M. Night Shyamalan’s dramatic thriller Servant continues its second season on Apple TV+ today with the seventh episode, “Marino.”

Check out our review below. (Note: this review contains spoilers! Jump down to the Bottom Line for the spoiler-free take.)

Episode 7 of this season of Servant is a bit of a drag, honestly.

Where episode 6 balanced humor and scares, consistently ramping up the dramatic tension and teasing reveals, the follow-up just… doesn’t really land. The plot and structure of Servant doesn’t really lend itself to filler episodes, but if I had to describe episode 7, that’s what I’d say it was. A filler episode.

I knew we weren’t really going to get definitive answers from the last episode’s setup. I know the mystery drives the creep factor of the show. But this episode feels like it’s dragging its feet: unwilling or unable to give any real answers, it also doesn’t introduce new twists to escalate the existing mystery. 

Instead the episode focuses on upping the dramatic tension, bringing a police officer into the Turner house. It’s not a bad plot point exactly – it just feels like a path the show has walked before. Similarly, playing Leanne’s cross-totem making as a big scary reveal feels redundant. Sure, it’s still weird, but it felt a lot creepier the first five times we saw her do it.

Every so often, it feels like Servant backs itself into a corner. But not in the exciting “how will the characters get out of this one?” kind of way. In a “this show has run its course and has nothing left to offer” kind of way. To be fair, so far it always turns things around and manages to grab my interest again. In fact, I still expect that to be the case as the season builds towards its conclusion.

But that doesn’t change the fact that when I finished this latest episode, I didn’t really care what was going to happen next.

Servant S2E7: The Bottom Line

Honestly, this one felt kind of like a filler episode. After the previous episode seemed to be ramping up to some real answers, a lot of what happens in this one feels redundant and drawn out. There’s a little creepiness, but the dramatic moments don’t quite build the tension they wanted to.

Rating: 6/10