Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menéndez Story, the second season in Ryan Murphy and Netflix’s anthology focused on provocative true-crime stories.With its moody lighting, dramatic music, and extended, passionate embrace between handsome actors Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch—playing Lyle and Erik, respectively—the teaser left us with one question: Wait a minute, is this supposed to be homoerotic?Well, now that the season has premiered, we have our answer, and it’s a queasy, uncomfortable, and controversial….
yes???Subscribe to our newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer.If you weren’t already familiar, The Menéndez Brothers’ trials for the murder of their parents, José and Kitty, were one of the media sensations of the ’90s.
At first, the siblings’ maintained their innocence and it was believed to have been a mafia hit on their wealthy and powerful family, but after a tape was leaked of Erik confessing to his psychologist, the young men claimed it was in retaliation to a childhood of psychological and physical abuse at the hands of their parents.In 1996, Lyle and Erik Menéndez were convicted of murder and sentenced to life in person without parole.Throughout the case’s media circus, a number of rumors about the brothers swirled, including the notion that, perhaps, Lyle and Erik were incestuous lovers who plotted to kill their parents after they’d been found out.
Though that claim was unsubstantiated, Lyle did tearfully admit to perpetrating their father’s cycle of abuse toward his younger brother, while questions lingered around Erik’s sexuality, especially after prosecutor Pamela Bozanich asserted he was gay and having sex with inmates.To this day, both men maintain the are straight, and both have even gotten married to women while serving out their life sentences.All of which is to say, the story around the Menéndez brothers is nuanced and quite complicated.