Wow. I was in in shock after watching Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness and all the craziness involved with the story of multiple big cat owners. Tiger King is a new eight-part documentary series on Netflix that follows the story of Joseph Maldonado-Passage, aka Joe Exotic and his crazy journey of owning a big cat zoo. The story shows every twist and turn of his life as well as the lives of his close friends and enemies.

I have to mention how great Netflix did at putting together the series. It made me super engaged and constantly wanting to watch more. I could have probably watched the entire series in a day if I had wanted to. I thought Netflix portrayed everyone fairly and accurately, however, many of the people featured in the series, such as John Finlay (Joe’s ex-husband), Jeff and Lauren Lowe (the new owners of the zoo), and Carole Baskin (another exotic animal owner) have come out and said that Netflix made them look bad.

While watching the series I was under the belief that Joe was a good guy who was doing nothing wrong with his zoo, however, after watching the last episode (the interviews) I quickly changed my mind to believe that he was a horrible person. The people included in the interviews talked about how Joe would kill innocent tigers just because he needed cage room and other inhumane stuff he did to the tigers that Netflix didn’t include in the series, but I wish they would have so that I knew the whole story of what was going on.

In the series we are introduced to Carole Baskin, a woman down in Tampa, Florida who owns Big Cat Rescue and who serves as Joe’s life long enemy. One of the main concerns about Carole is the possibility that she killed her husband Don Lewis and that she covered up his murder by feeding him to the cats. The rumor sparked so much attention that now thousands of people all across the world seem to believe that she killed him. Also, Carole prides herself on how she owns a ‘nonprofit animal sanctuary’ and how her tigers are free in the wild, however, when you look into what Carole is actually doing in her “sanctuary”, she is doing the same horrible things that Joe was doing. Carole is making money off of tickets and keeping tigers in small cages just like Joe, thus making her a hypocrite. 

Tiger King is a great series for anyone who loves crime, adventures, and tigers and I highly recommend watching it during quarantine. It took up a good amount of freetime and introduced me to a whole new side of exotic animals and crime. 10/10 recommend.