Servant - Season 4
Apple TV+In the early push for content, Apple TV+ looked to the creative talents of M. Night Shyamalan and Tony Basgallop who proposed a 60 episode psychological thriller called Servant. Following a family still grieving and trying to find a way to survive after a tragic accident took the death of their newborn son Jericho, the show promised a tense look at family and trauma with mystical abilities and powers sneaking their way into the plot via a nanny named Leanne (Nell Tiger Free) and her former cult who tries to track her down to restore their believed order and path for society. As seasons passed and global pandemics raged on, the show was forced to reduce to 40 episodes; a lucky turn of events considering how easily the show could have been canceled without any resolution. The fourth and final season of the show wears this reduction on its sleeve as the final push towards an ending creates a messy and wild season of television that wraps the show up on a perfectly campy and questionably devilish final statement that feels somewhat perfect for what the series has built up to this point.
Season 4 of Servant, in many ways, begins where the show has seemingly always been. The outside threat of the cult tracking and hunting Leanne down is more alive than ever from the first episode, Pigeon, which sees Leanne fight for her life as the cult makes an organized move against her life. While Leanne eventually returns to the safety of the decomposing Turner household, the walls that once defined her freedom are closing in quicker than ever. While Leanne's estranged relationship with Dorthy (Lauren Ambrose), the matriarch of the family, has been well documented and established, the brutal accident from the previous season which has left Dorthy injured and unable to walk has served as a catalyst for Dorthy's husband Sean (Toby Kebbell) to also turn actively against Leanne with only Dorthy's brother Julian (Rupert Grint) remaining on the fence about the future. While Leanne previously held the power over this family with the idea that the baby she has brought in the house, whether it is a random child or really the reincarnated soul of Jericho, might allow a future for Dorthy where she wouldn't have to accept the pain of her real child, Sean now believes the truth is the best way out for Dorthy and is willing to do whatever it takes to get rid of Leanne.
This drama is equally chaotic and rushed and unbelievably dull. Almost in a comedically charming sense, Servant has been a series without progress or development. While the show presents a brooding craft and confident voice that makes it seem like it is always on the verge of genius, the actual development and substantial progress of the show have been limited. The power dynamics between Leanne and the Turner family remain, at the core, the same as it always has been. The presentation, however, is more chaotic than ever with plots that have been established for seasons getting closed and left behind as quickly as possible to make way for the finale. It is easy to imagine that at the pace the show has moved to this point, any of these dramas could have taken up entire season arcs, yet Season 4 is forced to finally move on. While on the outside this is an obviously disappointing turn, anyone who has kept up with Servant to this point should be used to disappointing developments that ultimately lead nowhere so this flaw feels oddly charming and in line with the foundational cracked identity of the show to this point when it comes to narrative.
As the season moves into its latter half, the show is forced to finally begin to reveal answers and truths with some coming off as incredibly satisfying and some coming off as incredibly stupid. Much of the emotional interpersonal drama resolves in characters finally having an open dialogue about truths the audience has been aware of for years. While some of these conversations such as the closing statement to Leanne and Dorthy's relationship carry a poetic weight, some like Leanne's complex relationship with Julien prove to be worthless. Without spoiling the series' final episode, Fallen, the grand climax of the show thrives in its batshit insane energy and execution, a high almost immediately grounded by a shockingly misguided and unneeded tease to a future the audience will never experience. In many ways, the final moments of the show are utterly disastrous, yet again, this is the camp and lack of guidance that has given Servant the charm it has survived on. Servant was never a great show and the descent into madness is only fitting.
This isn't to say the show is badly made. In fact, it would be hard to find many shows on television that carry the same technical craft as Servant. Once again employing a wide array of directors including Kitty Green, Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala, Dylan Holmes Williams, Carlo Mirabella-Davis, Celine Held, Logan George, Nimród Antal, Ishana Night Shyamalan, and of course the legend M. Night Shyamalan himself; Servant is a stunningly tense and crafted visual experience with Season 4 seeing some of the grandest displays of production design and visual setting from the entire series. As the show expands, the single technical fault seen throughout the entire show is found as some of the visual effects fail to land with the same calculated follow-through as the rest of the series. Still, for all of its narrative faults, Servant remains a stunning cinematic experience that sadly will never get the praise it truly deserves.
Also expanding is the emotional range given to each character and actor as emotions trapped inside are finally allowed to be expressed in the open. This leads to some stunning work with those like Lauren Ambrose and Toby Kebbell proving their worth. No one, however, stands as tall as Nell Tiger Free. The character of Leanne has been complex with Free delivering on every twist and turn the character has experienced. In Season 4, Free finds a final perspective for the character that allows her to fully realize her ability and deliver an iconic work of emotion and wickedness that should be career-defining work, a reality more than likely pushed to being that of fantasy considering the limited engagement the series has found within the zeitgeist.
Servant Season 4 is a project that is impossible to describe in a simple singular statement. In many ways, the series is more trash than ever. The narrative is rough, messy, and beyond questionable as a conclusion. In another life, the final scene truly could be interpreted as a middle finger to audiences if the show carried even a slight resemblance of ego. Yet this messiness was always true for Servant. The show never was clean and never followed through with its narrative developments in the traditional satisfying sense. In this, the show created a persona and energy unlike any other that was captivating and entertaining in a confusingly honest way. For those who stuck through with the show to this point, nothing else should have been expected and the finale, under this context, somehow feels perfect.
