When you’re starting with a show that revolves around a mother mistaking a doll for her actual baby, it’s hard to raise the stakes. That’s likely why in its second season, Apple TV+’s Servant is less concerned with answering the countless questions it’s raised in Season 1, and instead looking inward, diving deeper into the characters. If Season 1 showed the budding stages of trauma over a lost child, this new installment is more focused on showing just how crazy-making that pain can be. The result is a twisted thriller that feels fresh, while paying homage to the horror era of hagsploitation.
At its core Servant has always been about parental pain. After Dorothy (Lauren Ambrose) and Sean Turner (Toby Kebbell) tragically lost their son, Sean purchased a reborn doll to help his wife cope with the death. But shortly after Dorothy hired a nanny to care for the doll, that toy was replaced by a real baby. Whether the living Jericho is a stolen child, the nanny Leanne’s (Nell Tiger Free) baby, or the resurrection of their dead son by a supernatural cult has yet to be explained. And if the first seven episodes of Season 2 are any indication, we’re not going to get a definite answer to that mystery anytime soon.
This new installment picks up right after where Season 1 left off. Leanne has fled the Turner household and has taken the living Jericho with her. On paper and in the eyes of Rupert Grint’s Julian, that should be great news. With the possibly stolen baby gone, so is the threat of jail time. Yet that relief and joy never appears.
Without giving too much away, it isn’t long before Sean pulls a complete 180 and becomes just as obsessive as his wife about getting Jericho back. In many ways that’s what this new season is about: parental panic. For Dorothy that means breaking out her investigative skills and proving why she’s one of Boston’s most trusted on-air reporters. For Sean it means abandoning every rational thought and decision he made last season in the slim hope he can reunite his family. It’s through their pain and desperation that the quiet horror of Servant Season 2 makes itself known. For this couple it doesn’t matter what Jericho is, where he came from, or what it means that he’s gone. In their feral desperation to see their boy, all rationality and reason dies. What’s left is a terrifying monster capable of almost anything.
Though Sean’s changing priorities completely rewrite his relationship with his wife, it’s Dorothy and Leanne’s scenes that steal this season. Each episode presents their relationship in a new light. One moment you’re watching the manipulative nanny and the grieving mother, the next it’s the terrified young caretaker and her abusive mother figure. It’s through this constantly shifting wrestling match that Servant is at its most interesting.
In many ways Leanne and Dorothy’s tragically convoluted relationship echoes 1960s horror, specifically films like What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Though she’s far younger than the psycho biddies of that era, Ambrose’s Dorothy perfectly mirrors the unhinged aggressors of these films and Free’s Leanne their wide-eyed victims. Her mania is told through highly stylized fights and confrontations that border on the edge of camp. Frankly, it’s fun to watch two talented actresses terrorize one another in that deeply unguarded way typically only extended to men. Yet, much like in this aforementioned film era, underneath this intense and addicting tension there is a bigger conversation to be had. This time it’s one about motherhood.
Servant Season 2 seems to ask what it means to be a “good mom.” Does it mean tearing through peace and stability in a desperate attempt to reclaim your child like Dorothy does? Or does it mean quietly accepting abuse and neglect in the hopes that sacrifice will offer protection, like Leanne? Tony Basgallop and M. Night Shyamalan’s drama never seems to decide which approach is correct, which is for the best. At this point in Servant’s history we still have no idea who Jericho’s mother truly is. But asking the questions forces us to see whether our own priorities concerning children are in fact selfish.
There are no answers in Servant Season 2, only pain. In many ways that’s for the best. Few shows are as skilled at sorting through the intricate, hypocritical, and quiet forms of hurt better than this thriller. But just because Servant has gotten more introspective this go round doesn’t mean the chilling drama has lost its edge.
Servant Season 2 premieres on Apple TV+ Friday, January 15 at 3/2c a.m. New episodes of Season 2 will premiere weekly on Fridays.
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