Who Killed the Montreal Expos?

Less sports history and more like grief counseling, the Netflix documentary explains why a city still wears the logo of a defunct baseball team 20 years after they disappeared— feels session.

J.P. Karwacki

October 12, 2025- Read time: 6 min

The Netflix documentary Who Killed the Montreal Expos? is less sports history and more like grief counseling for the entirety of Montreal. | Photography via Le 76 / Parc Olympique

Twenty years later, we're still asking the wrong question: Who killed the Montreal Expos?

The Netflix documentary had a packed house and standing ovation at a Cinéma du Musée-hosted Festival du Nouveau Cinéma (FNC) world premiere on October 9 before it would be released globally October 21. It dangles the promise of a whodunit. The title demands answers, and the trailer teases villains, but director Jean-François Poisson knows something the rest of us are still learning: this was never about solving a crime.

"It's not an unsolved crime," Poisson told a packed house at the FNC world premiere. "It's unresolved grief."

That distinction matters, because for two decades, Montrealers who know the pain of losing the Expos have been stuck in their anger, pointing fingers at Jeffrey Loria, at David Samson, at Claude Brochu, at Lucien Bouchard, at Major League Baseball, and at one another to some extent. We've been so busy assigning blame that we never actually processed the loss.

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