NYCC 2019: The creepiest thing about M. Night Shyamalan’s Servant isn’t the baby doll

M. Night Shyamalan’s Apple+ series Servant may have been teasing a creepy baby doll in its trailer, but it’s far from the real evil.

An automatic swing set that’s been placed before a living room television rocks back forth. Suddenly, there’s the familiar horror track as the camera zooms in on the baby inside the swingset. Only, the unflinching eyes and frozen expression gives away that it’s a realistic-looking baby doll. This is the teaser that’s been on rotation for Shyamalan’s Servant, and it seemed to have given away the scary villain from the series from the very start.

But after a sneak peek and cast interviews at New York Comic-Con, it’s become clear that the baby doll is probably the least of our worries. No one disclosed the identity of the fear factor in the series, but also, no one mentioned the creepy baby doll. From what can be grasped from the little that we learned, Servant is about a family dealing with a common and often privatized loss, tested by a darkness that has crossed through their threshold.

The story takes place entirely in a Philadelphia brownstone so that it is almost like a play. The couple that lives in the house has lost their infant, and the baby’s death shatters Dorothy Turner (Lauren Ambrose) so that the only way she can cope is to care for a baby doll as if her child had never died. Sean Turner (Tobey Kebbell) indulges his wife by pretending the toy is real, and so, they hire a nanny to care for the infant.

Watch the official NYCC trailer for Servant:

What’s most striking about the nanny, Leanne Grayson (Nell Tiger Free), is that she doesn’t even question the fact that she’s caring for an inanimate object. She tends to the doll like it’s real. There’s also the issue that Leanne is a walking question mark that doesn’t divulge anything about herself and seems to be connected to a darker storyline. Though Leanne may seem like a villain just by her suspicious nature, it appears that there is a combination of things that contributes to what’s scary about the series.

Shyamalan calls the series a sit-thriller in the way that it is set up like a sitcom, but instead of comedy, it generates fear. The loss of the child and the charades to pretend the doll is living, have put a strain on the family living in the house. Leanne’s presence stirs the pot some more, and so these characters are ready to blow at any moment. Even Dorothy’s brother, Julian Turner (Rupert Grint), who is the outspoken and level-headed one, is affected by Leanne.

Could she be a ghost, a demon, or some otherworldly presence? Unfortunately, the answer is a tricky one that no one would answer at NYCC. Shyamalan and the cast refused to call the series supernatural. Instead, Ambrose suggested during an interview with Culturess that it has a supernatural pulse. Apparently, all of the strange happenings could have a logical explanation. But Ambrose also suggested that, if you are a person that believes in spirituality, you’re free to draw your own fantastical conclusions.

If we’re truly to know what Servant is about, for the time being, we’ll have to ask the relevant questions. Ultimately, why is Dorothy’s brother and husband keeping the lie alive that the baby is still alive? Did Dorothy kill the baby and they don’t want her to remember?  Is she a murderer and Leanne is in on their secret?

Why would a nanny come in to take care of a doll without calling out the parents? What is it that she ultimately wants from this? Is it the house that has attracted a darker force into this home? The entire series takes place in this one house, after all. Or is it really the baby doll that has pulled in this dark presence?

We won’t get our answers until the series airs, but there’s one promising fact about the series in the meantime. Shyamalan is afraid for his mother to see the horrible things he’s done in this show.

M. Night Shyamalan’s Servant airs on November 28 on Apple+.