'Servant' Season 1 Episode 4: Sean may be warming up to Leanne as uncomfortable truths are revealed
When the first three episodes of 'Servant' dropped on Apple TV+ last week, fans were left delightfully disturbed as we saw a mysterious nanny, Leanne, enter the Turners' lives to look after their "baby".
Sean and Dorothy Turner hired Leanne to look after their baby, which is really a Reborn doll that is being used to help Dorothy top cope with the loss of their son, Jericho. For Dorothy, the doll is real, however, Sean treats it like the inanimate object that it is, albeit cruelly.
Just like the viewers, Sean is creeped out by the nanny and destroys her twine cross leading to strange things happening to him like splinters being found in various parts of his body and him losing his sense of taste — a really bad thing for him since he is a consultant chef who will very much need it. Moreover, their Reborn doll is replaced with an actual baby, leading Sean and his brother-in-law, Julian, to become wary of Leanne.
Spoiler Alert follows for Episode 4!
The fourth episode was released by Apple this week and the strange occurrences continue, but we also get a glimpse into the past of the three central characters. First up is Sean whose memories of Dorothy's many miscarriages would leave viewers empathizing with his need to keep Dorothy happy.
The many pregnancy tests were also given names like Harry and Sam — names the hopeful parents would never use again. And so, when their son was born, it was Sean's suggestion to name the boy Jericho.
In the present, his suspicions of Leanne continues as he installs a hidden camera to spy on the nanny. Though he watches when he can, nothing untoward happens — Leanne eats, prays, and sleeps. What is strange, however, is that when Leanne thinks everyone is asleep, she takes the baby to her room. This leads Sean to speculate that Leanne arrived with the baby in her suitcase when she first came — a theory that Julian immediately calls out for being ridiculous but understands that Sean wants to keep the baby.
Meanwhile, Dorothy continues going to work and she becomes disappointed to learn that Sean doesn't watch her segments completely. Dorothy plans to take Leanne and the baby to work the next day because her colleagues want to see the baby, and Leanne is excited about the prospective day out.
Sean immediately starts to discourage her, knowing that the baby is not really theirs and that something more sinister could be happening. Eventually, he succeeds in changing Dorothy's mind by telling her that the baby is still fragile with "tiny lungs".
However, when Dorothy gets up to make coffee the next morning, she sees that Leanne is already ready with the baby to leave and so Dorothy tasks Sean with telling the nanny that the trip is not happening. But Leanne does leave with the baby on the pretense of a walk, but when Sean watches Dorothy's segment that day he sees Leanne standing in the background, holding the baby.
Leanne comes back home with the baby after Dorothy does and the latter asks her if its the first time she has been on television. Leanne says yes after a pregnant pause.
We also see Sean continue his cooking adventures as he makes a lobster ice cream — something the show depicts as gruesomely as it can. No one wants to taste test the ice cream for him, with both Julian and Dorothy refusing.
Later in the night, when Leanne comes down for a midnight snack, Sean is already in the kitchen prepping something since he couldn't sleep. When Leanne takes ice cream to have, she seems unfazed when he tells her that it's lobster and not strawberry flavored.
In between, she gets up to add chocolate sauce to her bowl, telling Sean that it tastes better with chocolate, leading Sean to have an epiphany about how he could serve the lobster ice cream with the bitterness of chocolate to enhance it — and Leanne agrees and says that it sounds delicious.
It is then that Sean chooses to show a softer side to Leanne as he asks her why she chose them. She tells him that she knew she would be happy with them. Once Sean goes to bed, however, we see Leanne sneaking down to watch some of Dorothy's old news tapes, choosing a particular video from March 11, 2011.
Dorothy is at a pageant contest here and we see her talking to a little girl who is twiddling her thumbs. When Dorothy asks her what her name is, the girl says that she is Leanne from Wisconsin and we see the adult Leanne tearing up while twiddling her thumbs.
There seems to be more indication that the nanny is, in fact, the real Leanne that might have been resurrected and not an imposter as Julian and Sean think she is. After all, they had seen a grave for Leanne indicating she died much earlier than the date of the tape.
It would also seem that Sean is warming up to Leanne and this could imply a different dynamic in the coming episodes, with only Julian left who wants to find out the truth behind Leanne and the baby, which could really be Jericho.
New episodes of 'Servant' will drop on Apple TV+ on Fridays.