Lizzie Borden Takes September

September belonged to a woman acquitted in 1893. Lizzie Borden added more than thirteen million views — a nearly fifteenfold jump to just over fourteen million, by far the month's largest gain — after Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, the fourth season of Netflix's true-crime anthology and the first built around a woman and around someone never convicted, premiered on September 17. The season pulled its whole call sheet onto the chart: Vicky Krieps, who plays the Bordens' maid Bridget Sullivan, rose fifteenfold, alongside Charlie Hunnam and Rebecca Hall as the murdered Andrew and Abby Borden and Jessica Barden as the actress Nance O'Neil. Its detours did the same work. Sarah Paulson appears as Aileen Wuornos, who climbed almost tenfold to become the month's fourth-biggest riser; Krieps doubles as Elizabeth Báthory, up nearly sevenfold; and Ed Gein, the subject of last year's season, rose again. Even the lead's parents moved: Ella Beatty, who plays Lizzie, is the daughter of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, and both gained. True crime filled the rest of the podium. Elizabeth Holmes rose twenty-one-fold after You Can See Everything, an A24 documentary by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim filmed in the weeks before she reported to prison, premiered as a surprise screening at Telluride on September 6 — Fielder himself rose twentyfold — and again when the Bureau of Prisons disclosed on September 22 that she had been approved for transfer to a Texas halfway house next August. Ted Kaczynski gained more than sixfold on the September 25 release of Netflix's Unabomber, starring Russell Crowe, which also lifted cast member Shailene Woodley.

Sport's contribution came from Flushing Meadows. Elena Rybakina beat defending champion Aryna Sabalenka 6–4, 5–7, 6–2 for her first US Open title and her second major of the year, and Alexander Zverev beat Ben Shelton in four sets to become the first German man to win in New York since Boris Becker in 1989, adding it to the French Open he won in June. Shelton's run to a first Grand Slam final — through a fifth-set tiebreak against Carlos Alcaraz that ended at 3:33 a.m. and an all-American semi-final against Frances Tiafoe — carried his father and coach Bryan Shelton up twenty-two-fold, with Karen Khachanov, Emma Navarro, Coco Gauff, and Iva Jovic rising behind them. Elsewhere, Katie Taylor became undisputed champion again in front of 83,000 at Croke Park on September 5, Brandon McNulty won the world road race title in Montreal as the first American to do so since 1993, Kimi Antonelli won his home Grand Prix, and Justin Verlander pitched the last game of a 21-season career on September 26, taking Kate Upton up with him. The month's loudest argument started at MetLife Stadium, where Macklemore used his opening set on Ed Sheeran's Loop Tour to declare "Free Palestine" and was dropped from the tour on September 14; he rose twenty-two-fold, and Robert Kraft, who led the push to remove him, nearly twenty-nine-fold, with Pink drawn in after siding against him. The second season of The Gentlemen on September 3 lifted Theo James, Kaya Scodelario, Vinnie Jones, and Guy Ritchie; Resident Evil on September 18 lifted director Zach Cregger and lead Austin Abrams; and the Emmys on September 14 lifted three-time winner Matthew Rhys, Tom Pelphrey, and Michael J. Fox. Celine Dion returned to the stage in Paris on September 12, her first run of concerts since her stiff-person syndrome diagnosis. John Ternus took over from Tim Cook as Apple's chief executive on September 1; Alice Weidel rose sevenfold as the AfD took 43.8 percent in Saxony-Anhalt on September 6, its best state result ever; Hashim Thaçi was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to 25 years on September 16; and Maria Bartiromo was dismissed by Fox on September 3. The 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks returned Osama bin Laden, Mohamed Atta, Ziad Jarrah, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to the chart together, a day after the first anniversary of Charlie Kirk's assassination.

The obituary column was shorter than August's but not short. Gloria Steinem died at her Manhattan home on September 2 at 92 and rose thirty-four-fold. The wrestler Pac — Neville in his WWE years — was found dead in Des Plaines, Illinois, on September 27 at 40, the day after wrestling at AEW's All Out, and rose more than eightyfold. Emma Bonino, the Italian Radical and former foreign minister, died on September 11 at 78; the same day Norway lost Princess Astrid at 94, two days after she attended the state funeral of her brother Harald V. The month also took Marina Vlady at 88, Inter great Sandro Mazzola at 83, Chinese singer Liu Huan at 63, jazz singer Cassandra Wilson, director Jean-Paul Rappeneau, and Man About the House star Richard O'Sullivan; Cindy Crawford quadrupled after the death of her son Presley Gerber on September 20 at 27. The decline column, as ever, is last month's front page. Hayden Panettiere gave back nineteen million of the twenty million views she had gained and Dolly Parton fourteen million, with Tim Curry and the Cambridge sociologist Jason Arday, found dead on August 14 days after resigning over misconduct allegations, completing the top four — and Panettiere's orbit of Jansen Panettiere, Wladimir Klitschko, and Michelle Trachtenberg receding with her. The Norwegian royals eased back after the funeral, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Sadie Sink, and Jon Bernthal cooled as Spider-Man: Brand New Day left its opening weeks behind, Christopher Nolan and Matt Damon kept sliding with The Odyssey, and Charles Manson fell as the true-crime audience moved on to Fall River. One footnote: a cluster of very small pages — Angélica André, Albert Kluyver, Li Yunqi — multiplied several hundred times over from bases of a few hundred views, and we could find no news event behind any of them.