Steven Prusakowski
The final season of HBO’s Emmy-winning and much beloved Hacks kicked off the end of an era last week. While the opener had Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) rising from the dead after a premature obituary, the comedy quickly shifted into a meditation on legacy. During a recent press conference the cast and team behind the series shared thoughts on the final season and closing out the series on their terms.
Series co-creator Lucia Aniello explained how Deborah’s brush with “death” forced her to confront the life and legacy she wanted to leave behind. “It really puts the kind of idea of legacy and how to live a life and how you want to live a life really into focus for her. As the season progresses, we explore a lot of different ways that she wants to have the relationships she wants to have, the lasting legacy she wants to have for Las Vegas, and for her work as well. For the three of us, there are so many episodes we have been wanting to do for a very long time, and it was kind of like, well, here is your last chance to do it.”
While keeping his lips sealed about some of the finer details, co-creator Paul W. Downs shared that the series finale itself serves as a small but perfect encapsulation of everything Hacks set out to do from the very first episode. “All I will say, and it is so tiny, it is like an encapsulation of what we set out to do with the show, of what we set out to make with the tone of the show. And it is about what we set out in the very first episode, which is your legacy and what you leave behind, because we are leaving behind a series and we are thinking about that for ourselves and for our characters.”
Season five marks a return to form for Deborah and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) who have been through a lot together. “Season four got a little bit dark, but again, I think we had earned it,” said Smart. “Season five, we get to get back to being profoundly silly, which is really, really fun. It is also nice that we were able to kind of be on the same team. It is so nice for us to be working towards the same goal.”
Einbinder agreed, adding, “It is also nice that we were able to kind of be on the same team. And of course, we have our sparring throughout, which we also enjoy just as much. It is so nice for us to be working towards the same goal.”
Closing out the final season struck up a lot of emotion for those involved, especially for Megan Stalter, who used the press conference to releasee a string of feelings as she described her emotional collapse with a great deal of comical hysterics at the conclusion of the final scene. “I started screaming and crying and during the scene. I felt like it was the worst pain of my life. Leaving the show was like having a golden fork ripped from my hands and now I have a stupid plastic fork. It was really horrible. I did not handle it well,” shared Stalter.
In contrast, Einbinder offered a quieter reflection on saying goodbye to a character who meant so much to her. “They do feel like real people to us. It is weird to say goodbye to Ava. I kept a lot of her clothes and it is funny because I have them all laying out. It is like that is my friend’s shirt. I pick it up and in my ear goes the Hacks score. They are real to us so it is crazy.”
Smart added her own sense of loss felt as sets were wrapped during filming. “When it started to become very real to me was during the season, as the season went on, they started wrapping certain sets, like when we were shooting in Deborah’s house… the first time it happened, they said, okay, that’s a wrap, that’s a series wrap on Deborah’s bedroom. I was like, we’re never gonna sleep in this bedroom again.”
In the end, faith in the creative team brought everything full circle allowing Smart to enjoy it like a fan. She admitted deliberately avoiding asking about the ending for years, wanting to be surprised along with the audience. When she finally learned how it all wrapped, her reaction said it all. “When they first talked to me about how it was going to end I was surprised, I was not sure I was real happy about it, but I said, hey, I trust you guys, I always have, it always turns out great, and it did, and now I think it is kind of perfect, and it is really great, it is truly great,” admitted the actress.
The fifth and final season of Hacks is a farewell to one of television’s most beloved duos. Deborah Vance and Ava Daniels may be saying goodbye, but the legacy of laughs will endure long after the final bow.
Hacks continues it final season with new episodes each Thursday on HBO Max.
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