Of course, knowing the overall outline of a series is one thing — actually pulling it off, on the other hand, is quite another. Nobody needed to make M. Night Shyamalan aware of all the cautionary tales in television that have come before. For every beloved show that came to a satisfying end, there are countless more that caused meltdowns and controversy lasting to this day. So will “Servant” end up resembling the divisive “Lost” ending or the almost universally-panned conclusion to “Game of Thrones,” or will it become something else altogether?
In the same interview, Shyamalan went on to admit that he knows exactly what he’s up against:
“When we look back at the history of this art form, very few have been able to pull the integrity and the narrative purpose through the entire run of the show to the end. Partly because you don’t know if you’re going to be renewed, partly because it’s so unrelenting in the amount that it’s asking of you. Those factors are crushing.
So the ‘Sopranos’ [and] ‘Breaking Bad’ are very rare that they can sustain from beginning to end. I’m astonished now when I think of any peers who have done this. I’m humbled by the pressure of it. There’s something beautiful that can come from that. This is partly why we picked an ending — so we could aspire to this integrity and resonance.”
Let nobody ever say that Shyamalan isn’t a risk-taker. There was never any guarantee that “Servant” would last this long or allow room for the creative team to tell their story the way they wanted to, but here we are several years later as the show begins to wind down.
New episodes of “Servant” season 4 premiere on Apple TV+ on Fridays.