Managing ecosystems to sustain ecosystem services amidst global change presents a significant challenge for scientists and policymakers. Predicting how management strategies and fluctuating environmental conditions affect ecosystem services is challenging due to the complex nature of the interactions and the intrinsic dynamics within ecological and social systems. Overlooking these interactions can result in missed opportunities to secure ecosystem services, which are crucial for the well-being of both human societies and ecological communities. Given the nature of these interactions, complex systems in general and network theory in particular provide a framework for exploring their complexities. This study reviews the main scientific literature investigating ecosystem services using network theory. We systematically selected studies that combine complex network analysis with ecosystem service research. A total of 152 published papers were fully read and analyzed to investigate their temporal and spatial distributions, spatial scales, topics of study, network metrics, and the types of network models used in case studies. We aim to report on how ecosystems and their services are modeled and analyzed, identifying methods that could potentially advance the research field. The findings reveal that research tends to rely on a limited set of network metrics and models. By shedding light on existing practices and potential avenues for advancement, our review contributes to the ongoing dialogue on harnessing complex network analysis for effective ecosystem services management in a rapidly changing world.