Apple TV’s Servant
3×02: “Hive”
Directed & Written
by Ishana Shyamalan

* For a recap & review of 3×01, click here.
* For a recap & review of 3×03, click here.
A security company is installing cameras at the Turner house while Dorothy’s preparing for a Mommy and Me group get-together she’s hosting. The whole group thing doesn’t thrill Leanne, who’s only finding out right before guests arrive. The nanny isn’t ready to “trust strangers” again. But it’s important to Dorothy. She wants to build community with other mothers, and she insists Leanne knows these people, having chatted with them a lot online. She insists it’s important for her and Jericho. That seems to convince Leanne. At the same time, Leanne hears footsteps upstairs. She sees someone walking down with her dagger. Just a hallucination; it’s only one of the security guys.

Dorothy has a guy named Mr. Smiley a.k.a Riley (Rob McClure) hired for her party. Sean’s busy in the kitchen making Dominican food for their guests and he enlists Leanne’s help to keep her distracted from all the socialising with strangers. When the party gets going Mr. Smiley puts on a show for the kids, some of whom are busy crying, some of whom are sleepy. Leanne keeps busy cooking with Sean, as Julian and Veera arrive to watch over the surveillance system to make the nanny feel more comfortable. The couple head upstairs while the party continues.
Meanwhile, poor Leanne sees the Mommy and Me group like a cult, if only for a second. She pushes away the visions and serves up food for everybody, then Dorothy introduces her to everybody. Dorothy insists Leanne sit with them for a minute. The nanny reluctantly agrees but she quickly finds the group annoying, from one woman not watching her child vigilantly, to another lady bringing up Julian’s addiction issues, among other things. The lady keeps pushing until Leanne excuses herself. Upstairs, Veera and Julian watch things unfold, albeit without sound.Leanne tells Sean the other mothers aren’t there with good intentions. Of course the husband brushes it all off, believing it’s just the nanny’s paranoia and suspicious mind. Yet Leanne insists strangers can’t be trusted, telling Sean that cult members will hide amongst regular people by faking in insidious ways. She mentions scars, like her own. Then when she goes to serve more food, she sees scars on a woman’s back; are they real, or just another vision? Afterwards, Leanne runs into Sean, literally, and gets some of his cooking blood all over her. While she washes it off she hears someone upstairs: the woman with the scars. The lady’s looking under Leanne’s bed and the nanny catches her. Julian and Veera walk in on them, and the woman claims she was looking for her baby’s pacifier, grabbing under the bed for it; looks more like the lady had it in her hand already, though. Things are getting more tense all the time.

Julian attempts to calm Leanne down so they can get through the day for Dorothy’s sake. The nanny sits in her room a while, talking to Aunt Josephine’s corpse behind the wall. She insists she’ll protect the Turners, her new family, in defiance of Josephine and the cult. She’s not running from what may come next. A bit later, she goes downstairs but can’t find anybody, only Mr. Smiley. She tells him to stay back and he keeps approaching her. She says openly: “I will kill you.” That’s when all the mothers, and the one presumably gay dad (we stan the gay dads!), come back inside, after visiting an ice cream truck. Leanne forces Mr. Smiley to take off his shirt, looking for scars. But there are no scars. It all just upsets everyone, especially Dorothy.

The party goes on downstairs with “a toast to motherhood.” That also goes awry once a bunch of flying insects come bursting through the chimney. This sends all the mothers and the daddy running while Sean tries to shoo away the bugs. Time for an exterminator, who discovers a wasp’s nest that must have come dislodged from the roof and got stuck in there. Sean is most confused by the fact he didn’t get stung despite being closest to the chimney. Upstairs, Julian thinks it was Leanne who did this and that it’s because Jericho is probably her child.
That night, Leanne brushes Dorothy’s hair, telling the mother she and Jericho have everything they need in that house. While Dorothy believes she’s cursed. The nanny tells her not to worry, that things are happening as they’re meant to, yet that doesn’t seem to help Dorothy worry any less.