SPOILER ALERT: The following story contains details from Hacks‘ Season 4 finale.
Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) goes to hell and back in the Season 4 finale of Hacks, which aired on HBO Max tonight.
After blowing up her late-night dreams, she finds herself under a network non-compete in Episode 10, “Heaven,” which states that she can’t perform as a comedian for 18 months. Ava (Hannah Einbinder) encourages her to make the most of her mandated time away from the spotlight, in the writing of a new act, but Deborah instead sets out to find a legal loophole that will allow her to skirt the agreement.
At loose ends for perhaps the first time in her life, Deborah pays a visit to former manager Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins), trying to convince him to come back to work alongside her — though he’s now content to oversee a warehouse producing solar panel materials.
Marty (Christopher McDonald) offers Deborah an extended stay at a Hawaiian hotel where he’s a part owner, and while it looks for a moment that she’s resigned herself to jet off for a vacation with Ava and set work aside for a beat, Ava is surprised to wake from the trip in Singapore instead.
Deborah has found her loophole: She’s negotiated a limited run in a casino, where she’ll perform through a translator, circumventing the terms of her late show contract. Over time, the run extends into a residency, and Deborah lives the high life, partying too much as Ava becomes increasingly disillusioned.
Ava accuses Deb of having given up — after all, she hasn’t written new material in months — and is sent packing following yet another big argument with her boss. But when Ava wakes on the morning of her flight, it’s to frantic texts and calls, letting her know that TMZ has reported Deborah dead.
Fear not, though, as she’s very much alive. This was just a case of an obit being prepped in advance and accidentally published. In any case, the moment serves its purpose for Deborah, lighting a fire under her to get back to the U.S. and have the final say in the writing of her story.
Hours before Hacks‘ Season 5 renewal was formally announced, creator-showrunners Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky hopped on Zoom with Deadline to break down the finale and preview their endgame for the series. Here, they discuss signs of “character growth” for Deborah, a big evolution in her dynamic with Ava, whether they’ll stick to a five-season plan for the series, the potential for a Jimmy-Kayla spin-off, their Kaley Cuoco comedy Kansas City Star in development at HBO, and more.
DEADLINE: Hacks has been renewed for a fifth season, as expected. How are you feeling?
JEN STATSKY: Good! We feel privileged and honored to get to do another season of this show.
LUCIA ANIELLO: Yeah. In a world where five seasons of a comedy is extremely rare, we count our blessings.
PAUL W. DOWNS: And it shouldn’t be, but it is.
DEADLINE: Do you have a sense of when you’ll be back on set?
DOWNS: I think the fall. We have been writing, so behind the Zoom tab is another tab. We’re in process.
DEADLINE: Why did this feel like the right place to leave Deborah and Ava this season?
DOWNS: It just felt right. I mean, in [Episode 9] “A Slippery Slope,” Deborah gives up her white whale, and it was something we always knew we would do, and it really took four seasons to get there. All of the ups and downs of their relationship, and all of the twists and turns of Deborah’s career have led to this moment where she says, “I’m going to actually put someone before my career, and I’m going to do right by my career as a comedian and not make a show the wrong way.” So obviously it’s a huge character growth for Deborah. And I think that it’s just something that we’ve always planned to do. We always knew we wanted her to get the late-night show; we always knew we wanted her to give it up. And I think at the end of four seasons felt right.
DEADLINE: These beats were part of your concept of the show from the very beginning?
DOWNS: Yeah, although we didn’t know it was Season 4. Initially we were like, “Oh, maybe she gets the late night show in Season 3. Maybe it’s half of a season.” So all of the tentpoles are there. It’s just, when we roll them out and how long we stay with certain stories kind of depends on how we break each season with our writers.
DEADLINE: There are points toward the end of the season where it seemed like things might go in a different direction: Maybe Deborah exposes her dalliance with network exec Bob after she’s ousted from late night. Maybe she goes to Hawaii instead of Singapore. And maybe she dies for real. Were any of those avenues discussed? What informed your choice of direction?
ANIELLO: Going to Singapore, I think what we were searching for there was basically Deborah, since she’s kind of banished from performing in English, she always finds a loophole. For us, the way that she in her career ended up going to Vegas, when she was tossed out of the entertainment industry, she kind of likes to find these places where she can build her own reality, her own fortress. And for us in Singapore, that was her doing the same thing. She was creating a world where she could live in the lap of luxury and do what she wanted to do, which is perform, so she figured out her own kind of loophole.
In terms of the Bob Lipka of it all, I think we actually thought it was more interesting for her not to be able to get out of the non-compete…Obviously, that’s not necessarily set in stone. We haven’t written the rest of the series. But that did feel like to give him a checkmate would be really putting her in an interesting position and a lack of power, which isn’t really something we’ve seen before. So for us, we’re really trying to put our characters in new situations you haven’t seen them in. That is what led us to the spirit of the finale, which is to see Deborah in an extremely, extremely low place, and a place which is very different than we’ve ever seen, which we thought was particularly interesting after she has kind of an emotional climax of just making the right choice in our minds. So for us, in terms of where we left it, I think that’s the thing that we’ve found to be the most interesting, is when Deborah Vance has something she wants, she’s reinvigorated and she’s excited for life.
So we wanted to end the season with her excited about her new goal, instead of just ending in a, “Well, that was that. I finished my late-night show, and that’s the end, and I chose Ava.” Just because that could feel like a series finale, and we just don’t feel like that’s where we wanted to end the season. So that is why we kind of had this epilogue episode that got to explore different things and put them in a new scenario.
For us, in terms of the form of the episode, it feels different than the rest of the series. And for us, we like to challenge ourselves and try to make episodes of the show that you don’t see coming. So for us, it’s a really special episode.
DOWNS: Although we did always talk about those things. Like, could she get out of [the contractual agreement]? Could she do this? Could she talk about the affair? But obviously, the affair could tarnish the way in which she earned the show. So we were like, can’t really do that. And also, knowing that we wanted to get to this place where Ava in Season 3 says, “You’ll never put someone before your career,” we needed to give Deborah the opportunity to put someone before her career. And there’s not going to be a greater moment, or a more heightened moment than giving up her white whale, this dream that she’s had.
DEADLINE: Was the death fake-out simply about making Deborah realize she needed to get back to her real life? Shaking her out of her funk?
STATSKY: Yeah. She does this amazing thing in 9, which is both an emotional and moral victory for her. But we always, after being a comedy first, want to treat our characters as real people and in a grounded way. And we wanted to honor the fact that this was Deborah’s dream for her entire life. And even though she knows it was the right choice to walk away, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. If you’ve been muzzled and she’s not going to be able to do the thing she loves more than anything — the thing she’s addicted to, as we’ve shown — that’s going to really put her in a low place, and really put her in a place of grieving and feeling adrift, and everything that you see happen in Episode 10.
So, then we’ve always talked about this story of an obituary being leaked of a famous person because we find it so fascinating. The idea of doing this story with Deborah has been around since Season 1 because all of us were taken very much with the story of Alfred Noble, who had invented dynamite, and then his obituary was accidentally printed and it said, “The merchant of death is dead.” The obituary was about all the people his invention had killed, and it made him realize what his legacy was, and his legacy was someone who had hurt others and taken lives from people. And so it made him reevaluate and want to establish the Nobel Peace Prize in his will, which he did.
So we always have really thought it was so interesting to have a famous main character who this could happen to, who could see their life the way it would be remembered, and perhaps not like what they see, and still have the chance to change that. To get a second chance at writing your legacy is such a rare, incredible thing, and we really wanted that to be the fire that would be lit under Deborah going into Season 5.
DEADLINE: What does this ending reflect about where the dynamic now rests between Ava and Deborah? Is this always going to be a love-hate relationship, or have they turned a corner?
DOWNS: I think after what happens in “A Slippery Slope,” they’re so ride or die for each other. They really have, I think, sealed the deal. They’re creatively bound, and I think Ava has said this in the past, that as much success as she’s had on On the Contrary — which was that weekly news show that she worked on and was offered the head writer job of — or the success she’s had in her past, she gets so much satisfaction from working with Deborah, I think because writing can be a very solitary thing. I think their creative collaboration is the most satisfying thing for her. So I do think they are in the best place they’ve ever been. Of course, they’re still going to have philosophical differences because they’re two women of very different generations, and the way they see the world is different. They are always going to have grist, and that’s sort of the secret sauce of the show. But I don’t think they’re going to be at odds in the same way again.
DEADLINE: What does the future hold for Jimmy and Kayla? Because it seems like they’re also coming to a new place, in their relationship and shared professional life.
DOWNS: We are digging into that right now because their relationship has certainly evolved, as well. They’re like a bizarro version of Deborah and Ava, and things have changed for them, but also we have to remember that two of their highest-earning clients now are out of a job and are in Singapore. So what’s happening with their fledgling management firm is yet to be seen. We have a lot to explore with them. I don’t even actually know all the answers.
STATSKY: But they’re ride or die, too. Just like Deborah and Ava, at the end of the season, are ride or die.
DOWNS: You know what it is? They’re all family — and you can’t choose your family.
DEADLINE: You’ve long talked about Hacks as a five-season show. Is that still definitely the plan?
ANIELLO: We very much know where we want to end the series; it’s how we pitched the show originally. Right now, we’re still writing towards it ending in the fifth season. But that being said, we have a lot of things we want to do this season. A lot of stories we want to pay homage to and a lot of characters we want to do right by. So that being said, there’s always a world where it’s more than the amount that we can turn out in a year. Because we really like having the show out every year. But we are really in the middle of figuring it out. If it’s not done in five, it’s close to it. But we shall see.
DEADLINE: It feels like the world of Hacks might lend itself to a spin-off — perhaps one focused more squarely on Jimmy and Kayla. Is that kind of thing something you’d entertain, or will your time in this world be done once this show is completed?
DOWNS: We’re asked that a lot, and the truth is that we have so many funny scenes for Jimmy and Kayla that don’t end up in the show, and we’re like, “Well, that’s going to be for a different show.” Because there’s oftentimes stories that we want to tell with them that there just isn’t room for in an ensemble show, especially one that’s a character study of this woman, and they really are best served when they dovetail with Deborah and Ava’s stories. So you’re right. There’s certainly a lot of material there, and it would be a lot of fun. I think we would absolutely be open to it, but we haven’t been asked to do it. So, you know.
ANIELLO: Start the petition.
DOWNS: We need the Deadline blast. We need the groundswell.
ANIELLO: And that’s up to you.
DEADLINE: Last fall, we broke the news that you have a new HBO series in the works — a comedy called Kansas City Star, starring Kaley Cuoco. When can we expect that? What can you tell us about it? And how are you going to now balance two shows?
ANIELLO: We’re very much just concentrating right now on finishing Hacks. It’s not something we’re juggling really at the same time.
STATSKY: HBO and HBO Max have been such incredible creative partners. Everyone there is just so wonderful and listens to creatives first. Hacks is this thing that exists and it’s so important to us, and we’re able to focus on that and dedicate ourselves to that. And so while we have things that we’re super excited about, including this Kaley show, it’s not taking up the majority of our time right now. The majority of our time is Hacks, Hacks, Hacks….and maybe, the Jimmy-Kayla spin-off.
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