That ‘Servant’ Show on AppleTV+? Jaw Still on the Floor
Lately, it feels like every movie has us thinking, “What the f*ck did I just watch?” In this series, we will break down exactly what happened in all those wild, mind-bendy, and just plain strange flicks...in a way that’s much easier to understand than the actual film.
This post contains spoilers for Servant episodes 1 through 3.
Servant, the Apple TV+ series from M. Night Shyamalan and Tony Basgallop, is sure to have families talking this Thanksgiving, so get on it and gather your folks ’round the thriller. Whether you are being forced to watch with your cousins or, like, genuinely can’t wait to be spooked by a mysterious nanny and dead-baby content, let’s see if we can parse all things weird and creepy about Servant together. I absolutely hate horror as a genre, but I’m super into it, so maybe you will be too.
If there’s an infamous Shyamalan twist coming, we won’t know about it for a while. The first three episodes just dropped, and we will continue to get new episodes weekly through the January 17 finale. But there’s already so much to unpack in Servant, it’s insane.
In theory, Servant is about a grieving couple named Dorothy (Lauren Ambrose) and Sean (Toby Kebbell) in Philadelphia, who lost their newborn baby, bought a “reborn doll”—which is totally lifelike and absolutely a real thing IRL—to help Dorothy cope, and hired a nanny to take care of it. But don’t be fooled by the autumnal colors and flowing red wine on the show, because something bad is going to happen. The doll in and of itself is creepy to me. Just the image of Sean swinging around what looks like a real infant is unsettling.
Naturally, things start getting weird as soon as Leanne the nanny arrives. She’s played by Nell Tiger Free, who you may vaguely recognize as the second actress to play Myrcella Baratheon on Game of Thrones, aka Cersei’s daughter who died in Jaime’s arms and it was a whole thing. First, Leanne treats “Jericho” like a real baby even when Dorothy is not around. She’s 18 and quiet and she doesn’t seem to have much of a personality, which *eye roll* of course attracts all the men around her.
Then, UM, the baby comes to life?! Or was it even a doll in the first place? I don’t know what’s real or who’s crazy, but by the end of episode 2, Jericho is laughing and crying and wiggling around like a normal baby. Maybe this is some kind of gaslighting situation where the men are being lied to…that would be fun. Sean does seem to be the one being targeted by whatever TF is going on.
Dorothy’s husband seems to think the nanny stole a baby and replaced the doll, so he’s on the case to figure out where Leanne came from and what her whole deal is. That brings us to Dorothy’s brother Julian, played by Rupert Grint and the reason that a millennial horror wuss like myself was interested in watching the series in the first place. If you wanna see the actor formerly known as Ron Weasley play kind of a scumbag who says a lot of R-rated words in a questionable American accent, oh boy, is this a show for you.
They find out that her family’s house burned down, like, a long time ago when Leanne was just a baby and she supposedly died in the fire along with her parents. “She stole the identity of a dead kid,” posits Julian, but how much do you wanna bet that’s not really what happened? What if Leanne came back to life, like Jericho? What if she’s a grown-up doll? Tell me!!!!
As is often the case with Shyamalan, Servant is full of way more psychological scares than gore and violence, but it’s still so absurd, and the fact that we don’t have the answers yet somehow makes the creeping dread worse.
Most WTF moments of Servant:
Sean losing his sense of taste and finding splinters in his toes and throat. I don’t have any theories for that, I just hate it.
You know how your chef husband comes home, throws some live eels up on the counter, and nails them to the cutting board? Yeah, Servant seems to think that’s normal behavior.
Leanne seducing Julian. I knew it was going to happen, but I still didn’t want to see it and I’m not a hundred percent sure why she did it.
The fact that Leanne trying on Dorothy’s lipstick and rings is all very Single White Female and still not the weirdest thing about her. All uncanny baby-doll things considered, it’s actually kind of charming.
The slightly stilted and formal way everyone talks is intentional, not bad acting, but still spooky. It’s just building that tension and making you lean in even when you just know something scary is going to knock you back at any second.
You Might Also Like
Solve the daily Crossword
