Credit: Netflix

When you first hear this story, it sounds like just another story about a marriage falling apart after years of being together. But the more you learn about what happened between Morgan Metzer and her ex-husband, the harder it becomes to look at it as just another relationship story. Every new detail or development in the story makes it harder to grasp, and that’s exactly what the Netflix movie Gaslit by My Husband: The Morgan Metzer Story shows.

The crazy part is, Morgan didn’t just meet Rodney randomly later in life. She knew him from when she was really young, and their relationship just kept building over the years into something serious. They got married and were leading a life that looked completely put together, which is exactly why no one saw what was coming next.

After losing his brother to leukaemia and going through the loss of their first child, Rodney started to change, and you could already tell this wasn’t going to be any good. Initially, it began as control, and before you know it, it turned into serious abuse. And Morgan, she wasn’t just dealing with emotional manipulation and physical abuse, but was also being made to believe that it was all somehow her fault. Thus begins the story of her getting stuck in a situation like that for far longer than she should.

And even after all that, walking away wasn’t simple for her because leaving a situation like that takes time. It finally took her to a breaking point. When Morgan finally filed for divorce in 2020, it was more than just a legal decision. It was her choice to step out of a life that had been weighing on her for years, and now she was looking forward to building something new for herself.

For a moment there, it really did look like she had made it out.

The moment everything changed

Just weeks after the divorce was finalised, on a night that was supposed to mark a fresh start, everything changed. A masked intruder broke into Morgan’s home. He had a weapon, and this wasn’t a robbery, because once he got inside, things turned violent, and her own home no longer felt like a safe place to be.

And then, in a twist that almost sounds unreal when you first hear it, Rodney showed up not long after the attacker left. He cut her free and then told the police this story that almost works when you first hear it, saying a stranger came to his window asking for Morgan, and that’s what made him rush over. It sounds a bit made up, but everyone believed him at that time.

But when investigators started looking at the details more closely, that version of events didn’t make sense, because the timeline didn’t fit together. The more they looked into the explanation, the more questions it raised. The initially well-constructed narrative then began to fall apart.

And that’s when everything changes so drastically it will make you see Rodney in a totally different light because Rodney wasn’t just someone who came right after the attack… He was the one who had planned it from the beginning. This man disguised himself, altered his voice and broke into her home. He then went on carrying out the assault and then returning later to position himself as the person who came to help, all as part of an attempt to manipulate Morgan and regain control over her life. It sounds unbelievable, but it’s true.

Luckily, instead of pulling her back in, though, his actions led directly to his arrest and eventual conviction, resulting in a 70-year sentence that ensures he will never be able to come near Morgan or their children again.

And when you step back for a second, what really gets you isn’t just what he did; it is that he sat there and planned all of this just to pull her back after she had already walked away.

Gaslit by My Husband: The Morgan Metzer Story brings this case to the screen, but once you understand what actually happened in real life, it stops feeling like just another story and will make you more uncomfortable than you expect.