Servant 4, the review of the ending: the ultimate sacrifice

The ending of Servant, M. Night Shyamalan’s first TV series, closes the storylines of all the characters, who find themselves reunited and learning to forgive each other, but above all to forgive themselves. From March 17 on Apple TV+.

One of Apple TV+’s most silent series is at the same time one of the most deserving of the streaming service, which we have already praised previously, and now it comes to an end. In fact, on March 17 it closes definitively Servantthe first television project of M. Night Shyamalan, with the series finale. An epilogue announced and thought out practically from the beginning, which allows the characters to reveal their latest secrets and try to find some peace. So we come to write the review of Servant series finale with a mixture of sadness and at the same time certainty that it was just the right time to close, and the last two episodes confirm it.
Be warned: if you haven’t seen all of this last season, there will be spoilers in the article.

Dorothy’s awakening

In the ninth and penultimate episode, which is important to understand the series finale of Servant, after impediments, postponements, obstacles and postponements it is time for Dorothy (Lauren Ambrose) to “awaken” and learn the truth about Jericho’s death. Or rather remember it, because the human brain is a mysterious machine and sometimes it deliberately forgets a portion of time when it suffers a strong trauma; like that of losing a newborn son due to inattention due to the extreme tiredness and psychological and physical pressure that the woman undergoes after giving birth – which is never talked about enough and which she recently reminded us on TV Fleishman a pezzi. Sean (Toby Kebbell) and Julian also admit the truth, having “abandoned” her under those circumstances: “I thought I was being given a break from being a father.”

M. Night Shyamalan himself wanted to direct the episode because it is a decisive passage for the actual epilogue and above all to give voice to Dorothy’s clouded mind (in this last season we see Leanne proposing to see her The Wizard of Oz, the most explicit reference so far to the story of the girl of the same name who travels to a fantasy world). The moment of truth – but actually the whole last season and especially the last two episodes – is played wonderfully by Lauren Ambrose, who through the expression of the eyes alone manages to communicate all the pain that pours into her once she has remembered. The claustrophobic horror element doesn’t leave us even in the epilogue, and in this ninth episode, coincidentally, the revelation takes place inside the Turner’s car, positioned in the same place in the parking lot where Jericho died. Meanwhile, it is raining outside and Dorothy finds shelter to meet Sean and Julian in secret from Leanne (Nell Tiger Free), who has now taken possession and control of the house.

Servant 4, the review: the beginning of the end for the first series of M. Night Shyamalan

It was home

The house returns preponderantly as the narrative topos of thiscontemporary horror timeless for the subject it tells, the mourning of a newborn for an entire family, who for a sort of alternative therapy thought that a doll would make it easier for the mother to accept it forgotten in the car. The female figures are important in Servant and for Shyamalan and here it is between Dorothy and Leanne that the “final clash” takes place, while Sean and Julian are confirmed as rather inept and not decisive, even if full of genuine love for their wife and sister. It will be Dorothy who forgives Leanne in a final act of love, while the girl decides to burn herself alive, in a biblical and apocalyptic way, together with her house. The flood that appears to have hit Spruce Street and the entire city of Philadelphia is just yet another religious symbol like the grasshoppers and other elements from previous seasons. But now we are at the showdown and it is the house that disappears in the finale, almost in a surreal way and on the verge of the supernatural, as the whole series has been up to now. In fact it burns leaving the nearby houses intact. The next morning, the rain has stopped, Evil has perhaps been eliminated forever and everyone is free to start over.

Have faith

Religion has always been a Red string in the filmography of M. Night Shyamalan (also in his latest film A Knock at the Door) e Servant is the confirmation on the small screen. This last season, above all, has made us understand how much the “servant” of the title, i.e. Leanne (also Nell Tiger Free gives her best in the finale), is not only a “servant” in the sense of the Turners’ housekeeper and Jericho’s babysitter, but also a “servant of the Lord” through the Church of the Minor Saints. The “cult” reveals to Sean and Julian that the girl had a near-death experience as a child in the famous fire she started to kill her parents. An experience that led her to have a power (or assumed power) according to the “cult” that she herself started in turn in the previous season in the park at the back of the Turner house. Julian (Rupert Grint) is now having a similar experience at the New Year’s Eve party, reported on TV by Leanne himself, and who now, in the finale, in a sort of passing of the baton, is “recruited” precisely by the Church of the Santi Minori di which we also discover to be part of the policewoman who had rushed just when Jericho died.

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The ultimate sacrifice

Nell’final episodebiblically titled Fallen (Fall) after the revelations of the seventh and eighth episode that showed Leanne as an ordinary girl without any power who, through a series of tricks, had made the Turners believe they had healing abilities, however, inextricably linked to the Devil and not to God (someone said Christian? ), Dorothy accepts the reality of the facts and does not want an alternative-magical child in place of her lost son. Also because he discovered that Leanne, interviewed as a child in one of the beauty contests for girls, basically chased and sought her from that moment on, because she needed a mother or in any case anyone who loved and accepted her for what she was. era. At this point we will never really know what the truth about Leanne is: Shyamalan leaves us to our interpretation of the story, whether to believe and have faith or to rely on science and all that can be explained with facts, and perhaps it is the most honest and coherent that he and showrunner Tony Basgallop could do, while still giving all the tools to the viewer to choose which version to make their own.