Warning! Spoilers for Servant below.
M. Night Shyamalan’s Servant on Apple TV+ has become one of the streaming service’s most talked about programs and its season finale did not disappoint.
Shyamalan is more famously known for his cinematic contributions, but Apple TV+’s Servant is one of the best things that the director has been involved with in years. Shyamalan mixes the human with the supernatural in a mysterious series that plays with the limits of what’s real and what’s happening in the characters’ minds. He is a master of letting the audience’s imagination run away with them and jump to their own conclusions. It’s a technique that he played around with beautifully in The Visit, but Servant is one of his most effective examples of this.
Servant looks at the Turner family during an extraordinary moment of grief after they suffer the loss of their infant baby, Jericho. Many of the series’ biggest mysteries revolve around the “new” Baby Jericho that shows up in the Turner house as well as just what is exactly going on with Leanne, the baby’s new nanny. Servant’s first season finale, “Balloon,” still plays things very coy, but it does provide some major answers in regards to Leanne’s upbringing and two important figures in her life, Aunt May and Uncle George, as well as the Church of Lesser Saints, a cult that they were all involved in. The answers that “Balloon” does provide hints at some even deeper revelations that tie together with both Leanne and Baby Jericho.
Baby Jericho Is Likely Leanne’s Own Baby Or Was Born Within Her Cult
Servant has revealed that people outside of the Turner household have seen a real baby with Dorothy before the season finale comes along, but it’s been unclear where he’s come from. Servant has played around with the theory that Leanne has somehow turned the baby doll into a real baby, but this season finale really pushes the idea that nothing supernatural at all is going on within this series. Leanne is just a tortured figure who’s been raised and brainwashed by a cult. Certain pieces of dialogue from both Uncle George’s conversation with Sean and Aunt May’s conversation with Leanne indicate that this baby came with Leanne from the cult, whether it’s her own or somebody else’s within the group.
Servant has peppered instances of missing children throughout the whole season and there are even amber alerts in this finale. Leanne looks genuinely worried when police show up at the Turners’ door, as if she’s kidnapped a child of her own. It seems likely that “Baby Jericho” is just another piece of Leanne that was able to escape with her when she ran away and tried to start a new life away from the Church of Lesser Saints.
The other explanation that Servant’s finale entertains is that Leanne actually is doing something supernatural and has brought this doll to life with her special abilities that the cult is so interested in. Sean’s conversation with George is all about sacrifice and balance. Sean tells George about all of the afflictions that he’s suffered and it’s possible that his pain is in relation to Jericho’s life. Sean must suffer so that Jericho can exist. There’s also the heavy use of placenta throughout the episode and how it’s said to represent the end of one life and the beginning of another, just like with Sean and Jericho. Shyamalan’s Servant provides no definitive answers on the subject, but it seems likely that the former, more grounded, explanation is the more likely one. Servant’s finale ends with Leanne returning to the cult, presumably also with Jericho, so hopefully season two will come with some firmer answers.