Servant goes out in a blaze of glory [Apple TV+ recap]

servantthe stellar Apple TV+ show about a supernatural nanny and the Philadelphia family who play unwitting and unwilling hosts on her journey, on its fiery weekend.

Leanne must decide who she will serve, and Dorothy will decide what her family and life will be from now on. The episode, titled “fell,” delivers an almost perfect ending to an almost perfect show.

servant finale recap: ‘Falled’

Season 4, episode 10: Dorothy (played by Lauren Ambrose) has a choice to make. He believes that Leanne (Nell Tiger is free) turns her child into a doll and either returns her … or she may believe the nanny is a charlatan. The matriarch of the Turner family told Sean (Toby Kebbell) and Julian (Rupert Grint) to wait outside while he thought.

Meanwhile, Dorothy goes upstairs to say goodbye to baby Jericho … and she rejects Leanne’s advances. Leanne begins to cry and the city begins to flood. So he went to the rooftop to cry out to his god.

Dorothy came over to talk to him. He forgives Leanne for what he’s done — and thanks her for giving him months with his son, but he can’t get his son back. The pain Dorothy feels from accidentally killing him, as revealed in last week’s episode, was something he could no longer notice. He needs to heal.

Dorothy tries to forgive Leanne, but she can’t. After all, Leanne killed her parents – and liked it. Dorothy says if Leanne can forgive Dorothy for killing Jericho, he must forgive himself. As they stood there, talking in the rain, Leanne saw a man and two little girls standing across from the Turner house. Then lightning strikes the roof and snaps an antenna nearly killing Dorothy and Leanne. Leanne says her god is trying to kill her.

A sham and a fiery series finale

Dorothy got out of the car when her brother Julian’s stab wound started to bleed again. They must get him to a hospital before the roads become impassable. They offer to take Leanne along, but she doesn’t come (although she says she will, but she “forgot” something upstairs and needs to look it up).

What he is looking for is the knife that Uncle George gave him to stab himself (which he left behind buried in her face after she hugged him), and the kerosene he will use to burn her body after he kills her. Leanne covered the living room with kerosene and lit it. He went upstairs and called Tobe (Tony Revolori). He said he was thinking about her. He makes her describe the perfect date to him. Heartbreaking.

Julian notices the fire and runs inside, but doesn’t get very far. Sean confronts the cult member on the street, and the man tells the Turners that Leanne did this to herself to save everyone. Leanne plays a record, wears Dorothy’s old clothes and perfume, dances alone, and slits her own wrists.

servant ending its reign as the most cinematic TV show

Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala direct this week, and I just don’t know how it is that they’re so good when working on this show and so terrible elsewhere. Their 2019 movie Put in is a trainwreck and their 2014 surgery horror movie good night mommy plays like a parody of sadistic Austrian cinema.

But in servant they proved incomparable. too good! The first shot of this week’s episode is Sean and Dorothy with a split diopter. We are within from the jump. Dorothy’s confused and suffering face dominates the foreground, diminishing Sean’s uncertain expression in the background.

The camerawork throughout the episode proves to be superlative — lots of purposeful, restless sliding through spaces. The directorial team, however, messed up the most important image in the episode: Leanne’s actual death. They strap a rig to him so the camera pans around him as he burns, and then the shot of his CGI body falling into the burning house just isn’t weighty enough. It’s just too obviously fake, and a missed opportunity for something a little more solid and provocative for our farewell to such a great character.

Behold, the awesome power of Nell Tiger Free

However, the rest of the servant delivered the series finale. What a great showcase for Nell Tiger Free. The hardest (but also, best) thing comes first when Dorothy rejects Leanne’s offer to stay with her and start a family. They are alone in the house together, and Leanne starts sobbing and trying to reason with Dorothy.

“What are you?” asked Dorothy.

“It doesn’t matter anymore… I’m yours.” Leanne’s heartwarming response. Free allows her speech to be childish in Leanne’s moment of true desperation. You just feel the character.

servant never fails to deliver

It’s been a top 10 show for me every season it’s been on the air — a visual marvel, a feast of great and unique performances, a beautiful cornucopia of folk horror tropes and rewired Lifetime original plot designs of the film.

Showrunner and executive producer M. Gabi Shyamalanhis amazing crew of directors and writers, and slave’The rest of the cast came together to create something unlike anything else on TV.

In fact, servant is the most cinematic TV show in years. I will miss the way the team uses their cameras to show you the most amazing surreal scenes. I will miss Nell Tiger Free’s performance of an impression of humanity. And I’ll miss the feeling that anything could happen at any moment and, despite the ridiculousness of any given plot point, everything still felt like the right move for the wild and wonderful show. this.

goodbye, servant I will miss you.

watch servant on Apple TV+

You can now watch all four seasons of servant on Apple TV+. And if you’re a fan of horror and psychological thrillers, you really should.

Rated: TV-MA

Watch on: Apple TV+

Scout Tafoya is a film and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay series. The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He wrote for The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Nylon Magazine. He is the author of Cinemaphagy: In Psychedelic Classical Form by Tobe Hooper, The director of 25 feature films, and the director and editor of more than 300 video essays, which can be found at Patreon.com/honorszombie.