The official trailer for the highly anticipated second season of the Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan true-crime anthology Monsters is finally here. Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story will focus on real-life brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were convicted in 1996 for the murders of their parents, José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez.
Over the past couple of weeks, Netflix has been teasing what’s to come with season two. The official trailer for Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story showed us a lot in two minutes. So, we thought we’d break it down and talk about the parts that stood out to us.
Lyle is running the show
From the moment the trailer for Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story begins, it’s clear that Lyle (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) is running the show. He’s taking charge of everything while being the protective big brother. We see him doing a lot of the speaking for the both of them. He continues to say that their parents “would be proud” of them. He’s also doing his best to keep Erik strong while justifying the choice they made to kill their parents. And unlike Erik, we see a lot of Lyle happily enjoying life with their parents gone.
Erik is struggling
Throughout the trailer for Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, we see Erik (Cooper Koch) grappling with what he and Lyle did to their parents. He’s having nightmares and the guilt is eating away at him. That is to be expected though. Not just because he’s the younger brother, but also because making the choice to kill your parents is something we imagine would haunt you.
The spending extravaganza
If you followed the Menendez brother’s case, you know that one of the biggest things people spoke about was the fact that after the boys killed their parents, they went on shopping sprees. In peoples eyes, this behavior indicated that the killings were in fact motivated by greed. And not years of abuse as the boys claimed. We got a few glimpses of that shopping spree in the trailer as Lyle and Erik are living in the lap of luxury staying in fancy hotels, ordering room service literally asking how many shrimp they can get, getting new clothes, and fancy sports cars. Also, it wasn’t lost on us that the song used in the trailer is titled “Dirty Cash (Money Talks).”
The courtroom
Just as we expected, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story will feature many courtroom scenes. Anyone who watched the trial knows it was incredibly emotional when Lyle and Erik took the stand. They revealed in detail, a lot of the abuse they had experienced at the hands of their father. It was shocking stuff for the world to hear about young boys being abused. Watching those short moments in the trailer with Chavez and Koch gave us a preview that those two are about to deliver some amazing performances.
Who are the monsters?
One thing that is clear in the trailer for Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is that it makes the viewer question who the monsters are. Lyle and Erik’s father, Jose (Javier Bardem), is showcased as menacing, short-tempered, and violent towards the boys, while their mother, Kitty (Chloe Sevigny), appears to sit by silently and watch the abuse take place. Naturally one would say that the parents are the monsters but because there are also various scenes of Lyle and Erik seemingly having the time of their lives in the aftermath of the murders, the viewer would think the same could be said of them. The trailer ends with Lyle and Erik sitting on the prison bus, and they both start to crack a smile as if they’re sharing a secret that we’re not in on because in reality, nobody but the two of them knows what really happened and why. We think that’s exactly the way Murphy wanted it to be.
Check out the official trailer for Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story below:
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story premieres Thursday September 19th on Netflix.
