Over the course of its first three seasons, Servant has served up a dish of confounding supernatural mystery, and things are no less normal—or lucid—as it begins its fourth and final run (Jan. 13).
All is far from well in the ritzy Philadelphia townhouse of TV news journalist Dorothy (Lauren Ambrose) and high-end chef Sean (Roby Kebbell), most of it courtesy of Leanne (Nell Tiger Free), the nanny who tends to the couple’s son Jericho. Or, at least, it’s some baby who seems to be Jericho, since the actual tyke died before the show began due to Dorothy’s negligence, and was then magically reborn (via a doll) by the caregiver.
Creator Tony Basgallop and executive producer M. Night Shyamalan’s Apple TV+ series is a tantalizing tease stretched out to almost mind-boggling length, such that answers to its core questions remain, to this day, outstanding. Who, exactly, is Leanne? What, precisely, are her powers? What’s the deal with the church that she fled, and which now wants to return her to the fold by any (crazy) means necessary? What does her creepy Uncle George (Boris McGiver) want, and what are his beliefs? And, ultimately, what’s the nature of Jericho, the resurrected child who has a habit of turning back into a doll (or vanishing) whenever Leanne sees fit?
Servant is the rare (only?) series to make sense from second to second without explaining or divulging any of its underlying secrets. Watching it is akin to walking on a rickety bridge—there’s always a feeling that the bottom might drop out at any moment.
Certainly, a plummet was central to Servant’s Season 3 finale, when Dorothy attempted to flee with her son in tow (to escape Leanne, whom she blames for everything) and, in a horrific twist, crashed through an upper-floor termite-infested railing and (as Leanne grabbed Jericho from her arms, saving the boy) fell to the floor below. It was merely the latest in a long line of accidents for this household, although as the show returns, it’s clear that Dorothy hasn’t perished from her wounds and, in fact, is on her way home from the hospital, much to Leanne’s delight.
Dorothy is on the mend but she’s hardly in great shape, paralyzed from the waist down and thus confined to a room with a hospital bed (and tray) and in need of constant care. Unsurprisingly, she doesn’t want that to come from Leanne, which is a problem since Leanne is desperate to nurse Dorothy back to health, both as a means of atoning for the catastrophic fall, and because she’s still deeply in thrall to her employer. Everyone else is more than a bit scared of Leanne.
Despite being an employee, Leanne has, in Dorothy’s absence, assumed an even greater domestic role, ordering Sean to fulfill his media-related duties (now that he’s the star of a cooking-competition show called Gauntlet Gourmet, in which he barks insults at contestants like a proto-Gordon Ramsay) and forcing Julian (Rupert Grint) to publicly embrace their ongoing, uncomfortable sexual-romantic relationship.
Tensions run high between Dorothy and Leanne upon the former’s arrival at the townhouse. Yet before that can even take place, Servant delivers a full-throated WTF season premiere. While getting the home in order for Dorothy, Leanne is accosted by a grubby intruder. Smashing him in the head with a flower vase, she flees to the clan’s SUV parked across their street, her bizarre park-dwelling minions—who do her bidding and watch over her as protectors—suddenly nowhere to be found.
Before long, the neighborhood is engulfed in mist and ordinary passersby are revealing themselves to be attackers—and, therefore, acolytes of Leanne’s church—who materialize and disappear with a suddenness that’s in tune with their psychotic viciousness. What ensues is an episode-long standoff between Leanne and these adversaries in and around the vehicle, during which ominous threats, mystical symbols, and flocks of birds (controlled by Leanne?!?) all factor into the bonkers equation.
Servant has always been a malevolent beast of a TV show, its humor stinging and its horror perplexing, and its formal sharpness hasn’t dimmed in this fourth go-round. With sinister Shyamalanian silkiness, its camerawork glides, rotates, and pivots with unnerving purpose, routinely keeping key events and sights just out of the frame, only to later reveal them with a subsequent pan back to some prior point of interest.
Much of the series’ suspense comes from its serpentine visuals, and the way in which they disclose or deny viewers vital information. Coupled with Trevor Gureckis’ disquieting score (and its sudden, shrieky strings), Servant’s aesthetics are central to its power, always concealing things just enough to generate a great, urgent desire to see—a wish that’s generally only half-fulfilled, per the show’s tantalize-over-tell formula.
By its third episode, Servant has introduced even more complications into Sean, Dorothy, Leanne and Julian’s life—most notably, by way of a pair of elderly nurses hired by Dorothy to fulfill the duties she doesn’t want Leanne handling. Are they evil Trojan Horse-style villains sent to capture (or kill) Leanne, as the young nanny believes? Or are they merely pushy, cheery aids trying to do their job in a residence that feels like it’s coming apart at the seams? Figuring out where Basgallop and Shyamalan are heading has never been easy, and the joy—and fear—of this closing season is that a mad payoff is surely forthcoming, one way or another.
After enticing audiences with bombshells for years, a lot is seemingly riding on that finale. Still, even if their saga doesn’t wrap up in wholly satisfying fashion, Basgallop and Shyamalan cast an eerie spell that makes the waiting, and guessing, a pleasure unto itself.
As with a second installment that finds the neighborhood (including Dorothy and Sean’s townhouse) infested with a plague of bedbugs that may or may not be the (conscious or unconscious) handiwork of Leanne—and which transform their street into a small-scale vision of the apocalypse—Servant is the rare horror-thriller to consistently horrify, thrill, and amuse. Regardless of its ultimate destination, its harrowing and baffling journey has been more than worth it.
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