Hacks ends its season with a twist that was planned all along

This story contains spoilers about the Season 3 finale of “Hacks.”

When Season 3 of “Hacks” began, viewers saw an aerial shot of Caesars Palace, swooping down into the hotel and casino and fixing on a statue of Caesar himself. This all makes sense for a show mostly set in Las Vegas, but the visual clues were also a sly piece of foreshadowing for the last scene of the season, which ended in Thursday’s episode with a shocking — one might say Shakespearean — betrayal.

During the closing minutes, up-and-coming comedy writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) committed the ultimate backstabbing move when she blackmailed her boss and mentor, stand-up comedian legend Deborah Vance (Jean Smart). Tired of feeling like she has no power in their lopsided working relationship, Ava threatened to reveal one of Deborah’s most shameful secrets, unless Deborah made her the head writer on her new late-night show.

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“In the first week of [writing] the third season, we were like, ‘This double cross should happen,’” said Paul W. Downs, who co-created the show with his wife, Lucia Aniello, and Jen Statsky, who are also co-showrunners and executive producers. “So all roads kind of led to that moment. Throughout the season you will see, if and when you re-watch, that it was laid throughout, setting that up.”

The critically acclaimed Max comedy series — which was just renewed for a fourth season — built toward one goal this year: Deborah achieves her dream of finally becoming the host of her own late-night talk show, against nearly impossible odds. Early in the finale, Deborah excitedly offered Ava the job of head writer. This felt like a fitting full-circle moment for the pair who have gone from being a combative comedy writing team to a close-knit, brilliant partnership that launched Deborah back into the spotlight with a groundbreaking hit special that largely envisioned and inspired by Ava.

They tell each other everything, which is why Deborah confessed to Ava a few episodes ago that she’d slept with the married high-powered executive (guest star Tony Goldwyn) who was going to decide who got the late-night gig. Deborah was certain the show was going to a younger male comedian and, in that moment, didn’t care if the fling was a bad decision. The next morning, Deborah was mortified, because she had sworn she would never sleep with a married man — especially after the life-defining event of her husband cheating on her with her sister. Ava reassured Deborah that she shouldn’t be too hard on herself: “Trying to be a good person is hell, but at least you’re trying.”

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But everything blew up in the finale when Deborah almost immediately rescinded the job offer to Ava, at first lying and saying the network was more comfortable with the man who has already held the job for two decades, and then admitting that she thought it was too risky to have Ava in that role and that the show had to be “bulletproof.” She told Ava she could be second-in-command, but Ava was devastated and felt betrayed. So in the last scene, Ava walked into the writers room and pointed out that, wow, the optics would be bad (and not so “bulletproof”) if people learned that Deborah slept with the chairman of the company shortly before he gave her the show.

Deborah was stunned: “You wouldn’t,” she said. Ava remained unfazed: “I would. Wouldn’t you?” Then she took her place at the head of the table as the show’s new head writer.

To the showrunners, that course of action felt correct, because Deborah spent the season (really, the whole show) urging Ava to be selfish and think about her career above all else. So Ava has grown in confidence in Deborah’s image, and Deborah is the exact kind of person who would use that information against someone else.

“You know, I don’t blackmail often,” Statsky joked. “But I imagine that the deeper and more personal and the more it’s information that only one person has, the more explosive it is. ... And, of course, you’re touching on thematically painful for Deborah, the fact that it is something that she has shame about doing and she expresses so much inner conflict about based on her history. It is quite diabolical of Ava.”

As horrified as Deborah was in the moment, the showrunners said that there was a glimmer of respect from Deborah as the two stared each other down across the table. After all, Ava finally has the upper hand in this arrangement.

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“In the pilot of the show you have Deborah hiring Ava because she’s like, ‘Oh, this girl I can have a nice little fight with ... somebody who’s fun for me to go back and forth with,’” said Aniello, who directed the finale. “Now in the finale, it’s almost like Ava has reached her final form, which is like [Deborah’s] true equal as a competitor. And I think as much as that is very frustrating to Deborah in this moment because she’s forcing her to do something she doesn’t want, she also kind of likes having a formidable opponent.”

The plan for “Hacks,” which often explores harsh truths and hypocrisies of the entertainment industry, was always to see Deborah make one last valiant attempt for her place in late-night, the creators said. As the lore goes, she was supposed to have her own show decades ago, but the network scrapped it because of the bad publicity when her ex-husband’s house burned down after he left her for her sister. Deborah joked about taking the blame (the culprit was a malfunctioning dryer), but she became known as the crazy arsonist and had to fight to carve out a place for herself in the comedy world.

Even though Deborah doesn’t often adhere to the industry’s traditional rules, she was still “forged in the fire of the boys club” of comedy, as Downs put it. She knows the network is taking a risk in hiring a 70-year-old woman as a host, and she wants the show to work so badly that she becomes skittish about giving Ava a major role — even though Ava pushed her out of her comfort zone, which led to her getting the host gig in the first place.

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“I think that Deborah, as bold as she is ... has this internalized misogyny,” Statsky said. “She does have this flaw in moments of creative risk, where she can kind of pull back and maybe take the easier road so that she can succeed and still hold on to the one thing that she thinks she can depend on, which is her career.”

In addition to the drama, the episode was still filled with the usual “Hacks” hyper-speed level of one-liners packed into every scene. At one point, Deborah, trying to mend fences with her estranged sister, Kathy (guest star J. Smith-Cameron), revealed that she removed their parents from their gravesite and had them sent to Las Vegas when a plot opened up next to her. When Kathy called her a monster, Deborah offered a defense: “I used my art shipper!”

And another relationship had an unexpected emotional moment: Downs, who also plays Deborah and Ava’s manager Jimmy, realized the true value of his kooky-yet-underestimated assistant Kayla (Megan Stalter) and ran onto an airplane to stop her from leaving for Greece (a trip that she booked on the company credit card, naturally) after they had a fight.

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“This show is about creative collaborations, about these like unlikely duos working together,” said Downs, who added it has been especially rewarding this season to play a more confident side of Jimmy, as he and Kayla fought to get Deborah the late-night hosting gig. “It’s just really nice to see the Jimmy-Kayla relationship evolve in the same way that the Deborah-Ava relationship is evolving — just maybe a little less blackmail.”

The showrunners are already relishing the possibilities of Deborah on late-night TV, an institution that remains the ultimate marker of success for comedians and has no shortage of backstage intrigue.

“That is the actual herculean task: It’s like, how do you get [a late-night show] off the ground?” Downs said. “We’ve seen it time and time again ... there’s just so much drama and comedy in that landscape that it just feels really ripe and really exciting for us to explore.”

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