SummaryDorothy (Lauren Ambrose) and Sean Turner (Toby Kebbell) hire a nanny (Nell Tiger Free) to help care for a lifelike baby doll after the loss of their own child in the M. Night Shyamalan thriller.
SummaryDorothy (Lauren Ambrose) and Sean Turner (Toby Kebbell) hire a nanny (Nell Tiger Free) to help care for a lifelike baby doll after the loss of their own child in the M. Night Shyamalan thriller.
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. ... 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. ... Regardless of its ultimate destination, its harrowing and baffling journey has been more than worth it.
It’s a show about damaged people who unload their trauma on one another, and the supernatural forces that will either tear them apart or hold them together. Somehow, either possibility feels equally likely, and potentially equally satisfying. That’s a hard trick to pull off, and it feels like “Servant” is a show that will
be easier to appreciate once it can be viewed in its entirety. Until then, expect the unexpected.
If the remaining episodes are as good as these first three, it will be the audience who can truly count themselves the winners. A disquieting and dynamic portrait of one family’s descent, the final season of Servant is one that promises to reward those who have kept the faith.
This season of “Servant” delights in upending the status quo of our not-quite-nuclear family and seeing how it rattles the psyches of everyone involved. The results here, at least in the three episodes available for review, are just as delectable as ever, even if the show feels like it’s rushing to its mandated end.
It leans on dark humor and several horror tropes to provide fascinating character studies, especially pertaining to motherhood. That said, Servant continues to spin a familiar yarn without providing long overdue answers.
What remains true of this final season is how solid that central cast have become. Although the plotlines might have become more convoluted, their ability to sell any amount of narrative abstraction continues to astonish.