TL;DR: Devil in Disguise trades bloodlust for empathy, crafting a haunting, humane take on one of America’s most overexposed killers. It’s not perfect — some beats repeat, some dialogue clunks — but its refusal to indulge in sensationalism makes it one of the most meaningful entries in modern true crime.

Let’s get one thing straight: we did not need another John Wayne Gacy show. Between the documentaries, podcasts, and late-night “true crime rabbit hole” binges, Gacy’s been mythologized into America’s favorite bogeyman — the clown-faced serial killer who practically redefined suburban horror. But Peacock’s Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy dares to do something rare in the genre: it gives the spotlight back to the people Gacy erased.

And somehow, that makes this retelling feel new again.

True Crime Fatigue, Meet Its Cure

We live in an era where every serial killer has a fandom (ew), every docuseries has a body count, and every “based on true events” drama is another chance to ogle the darkness. Devil in Disguise doesn’t play that game. Instead, it leans into what I’ll call the anti-true-crime approach — shows like Last Call, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, and The Investigation, where the horror isn’t the killer’s creativity, but the systems that let him exist unchecked.

This series, from showrunner Patrick Macmanus (Dr. Death, The Girl From Plainville), takes that mission statement and runs with it. You never see Gacy in his clown makeup. You never watch him kill. You don’t get the lurid details, the slow-motion recreations, the “monster at work” shots that have become true crime’s worst aesthetic tic. What you do get is the humanity — the kids, the families, the investigators who stumbled through the darkness because their biases blinded them to what was hiding in plain sight.

That’s not just tasteful — it’s radical for a genre that usually can’t resist peeking through the keyhole.

The Horror of the Ordinary

Michael Chernus plays Gacy, and if you know him from Severance or Orange Is the New Black, you might be surprised at how quietly he carries this role. He’s not menacing in the traditional sense. There’s no Hannibal Lecter charm or Joker bravado here — just the pitiful smallness of a man who used normalcy as camouflage. He’s the guy at your block party who grills too much meat and insists on telling bad jokes. “It’s colder than a witch’s itty-bitty titty out here!” he says, and it’s such a painfully dad-joke line that you forget you’re looking at a murderer. That’s the point.

By stripping away the mystique, Devil in Disguise exposes the real terror: evil that looks like your neighbor, your contractor, your community volunteer. The kind that doesn’t hide in shadows — it smiles and shakes your hand.

The Victims Finally Get Their Story

Each episode frames itself around one of Gacy’s victims — young men dismissed, ignored, or forgotten because they didn’t fit the public’s idea of a “perfect victim.” Some were queer, some were sex workers, some were just kids trying to make rent. In other words: people society didn’t bother to protect.

The show’s emotional core belongs to Marin Ireland, who plays Elizabeth Piest, mother of Gacy’s final victim. She’s devastating — a woman clawing through panic, rage, and grief as she realizes her son’s disappearance is part of something unimaginably worse. Gabriel Luna and James Badge Dale, as the detectives on Gacy’s trail, bring a blue-collar exhaustion to their performances — men trying to make sense of a nightmare that should have been uncovered years earlier.

And yet, Devil in Disguise doesn’t romanticize the investigation. It points out the failures, the blind spots, the “it can’t happen here” mentality that let a monster bury dozens of bodies under his own home. This isn’t police hero worship; it’s a postmortem of an entire community’s complicity.

The Show’s Weak Spots (and Why They Don’t Sink It)

Sure, there are moments where the show hits its message a little too hard — like when a detective literally says, “I’m realizing that I have blind spots.” (Thanks, Captain Exposition.) And yes, the structure starts to feel predictable: flashback to victim, return to investigation, emotional gut punch, repeat. But honestly? I’ll take repetitive empathy over the usual serial-killer voyeurism any day.

The season’s one real stumble is the subplot about Gacy’s lawyer, Sam Amirante (Michael Angarano), who wrestles with defending someone he knows is guilty. It’s fine, but compared to the harrowing glimpses into the victims’ lives, it feels like filler. Still, Amirante provides a narrative buffer — a way to observe Gacy without centering him — and in that sense, he serves the show’s mission even when the script wobbles.

Tasteful, Tragic, and Terrifyingly Human

Devil in Disguise isn’t easy viewing — and it shouldn’t be. It’s slow, deliberate, and unflinchingly sad. But it’s also deeply necessary. In an entertainment landscape obsessed with monsters, this series reminds us that the real story lies in the people they destroy, and in the systems that enable them.

Macmanus and company don’t glorify Gacy; they dismantle him. They take the “killer clown” pop-culture myth and replace it with something smaller and infinitely more horrifying: a man-shaped void where empathy should be.

Final Verdict

Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy is the rare true-crime dramatization that earns its existence. Thoughtful, restrained, and emotionally grounded, it cuts through the noise of a thousand Netflix knockoffs with a simple truth — the scariest thing about Gacy isn’t what he did, but how easy it was for him to do it.