'Hacks' (Courtesy HBO Max) 'Hacks' (Courtesy HBO Max) Logo text [This story contains spoilers from the series finale of Hacks.]
You have to hand it to the writers and showrunners of Hacks — Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, Jen Statsky — for the unpredictable rug pull they delivered in the show’s final hour. Patience, comfort in white spaces, an affinity for foreign cinema — these may all determine whether you find the finale of the Emmy-winning series brilliant or a betrayal of its tone, as it coolly navigates the emotions of key players after comic legend Deborah Vance asserts her right to die. The cancer we learned of earlier in the season is back and now eating away at her body, leading her to make a final decision that impacts everyone around her. Ava, her writer, and Jimmy, her agent, are the only ones who know her prognosis and plan.
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It’s not an easy hour for Hacks fans to get through. It wouldn’t be easy to watch an hour of muted anticipatory grief as any two television characters gallivant around Paris, both understanding what awaits at the end of their journey. Hacks is a half-hour comedy with detours into drama and some sentimental flourishes, but stakes this high for its two main players — centering on the main character’s death — have largely been absent from the series, aside from the fifth and final season’s opening moments, when Deborah’s fans, the Little Debbies, mourn outside the gates of her home due to mistaken news reports.
To recap: Season 5 of Hacks opened with a TMZ splash headline announcing the news of Deb’s death in Singapore — an erroneous report that went viral but, more importantly, got the jilted comic motivated to cement her legacy during a year-long network TV contractual blackout. The MacGuffin becomes a solo show at Madison Square Garden, and it’s soon locked in. The rest of the season is designed to build to this moment, which Hacks delivered, unexpectedly, in the penultimate episode. In a fairly predictable twist, it was revealed that the record-setting sellout of the stadium was the work of none other than Bob Lipka, the TV executive Deb named on air as she quit late night — a man not about to let her keep dragging him. So he took a drastic, cruel step to end it.
“Legacy is about really honoring your truth,” Hannah Einbinder told The Hollywood Reporter. “When Deborah gives a speech at The Diva, she talks about loving Las Vegas, because it was the place that accepted her, and I think people who were concerned with what is the cool thing or the chic thing would not want that included in their legacy. Deborah is as happy to be known as a Vegas icon as she is to be known as a mainstream late-night star; as happy as she is to be known for walking away and making that moral decision. I think all of those things are true to her. I think that’s what’s important, and I think that’s what the show says.”
The penultimate episode wrapped up with a feel-good, “let’s put on a show” sitcom trope, where everyone springs into action to help the hero. The arc of the season was completed in a neat package — laughs, supporting-character shenanigans, and one-liners that felt a little too tidy, satisfying its double duty of wrapping up both the season and the series. But Hacks had one final, 45-plus-minute story to tell. And for Deb and Ava’s plotline, it had to be a two-hander.
For long stretches of the finale, there is silence. No humor in a show about — and marketed as — a comedy. It seems fair to find this jarring, and it may well be taxing for viewers who are here for the laughs first and sentiment around the edges, which is exactly what the show has delivered since it debuted in the dog days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Both women manage to make these tonally divergent performances land. With no comedy to hide behind, the characters’ love for one another crystallizes, and the undefinable nature of it — are they playing mother-daughter roles? Mentor and protégé? Lovers-to-be? — sits beautifully unresolved. All and none of the above are fair answers, fitting for a show about female dynamics and shifting power.
Comedy is granted as relief from the ennui shadowing our main characters in Paris through the wrap-up of the show’s B-story. Kayla and Jimmy are given a fun arc and a daunting yet apt new gig running her dad’s business. He was pilfering millions, it seems, and agrees to hand his life’s work to his ne’er-do-well daughter as a means of escape. Yes, it’s as tidy an ending as we could get for their arcs on the series, but they have always been the icing on the Deb-Ava cake. They’ll face daunting new challenges ahead.
Comedy ultimately returns for Deb and Ava, too, and — of course — saves the day. But not before an emotional blow-up in which Ava begs Deb to attempt treatment and live long enough for their relationship to move forward, now that the two are no longer at odds and are finally working toward the same goals. This final plea doesn’t move Deb (would it ever?) — but it isn’t until she’s about to board her train to her final destination in Switzerland that she calls for Ava and stops to share a fresher punchline than her own: “The worst part about dying is I can’t even enjoy being bone thin. That’s the better joke!”
With that, Deb has decided to live long enough to put together her cancer comedy set. Whether this feels heartwarming and life-affirming, like emotional whiplash, or simply like the episode’s inevitable conclusion is up to the viewer. It’s hard to imagine the show ending with Deb taking a train to be euthanized — almost too bold a choice for a series that puts its heroine on a pedestal, writing her larger than life, and larger even than the statue of her planned outside The Diva casino. Our final moment with Ava and Deb flashes forward, as they walk down a Las Vegas street, arms locked. The famous “Get Happy/Happy Days Are Here Again” duet by Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand plays on the soundtrack as they workshop jokes, the final scene sending them walking together into the sunset.
Einbinder discussed the intimacy of the series’ magnificent final shot with THR.
“I think that the place that they end, walking hand in hand — frankly, there’s an introduction of a physical intimacy in the finale that does feel new to me. I think when Ava meets Deborah at the airport, and she puts her head on her shoulder, they’ve hugged, and they’ve, you know, pushed each other a little in jest… I think there was a real, genuinely new physical intimacy that was established throughout,” she said. “They’re really holding each other in this way that is new throughout, whether that’s in the airport or in the Louvre, or in that last shot walking arm in arm. I do think something new happens in the finale.”
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