The Feminine Urge To Binge-Watch A Serial Killer

Scroll through social media long enough and you will inevitably stumble upon a meme about women “unwinding” after a long day by putting on a crime documentary. Picture a glass of wine in their hands, the lights dimmed and a serial killer grinning shamelessly on Netflix. And while this ritual often extends to horror and psychological thrillers, crime in particular seems to exert a peculiar pull. Madhuri Dixit recently returned to the OTT space with Mrs Deshpande (2025), a six-episode series adapted from the French thriller La Mante (2017). Dixit’s character operates as a female serial killer, whose targets range from paedophiles and rapists to corrupt politicians. While the series received mixed reviews, its existence invites a larger question: why a star of Dixit’s stature chose to inhabit a female serial killer at this moment and what this signals about the thematic currents that are shaping OTT viewership trends.

According to Vivint Security’s US-based research, true crime fans spend an average of 3.8 hours a week consuming the genre, with Netflix emerging as the most watched platform. More strikingly, women are 2.5 times more likely than men to watch true crime as a way to prepare for unsafe situations. Among viewers who have previously been victims of crime, one in three said the genre helped them respond better when danger arose. From Dahmer (2022) and Mindhunter (2017–2019) to Zodiac (2007), women form a disproportionately large section of the audience consuming true crime content. This is often framed lazily as morbid fascination or voyeurism. So what is it about stories of real violence, investigation and moral transgression that feel so irresistible, even comforting, to so many people, especially women? 

True crime, especially in its OTT incarnation, has become a cultural language through which these narratives organise fear, power and justice in ways the real world rarely does. Fictional narratives around crime also mirror how women are taught to move through the world: Trust your instincts, carry tasers, notice any shadows or suspicious vehicles. Women have turned into literal detectives protecting their mere existence in public and private. In the real world, violence against women is frequently met with social disbelief, bureaucratic delay or outright erasure.

On screen—despite the setbacks—evidence is gathered, someone listens and hopefully, justice is served. According to the Vivint study, watching investigators pursue truth offers a symbolic reversal of everyday powerlessness. Even when narrative closure is denied, the uncertainty itself is respected as an outcome. Justice may be incomplete but the attempt itself emerges as cathartic.

Women are perhaps not watching a single archetype anymore, but are possibly exposed to a wider spectrum of female antagonists who operate across different narrative logics: chaos, intellect, vengeance, repression and survival. This diversity mirrors the complexity of women’s real emotional and social negotiations. Fictional female killers destabilise the genre by forcing a confrontation with gendered assumptions about violence. However, these characters mostly aren’t tunnel-visioned killers—they expose cultural anxieties about women who desire autonomy and control. Characters like Karishma in Delhi Crime : Season 2 (2022), Villanelle in Killing Eve (2018–2022), Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct (1992) and Annie Wilkes in Misery (1990) refuse the idea of passive femininity.

In many of these stories, violence becomes a metaphor for reclaiming agency. In Bulbbul (2020), Choti Bahu’s (Bulbbul’s) transformation into a supernatural avenger is explicitly tied to reclaiming herself from patriarchal violence and sexual abuse. Similarly, Jennifer’s Body (2009) reframes the “monstrous woman” as a product of exploitation, turning horror into feminist rage. These narratives are about imagining justice in a world where legal and social systems routinely fail women. Fiction allows space for morally ambiguous thrill and the pleasure of watching the downfall of abusers in the most satisfying way possible.

True crime often becomes a form of survival literacy. In most cases, women watch these narratives to understand how violence often arrives through the trojan horse of charm, proximity and familiarity. Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes (2019) and Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile (2019), which dramatises Ted Bundy’s crimes, are pertinent examples. The film’s most unsettling insight is rooted in how charm, good looks and apparent normalcy disarm suspicion.

Similarly, The Serpent (2021) chronicles how Charles Sobhraj weaponised politeness and trust to murder backpackers across Southeast Asia. Dahaad (2023), inspired by the true crimes of Cyanide Mohan places Vijay Varma’s Anand Swarnakar—a psychopathic professor and serial killer, at the forefront. A Dalit woman police officer, Anjali Bhaati (Sonakshi Sinha) is at the story’s investigative core, shifting the perspective of authority. The series highlights how he charmingly manipulates vulnerable women through marriage, before murdering them for financial gain or jewellery. There is, however, also a darker phenomenon that cannot be ignored if Ted Bundy is being named. A subset of women are drawn not just to the stories but to the killers themselves. Ted Bundy’s infamy, love letters and courtroom admirers are well-documented. This is about the halo effect: the cognitive bias where attractiveness, charisma or confidence distort moral judgment. 

Sometimes, even with perceived goodwill, these documentaries and true crime shows risk prioritising the internal world of the killer over the victims and survivors. The public eye becomes dangerously ambiguous, whether it is a real-life killer or a fictional one. Serial killers are transformed into objects of fascination rather than caution. Women are not immune to this manipulation, but neither are they uniquely susceptible. You (2018–2024) is a prime example. Despite Penn Badgley’s repeated insistence that Joe Goldberg is not meant to be likeable, audiences continue to describe him as romantic and passionate. The show frames stalking and violence as a cautionary tale, with admirable writing, although it reflects how media aesthetics blur ethical lines.

Women gravitate towards such narratives because they are also exercises in pattern recognition. They map how manipulation works through layers and how institutions continually fail to protect women. This is why understanding the psyche, for example, in shows like Mindhunter (2017–2019), becomes a form of vigilance.

Another aspect that deserves sustained attention is the collective way in which women tend to engage with true crime. It circulates through shared listening and viewing practices—through podcasts, personal blogs and exchanges between group chats that dissect episodes in real time. There are also several dedicated online forums where discussions are held with substantial rigour. What emerges from this genre is a radical form of communal interpretation.

Within these shared spaces, fear is not only acknowledged but legitimised. As women compare cases and identify recurring patterns of behaviour, true crime begins to function as a shared interpretive language. An app called “Tea” is an interesting phenomenon where women share details and stories about the dangerous men they went on dates with, for others to avoid engaging with them. Similarly, there are other forums on Reddit  like r/TheGirlSurvivorGuide or r/femaletravels, that allow women to seek and provide safety and general advice based on their experiences. These spaces allow lived-in anxieties to be situated within larger structures of violence, power and systemic failure, offering coherence to what often feels like scattered or unspeakable unease.

There are women who are curiously fascinated with crime and a sense of guilt emerges because the pleasure is both vicarious and morally complex. The genre thus exposes the ethical ambiguity of finding entertainment in other people’s suffering, while also providing a way to engage with a world that is unpredictable and unsafe—to process fears that are both personal and societal. In this sense, the genre eventually reveals the conditions that make such stories feel necessary and persistently resonant.