Note: This story contains spoilers from “Hacks” Season 5, Episode 10.
Deborah Vance was never going to die. That may be a shock to “Hacks” fans who have seen the series finale to HBO Max’s Emmys darling.
The final episode of Season 5 follows Deborah (Jean Smart) taking her writing parter and best friend Ava (Hannah Einbinder) to Europe following a cancer diagnosis. Deborah’s plan is simple: force Ava to try real bread, and then end her life at the best assisted suicide facility in the world. And as hellbent as Deborah is to die, Ava is just as determined to convince her to live. Ultimately, Ava wins that battle as the series ends with the pair doing what they love most, writing a comedy special together.
“We always knew that this was the ending, so we’ve been building to it for quite some time,” series co-creator Jen Statsky told TheWrap.
Though this was the plan since 2019, co-creator Lucia Aniello noted that letting Deborah go through with suicide didn’t align with the tone of their show. Instead, the point of the finale was to challenge Deborah with one of the only remaining elements she can’t control. She’s already bent public perception and the entertainment industry to her will. Why can’t she do the same with her mortality?
” ‘Hacks’ has been the story of Deborah controlling everything,” Aniello said. “She would want to control even death … That asks the essential question of ‘If she’s going to die, what would be the only thing she’d be willing to live for?’”
The answer to that question harkens back to the ultimate purpose of “Hacks” itself: The joy of comedy. Before boarding the train that will take them to the assisted suicide facility, Deborah and Ava enjoy some croissants. Naturally, they begin to riff, trading jokes about the best and worst parts of dying. As Ava runs to the bathroom before boarding, Deborah comes up with a joke that’s better than her last one.
That simple act of creation — “The worst part about dying is that I can’t even enjoy being bone thin” — makes Deborah realize she’s not yet ready to die. She may not have years, but she has at least another standup hour in her and she wants to write it with Ava. It’s a beautiful callback to the first time this duo met, a confrontation that ended with Deborah cutting off Ava with her car and half-screaming at her as they workshopped the best joke about Senator Mike Rogers.
“The show, especially this scene, has really been about humanity,” Aniello said. That focus is why it was so important for “Hacks” to include its screed against AI, “QuikScribbl,” which was directed by Statsky. “The purpose of creating, thinking and living is hard, but it’s worth it, as Deborah says in the first episode. ‘Yes, I’m alive. It’s hard, but it’s worth it.’ And it’s the same thing in the end, which is, ‘Yes, I’m going to fight to be alive. It’s hard, but it’s worth it because it’s worth being with this person I love and creating together.’”
It was very much intentional for joking with Ava to be what pulls Deborah back from the brink of death.
“When these two people meet, they have this creative spark between them that lights them up and changes them,” Statsky said. “It isn’t always easy, and it isn’t always seamless. Maintaining that artistry and that integrity throughout a career isn’t a perfect straight line, but, at the end of the day, that is what she decides is worth living for, and that was always the intention and the point of the show.”
That deep love for creativity also carried over into the finale’s subplot, which focuses on Jimmy (co-creator Paul W. Downs) and Kayla (Megan Stalter). After being forced to return to the agency he hates and demoted to the mailroom, Jimmy realizes that Latitude has been illegally profiting off the AI likenesses of its deceased clients. Jimmy and Kayla use that information to blackmail Kayla’s father Michael (W. Earl Brown) and ultimately take control of Latitude.
Several agents leave due to the upheaval (and Jimmy’s declaration there will be no more Sugarfish lunches). However, his plea to help artists do great work strikes a chord with several remaining employees. Jimmy’s speech about empowering artists and helping bring great stories to audiences stands out as a wholesome and uplifting moment for a profession that is both vital to Hollywood and often vilified onscreen.
“[Jimmy] really believes in helping artists fulfill their vision, and he will do anything for it because it makes him feel like he’s won when they’ve won,” Aniello said. “That is how we feel about a lot of the people in this industry. Yes, it can be a gross industry, and it can have people who are really in it for ego, money, power or whatever, but there also are people here who just love TV shows and movies who want to be part of helping people make really good ones. For us, maybe we just wish that there were even more Jimmys and Kaylas out there.”
“We don’t want to be Pollyanna, but we try to accurately reflect the industry and what’s happened,” Statsky said, pointing to the show’s late night arcs as well as its AI-focused episode. “It’s about these people who believe in storytelling because it connects human beings together, whether it’s the artist telling the stories or the representatives who fight to protect them Even in a constricting industry — like Jimmy says, is a reality of what we’re facing today — there’s always value in storytelling.”
As for how the two Emmy-winning creators see the current state of Hollywood’s comedy scene, Aniello summed it up in three words straight from “Mad Men”: “Not great, Bob.”
“As companies are coming together — How many are left? Two? — that means fewer people are getting shots, but that does feel like it forces people who really want to tell these stories to find independent ways to make their work, whether it’s on the internet or producing an entire season of TV, self-financing it and then figuring out distribution,” Aniello said, noting that the “Hacks” trio sometimes scouted talent off of TikTok and Instagram. “In some ways, it’s better. In the mainstream world, it’s worse. But maybe there’s something the industry can learn about smaller creators or auteurs making interesting work and letting that exist alongside your bigger tentpoles and your four-quadrant movies.”
“People do want original stories — always, still — and they want authenticity. Any time we saw a comedian on Instagram we didn’t know, we’re always responding to the fact that there’s something authentic and real about their POV,” Statsky added.
Aniello, Statsky and Downs intimately understand how powerful the internet can be for creation. Prior to “Hacks,” Statsky — much like Ava — was known for her funny Twitter feed. As for Aniello and Downs, they were known for making YouTube videos.
“There are still ways that people are showing their original stories and showing their authentic selves. You just have to keep doing that and not become so disillusioned that you think, ‘That doesn’t exist anymore,’ because it does. You just have to be looking for it, and we have to also be fighting to make sure that we’re still valuing it,” Statsky said. “It’s like fighting for human connection.”
As for the future, though the trio are open to a Jimmy and Kayla-focused spinoff, they’re doubtful it will happen. “It’s not really something HBO does — take characters and then do spinoffs — so it does not seem particularly likely,” Aniello said. They’re also working on several other projects underneath their deal with Warner Bros. Television.
“Hacks” Seasons 1-5 are now streaming on HBO Max.
