Warning! Spoilers for Servant below.
One of the biggest hits on Apple TV+’s new streaming service is Servant from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan and its first season finale provided some major answers.
There have been plenty of mysteries afoot in M. Night Shyamalan’s Servant, with the Turner’s baby Jericho, his new nanny Leanne, and the Turners themselves all getting caught up in strange circumstances. Each new episode of the addictive series adds another complex layer to each of these stories that all steam from this very human place of grief and mourning that’s turned into a very emotional story. The arrival of Servant’s season finale thankfully provided some answers, but in perfect Servant fashion it still kept things very close to its chest.
Something that Servant has handled very well is how it maintains a balance between its grounded, emotional material and what appear to be supernatural circumstances. The sheer premise that the doll of a baby turns into a real baby is inherently fantastical in nature, but if Servant’s finale reinforces anything it’s that perhaps nothing magic at all is going on here. This is just the story of a mourning couple who haven’t come to terms with a major trauma. Much of that realism comes in the form of Leanne’s backstory, which finally gets some concrete answers.
Leanne Grew Up In A Cult And Escaped To The Turners
Servant’s season finale is centered around the momentous occasion of Baby Jericho’s baptism, however this event brings two unexpected guests, Leanne’s Uncle George and Aunt May. George and May deal with Sean and Dorothy separately, but between the two of them it’s revealed that they’re members—possibly even the leaders—of a cult known as the Church of Lesser Saints. May and George kidnapped Leanne when she was a child and burned her house down (and maybe killed her parents) to make it look like she was dead so they’d be able to get away with her. It’s unclear if Leanne was kidnapped because she has powers or because the cult simply kidnapped children in general.
Leanne becomes brainwashed by the cult and is seen as a Messiah-like figure, however she begins to form a fascination with Dorothy after she’s interviewed by her during the beauty pageant news segment that was shown in the past. Leanne’s obsession with Dorothy manifests in her applying to be their nanny and escaping from the cult (presumably with a baby in tow). This is why George previously sent her a letter and tracked her down. Leanne finds a sense of purpose with the Turners, but Aunt May makes it clear that she’s their servant, not the Turners’.
Ultimately, Leanne can’t deny what she grew up with and the episode ends with Leanne leaving the Turners to return to the cult, with her also removing the baby from the Turner’s house. All of this primes the next season of Servant to look at Leanne’s return to George and May’s cult as the Turners reel in the aftermath and maybe try to track her down.