'Servant' Season 1 Episode 5 plays the story from Leanne's perspective as yet another gruesome detail comes to light
This week's episode of 'Servant' on Apple TV+ starts off quite differently. In the first four episodes of the thriller series from Tony Bagsallop and M. Night Shyamalan, we see the story from Sean's perspective -- we follow his movements through the house and see Dorothy Turner and Leanne Grayson (the nanny) as he sees them.
However, the fifth episode focuses on Leanne, who goes through the motions around the house as other strange things happen. Sean will be out during the day for the whole week as he is pitching to restaurants, leaving Leanne and the baby alone at home. When Leanne goes for a walk with the baby, she notices a man in the car -- something she keeps noticing is there every time she steps out. The viewers might recognize him as the private investigator that Julian (Dorothy's brother) and Sean hired to dig into Leanne's past.
This week, we are introduced to some other new characters -- a possible one-off appearance -- as Leanne meets Wanda -- the nanny who she passes by on the street while walking and Olivia, the girl Wanda is looking after.
As Wanda invites herself into the Turners' home, she begins clicking pictures and asking Leanne questions about the Turners. Then, she leaves Olivia with Leanne for a bit to run a personal errand, telling Leanne that Olivia can't have anything because she is allergic to everything. However, Leanne later finds out that Wanda and Olivia are not, in fact, from their street.
Meanwhile, Toby, Sean's assistant shows up to help Sean do some prep work for his catering while Sean is out. Toby brings with him a box full of crickets that Sean requested. What follows are those creepy scenes you may have seen in the trailer. The crickets begin showing up everywhere around Leanne and one day, she wakes up with her bed full of them -- much like splinters keep showing up on Sean's body, which continues in this episode as well.
We still see Leanne doing suspicious stuff. We see that she is angry with Dorothy for tricking her to get out of the house while Dorothy got some action with her husband (presumably, since we never see Dorothy's perspective in this scene), leading Leanne to angrily write "Dorothy" in the margins of her bible and fiercely pray. Later, she does the same with Sean's name as he had scolded her for using a onesie she found in the cellar on the baby.
Things get weirder as Wanda tries to convince Leanne to work for another family who would pay more. Leanne then gives the lobster ice cream -- that Shawn had made -- to Olivia, causing the latter to go into anaphylactic shock. As Wanda searches for the pen, Leanne questions her. Wanda tells her Julian paid her to find out what she could from Leanne and to also convince her to leave.
Later, in the night, Sean asks Leanne to taste the cricket he prepared since he still does not have his sense of taste. It looks like Sean is warming up quite well to Leanne and even tells her that he couldn't "do this without you".
When the episode ends we see the cricket Leanne trapped earlier under a glass lying still -- presumably dead, Leanne kneels next to her bed leading us to think she might be praying. However, she undresses the upper half of her body after taking the TV cord and whipping herself while sobbing furiously. What's surprising is that when the camera zooms back, we see that the cricket is alive and well again.
This episode leads us to believe that whatever supernatural stuff may be happening may not be under Leanne's control either -- especially the scenes with the crickets. Could the final scene be hinting that the baby Leanne is looking after is, in fact, Jericho himself?
We cannot wait for the next few episodes to get the answers to the questions this week's episode raises. A new episode of 'Servant' releases on Apple TV+ every Friday.