligated to be affectionate towards him, she is tolerating his presence. I’m not sure if Ed understands the gravity of that phrase; he probably interprets it as his mother’s way of saying that she loves him and gets happy about it.
Ed Imagines Ilse’s Party
The nightmare begins as Ed discovers that he had imagined Henry talking to him about reuniting with Augusta, whereas in reality, his brother is still very dead. So, he drags Henry’s body into the bushes, stacks a bunch of branches, broken pieces of wood, and shrubs on him, and sets them on fire with a blowtorch. Now, before anyone questions the historical accuracy of this, I have to say that blowtorches did exist back in the ‘40s. As for the authenticity of how Henry’s death is portrayed, the official reason for Henry’s death, in real life, is asphyxiation caused by heart failure while he was burning down marsh vegetation on the Gein property. Even though bruises on Henry’s head were spotted, Ed wasn’t blamed for murder; it was only speculated that Ed might have killed Henry. But Monster: The Ed Gein Story, being a Ryan Murphy production, claims that Ed straight-up killed Henry, hid his body in a pile of wood, set it on fire, and claimed that he had died of asphyxiation. So, yeah, feel free to accept whichever narrative you want. After returning home from the coroner, Ed tells his mother that Henry wasn’t a good son. He knows that, of the 2 of them, Augusta loved Henry more.
But now with Henry gone, Ed says that he’ll fill his shoes as efficiently as possible. While he’s saying all this, he notices that his mother isn’t responding and is sobbing away. As he gets closer, he realizes that Augusta has suffered a stroke. He rushes her to the doctor’s, and the bottom line is that he’ll need to take care of his mother at all times. While giving her a bath, Ed seemingly imagines Koch cleaning the dead body of a Jewish prisoner. That leads to a full-fledged Zone of Interest-esque sequence where there’s a party going on in Koch’s house where the servers are Jewish prisoners; there’s a kid named Henriette who is interested in shaving the heads of Jewish girls; and then later on, Koch rides a donkey inside her house and chases after a Jewish woman. Now, as far as I know, Koch initially had 1 son, Artwin, and 2 daughters, Gisela and Gudrun. Now, we see Gisela, but the other two children’s names have been changed? Hence, Artwin is Gustav, and Gudrun is Henriette? Possibly. But why? I am not exactly sure. Maybe those are the kids’ nicknames.
Ed’s Mother Dies
The Nazi imagination segment comes to an end when Ed hears his mother calling for him because she wants to go to the Smiths’ farm and collect the $10 rent that they owe the Geins. Ed says that Augusta shouldn’t be physically exerting herself because she isn’t all that healthy. He tells her to rest while he goes and collects the money. Augusta points out that it’s due to Ed’s weak nature that the Smiths have become brave enough to withhold rent. Hence, Augusta has no option but to take matters into her own hands. Ed realizes that there’s no point arguing with his mother, and both of them head over to the Smiths to confront them. As expected, Augusta gets really worked up while asking for her money, and she suffers yet another stroke. She is unable to survive this one, and she dies. After doing her final rites, Ed walks all the way from the cemetery to his house and then proceeds to sit in the rocking chair where Augusta used to sit all the time. That’s when he hears Augusta’s voice screaming at him to get off that chair, and he promptly jumps away from it. When he sits down on it a second time, he doesn’t hear anything.
The next day, after doing his daily chores, he goes back to his old ways of wearing his mother’s knickers and doing seedy stuff. That’s when he hears his mother’s voice again, telling him to stop doing such activities. Augusta says that if he wants her to come back so desperately, he can just resurrect her. Hence, he rushes to Plainfield Cemetery and begins digging up her body. When he is unable to get to Augusta’s corpse, he takes out the body of the woman lying next to his mother’s grave and brings her body home. He puts her on the chair that his mother used to sit in and then disrobes her. What he does next is left to our imagination—if that’s something that you want to imagine. That part is left ambiguous because the real-life Ed always claimed that he wasn’t a fan of necrophilia. However, this is a Ryan Murphy production; if there’s a disputed piece of information out there, he is going to make sure that it is presented as an absolute fact. What’s true is that Augusta did die of a second stroke, and she was buried at the Plainfield Cemetery. Whether Ed actually got her out of her grave or was unable to do so for whatever reason hasn’t been confirmed. Ed did confirm that the name of the woman whose body he dug out of her grave was Adams, and experts say that every single body he dug out served as a proxy for Augusta. Sometimes, he wouldn’t even take the whole body home, just parts. But yeah, that’s just the tip of the iceberg that’s Ed Gein.
