Episode Guide
Donkey – | Review Score – 4/5 Hive – | Review Score – 3/5 Hair – | Review Score – 2/5 Ring – | Review Score – 2.5/5 Tiger – | Review Score – 3.5/5 Fish – | Review Score – 4/5 Camp – | Review Score – 3.5/5 Donut – | Review Score – 3/5 Commitment – | Review Score – 2.5/5 Mama – | Review Score – 3/5 Three words can accurately sum up Servant season 3 – nothing much happens. Yes, AppleTV’s promising horror/mystery series returns with a meandering, lackadaisical story that doesn’t really do anything particularly impressive with its 10 episode run-time. Instead, this series drip-feeds out a rather boring plot across 10 episodes. There are flickers of brilliance here but that’s quickly extinguished in favour of more monotonous drama that doesn’t really advance the story all that much. That aforementioned story picks up off the back of the dramatic season 2 finale. Leanne is now living with Sean and Dorothy, looking after Jericho full-time. Julian is still lurking about but he’s kicked his alcohol addiction and instead ended up obsessed with Leanne, whom he’s sleeping with on the side. With Sean and Dorothy both starting to double-down on their careers, Leanne starts to tighten her grip over the family, manipulating everyone around her. Everyone except Dorothy though, who slowly starts to sense something is very wrong here. This sets up a nice paranoia-inducing tension that’s teased early on, explored somewhat during a couple of good chapters, and then quickly forgotten about and never really explored. With the threat of Aunt Josephine still looming over the family, it soon becomes apparent that what was billed as the big bad early on is actually just a red herring for a plot device with very little pay-off. Unfortunately none of this is paced particularly well, with the painfully slow episodes drip-feeding out bits of story and misdirection, propped up by a number of cliffhanger endings that hint something big is going to happen next. But it doesn’t. Seasons 1 and 2 had managed to combat this with some creepy sequences or big reveals but there’s none of that here. Everything just flatlines; even the finale doesn’t live up to expectations, leading to a rather disappointing season that lacks much in the way of drama, tension or excitement. With Servant already renewed for season 4, this isn’t the last we’ll hear from these characters but this is another egregious example of Apple dragging out its storylines unnecessarily – an unfortunate trend that bogs down a lot of the shows on this platform. Season 3 of Servant is a boring waste of potential. Let’s hope season 4 improves.
