SERVANT: Ending Explained Breakdown + Full Spoiler Talk Review

Servant has been a pretty crazy show. The entire run has been laced with head-scratching moments. Massive twists and turns and the final episode didn’t pull any punches when it came to some big twists.

Throughout this, we’ll be breaking down everything you need to know about the show and it’s ending.

There will be heavy spoilers here so if you haven’t had a chance to watch the finale yet and don’t want to know what happens then I highly suggest that you turn off now.

With that out the way I just wanna give a huge thank you for clicking this, now let’s get into our breakdown of Servant.

Servant Season One Breakdown

Servant follows a Philadelphia couple named Sean and Dorothy.

Sean is a highly sought after Chef and Dorothy is a news reporter and whilst both look like they have it made on the surface, the pair are actually going through a lot.

In the aftermath of losing their son Jericho, Dorothy had a complete breakdown and went into a state of Catatonia.

In order to pull her out of this, Sean had to resort to using a reborn doll as part of a technique known as transitory object therapy. Dorothy believed that this Doll was her real baby and this seemed to work, giving her a new lease of life.

They didn’t announce the death to anyone except Dorothy’s father and brother Julian and thus very few people know the truth.

Sean loves his wife so much that he has been going along with it and the two hired a live-in caregiver named Leanne to come and look after the doll.

Now where the season started getting complex is that Leanne is a bit weird, initially, she seemed to believe that Jericho was real and she played into the fantasy with Dorothy too.

One day Sean discovered the impossible, the doll had seemingly turned into a real baby and the season has pretty much centered around what the character should do with this, where it comes from and what is really going on with Leanne.

How Did Jericho Die?

It’s been an awesome ride and every week has been stranger and stranger. I’ve loved watching the theories over the season with people throwing their wild guesses out there.

Some have been true, some have been false but the season wasn’t quick at giving any answers.

One of the biggest mysteries is how did Jericho die?

Initially it was leaked that he was ‘cooked’ and this had people online going wild believing that Sean may have accidentally done it during one of his many Chef moments in the show.

Though this turned out to be true in some ways, it wasn’t as extreme as we all thought and it was revealed that Dorothy actually left Jericho in her car on a hot day and the baby died due to this.

Dorothy was pretty much handling all of the parenting herself whilst Sean was away working on a TV show and the big reveal showcased how exhausting it was being in an unbalanced parent relationship where one person works all the time and the other has to struggle with the day to day.

It was kinda heartbreaking seeing this happen and though the big reveal wasn’t as gory as shocking as some fans were initially hoping for, it did fit tonally with the show.

However, that doesn’t mean that everything was straightforward and the season did tease that something supernatural was going on.

Did Leanne Bring Jericho Back To Life?

Sean began finding splinters and wood in his body, his ability to taste disappeared and Leanne seemed to be at the center of it.

In episode five titled ‘The Cricket’ we actually saw a member of the titular insect family be killed and resurrected and this sparked up theories that the living baby, which was initially thought to be Leanne’s was actually Jericho reborn.

Now there has been a lot of back and forth on this with some believing that the doll in fact was brought to life by Leanne whilst others believe that it was just her baby that she smuggled in with a suitcase.

Both theories were as strange as each other with it seems very unlikely that Leanne had managed to find a couple who had just lost a child without them even really advertising for it and her ability to resurrect someone from the dead coming across as godly.

We do get answers to this in the finale or at least enough to interpret things our own way and I’ll get into this in just a bit as we discuss the ending of the season.

M. Night

M. Night Shaymalam as always masterfully laces everything with an atmosphere, a creepiness to it and because of this Servant is easy to get addicted to. Though it has a relatively small cast, Servant uses each of its actors expertly and they all bring a lot to the table.

Sean played by Toby Kebbell is pretty much the eyes of the audience as they go on this ride and Dorothy is the other extreme of that, unable to assess what is really going on and thus you are basically watching a man in an impossible situation trying to save his marriage from a girl that has the potential to bring it all crashing down.

Leanne’s uncle has also popped up to try and call her home and he made one hell of an entrance. This is not the kinda guy that you wanna have round for dinner and he and his wife play a big part in the finale.

Episode 10 Breakdown

Episode ten opens with Sean preparing the placenta for a meal and for a final meal of the season this definitely felt like fitting end. It’s been in the fridge since Jericho’s death and this, like the episode, shows that everything is going to be laid out here.

He serves it up to the party and yep…I’m never going to one of these ever.

They are throwing a party for Jericho’s Baptism, I wanna say Baptism, in the U.K. we would call it a christening so yeah let me know if I’m wrong. Dorothy hasn’t held back on the invitations and many of her friends and family members come to the house including a child snuck in and brought a doll with her.

This child is taken home later in the episode by her parents much in the same way that Leanne eventually is and there’s sort of a setup here of watching someone go back to their home and taking their doll with them.

When talking to the child, she rebuffs the idea that her doll isn’t real and upon calling it Pamela she hits a chord with Dorothy who finally realizes that she has been playing with a doll too. Now it’s fine that a kid would think the doll is real as they are just playing make-believe but for Dorothy, it has severe repercussions as she realizes the reality of the situation.

To make matters worse, Leanne’s Aunty and Uncle were spotted at the church and they’ve snuck into the house. Leanne catches her aunt with Jericho and her Uncle goes to Sean for the blackmail money but he rejects it saying he wants Leanne back.

It’s here that we learn the truth of everything.

It turns out that Leanne’s aunty and uncle were part of an exetremist religious cult known as the Church Of The Lesser Saints who raised her after the death of her family. The cult believe that the rapture is coming and have forced Leanne to live a very sheltered life. Similar to Sean taking in the Jericho doll they took care her in and raised her as her own.

We did learn earlier in the season that Leanne had met Dorothy as a child and she became obssessed with her. Leanne fled from the family and they were able to track her to Dorothy and Sean because they knew of her love for the character.

The way that I took it is that this love allowed her to turn this doll into a real child and provide Dorothy with the thing that she wanted most in the world.

Who Is Leanne?

In the episode, Leanne’s Uncle says that she likes to please people she loves and hurt people that she doesn’t so because of her feelings for Dorothy, she gave her Jericho back.

Juxtaposing this, Leanne is capable of hurting people that she doesn’t like and we see this reflected in Sean who throughout the season has lost his ability to taste and feel.

Sean cares about food and being a chef above all else and the death of Jericho can somewhat be blamed upon his choice of work over his family. So she saw removing his senses as a fitting punishment for the character.

Sean breaks down to Leanne’s Uncle and confesses that now what he actually wants more than anything is his son back and this shows growth in the character and a change of his priorities.

He accepts that Leanne brought Jericho back to life from the doll and realizes that if he removed her from the house then his son would go too.

Sean says he knows his own child when he holds him and for me, this adds more weight to the theory that Leanne was able to return him.

Leanne’s Aunt, Aunt May, shoutouts Spider-man, forces Leanne to come home, claiming that Leanne is their servant and not Dorothy’s.

Dorothy recognizes Aunt May but she doesn’t remember exactly where they met until she reviews footage of a news report that she did in which she reported on the cult. During a police standoff, they were seemingly able to escape the long arm of the law and this is likely when Leanne left.

The report sends alarm bells ringing and she rushes to Leanne’s room to find her gone and in Jerichos room the doll is back in the crib.

Leanne has returned to her family and they creepily wait for her outside. They have a mass embrace in the street with all of them enveloping her.

SERVANT Ending Explained

For me, this once more showcases that she was of high importance to them and that her abilities do indeed exist.

They disappear much like their escape from the authorities and it is possible that they have gone to the rapture.

The rapture is an eschatological concept within Christianity that states during a specific event that may or may not be the end of the world that all Christians who are alive, along with resurrected believers, will rise “in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.”

It is possible that the cult members died in the explosion but Leanne was able to resurrect them and their disappearing act could signify this.

As for the disappearance of Jericho, you can take it one of two ways.

If you don’t believe that Leanne has supernatural abilities and the group just fled after noticing the police then it is possible that she merely took the real Jericho with her and left the doll in its place.

A group like that would draw suspicion and clearly they did from the policeman who even backed up to see what they were up to so it is possible that they noticed the squad car and either left or hid.

They’d have to run faster than Usain Bolt but it isn’t outside the realms of possibility.

However, if you lean more in with the supernatural side of things then Leanne leaving has also taken Jericho’s soul with her. Perhaps through religion she was able to gain these almost Christ-like abilities and if so I can see the second season centering highly around Sean and Dorothy trying to get her back.

Sean now cannot feel any pain and thus he will likely be able to push himself to the limit in order to get the child back.

Leanne is also clearly torn on her position in the cult and I don’t think it would take much to persuade her to return home as she clearly found a home that she wanted to be in and by the end wanted her.

Servant Season One Review

It was an incredible way to end the show and I can’t wait to see what happens down the line.

Servant was a great season that I think stands strong as one of Apple TV’s best entries. It was a bit up and down at times but overall it kept me coming back to it week after week wanting to know more.

This isn’t an easy task and it’s been great going into each episode not knowing what to expect. I feel like we got some satisfying answers for the end of the season as well as a lot of plot threads that will make people come back for season 2 and yeah I had a lot of fun with it.

There really isn’t anything out there quite like it and if you were unsure on the show I definitely recommend that you check it out.

It’s unique in both it’s subject matter and storytelling and that’s why it gets an…

8.5/10

Your Thoughts

Now obviously I’d love to hear your thoughts on the season and it’s finale so comment below and let me know.