The ‘Hacks’ Finale Levels the Playing Field With a Big Twist

Max’s Hacks may have just finished out its third season, but the show has never felt quite so energetic. In Season 3, young comedy writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) and legendary comic Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) are no longer adversaries, obliged to work with each other for one reason or another. When the show began, Ava needed work so desperately that she agreed to write for Deborah, despite Deborah’s pushing back against Ava’s “woke” comedy. And by the time they became fond of one another in Season 2, Deborah kept Ava on the hook with a lingering threat to sue her, after Ava broke her NDA.

But in Season 3, Deborah and Ava are as close to equals as they’ve ever been. Not only that: They’re friends. Watching that prickly friendship develop has made Hacks a blast to watch since it began in 2021, and enlivened the series with an emotional undertone that is strong enough to prop it up even in its (few) weaker moments. And after last week’s excellent penultimate episode, where Deborah saw firsthand how far her comedy has grown since Ava came into her life, one would expect Hacks Season 3 to finish on a warm, tender note.

How I love to be proven wrong! The Season 3 finale finds Deborah and Ava at odds once more when Deborah finally gets a second shot at her dream job: hosting a late-night show. It’s the goal that she and Ava have been running toward all season, but now that she’s clinched it firmly in her Deborah Vance-brand, shea butter-lotioned hands, Deborah is reluctant to give Ava the head writer spot she deserves. The decision sparks another fissure between the two, at least until Ava sees an opening to repay the blackmail that Deborah held over her head in Season 2. The narrative turn in the finale’s last moments is Hacks’ biggest whiplash moment yet, and a testimony to how invigorating television writing can be when it’s done right.

In last week’s episode, Ava told a reporter writing a profile on Deborah that, despite seeming tough, the comedian really just has high standards that she expects everybody to live up to. “If you meet those standards, she’ll take care of you,” Ava said. In the published profile, Ava was quoted as saying, “A ‘hack’ is someone who does the same thing over and over. Deborah is the opposite. She keeps evolving and getting better.” This line calls back to the third episode of Season 1, where Ava told Deborah outright that she was a washed-up hack comedian.

This full-circle moment of closure, combined with Ava and Deborah’s long hug after Deborah finds out that she got her talk show, would suggest that Hacks was ready to tie Deborah’s wigs up with a beautiful bow. The Season 3 finale could’ve simply given us a taste of what it’s like for the pair to work together, striving for good ratings, better jokes, and battling the late-night boys club. It would be a button on this story that no viewer could possibly be upset with.

Instead, Hacks did something much more clever. Writers Paul W. Downs, Lucia Aniello, and Jen Statsky understand that, if this story were to conclude without any of the animosity that drew Deborah and Ava together in the first place, it would be a disservice to how nuanced their character writing has been throughout the entire series. Deborah, Ava, and the vivid cast of supporting characters in their orbit have never felt one-note, and it wouldn’t make sense for the show’s central pairing to completely drop their inflated egos just because they scored a win. Instead, Deborah regresses, letting the fear of failure take over in the finale’s back half. They say old habits die hard, and the older the person, the older their habits.

Brief glimpses of Deborah’s backslide appear throughout the episode. After reconciling with her estranged sister Kathy (J. Smith-Cameron) this season, Deborah tells her that she has to cut a weekend that they planned together short. It’s disappointing for Kathy, who has wanted nothing more than to be on speaking terms with her sister for decades, but she’s willing to make small steps. That is, until the sisters go visit their parents’ gravesite, and Deborah leaves a moment of silence to take a call about what instruments she wants in her show’s band. (“I love saxophone,” she says, while Kathy rolls her eyes.)

When she returns, Kathy tells her that it’s upsetting and disrespectful for Deborah to roll calls while standing in a mausoleum. “Oh please, mom’s not even there!” Deborah retorts, quickly regretting her words. She explains to Kathy that she moved their parents to a plot in Vegas, next to Deborah’s, back in 1997 without ever telling her sister. Not even the fact that their parents are now resting in a coveted corner plot is enough to relieve Kathy, who calls her sister a monster for having their parents moved. “I used my art shipper!” Deborah says. It’s a perfect comeback, but one that only speaks further to Deborah valuing what money can buy her over what close relationships can give her.

The fight puts a rift back in Deborah and Kathy’s relationship, but even that’s not enough to make Deborah more considerate. After a business meeting with the team behind her show, Deborah meets up with Ava to tell her that, despite promising Ava the job, she can’t be the show’s head writer. Instead, they want to keep the crusty white guy who wears a sports jersey to work in that position, one that he’s already held for two decades. Deborah claims that the network execs thought it would be an easier transition for the show as it moves between hosts, but Ava later finds out that Deborah has full hiring power for anyone she wants to have on staff.

When Ava confronts Deborah about her lie, she lets loose entirely. “If you hire him, you’ll just be making the same version of the same show that’s existed for 50 years!” she tells Deborah. “And it won’t be special, or unique. It’ll just be the same shit in a dress. It will because I know you: You’re already making decisions out of fear, and you’ll keep doing it.

“Even if I want the best person for the job—and I am—you should give it to me because of our relationship,” Ava continues. “What we make together is good because of it, and you know that, or else you wouldn’t have asked me to come back here in the first place.”

Deborah has come so close to her dream that her proximity has clouded her better judgment. Even when Ava begins to cry, all but begging Deborah to treat her fairly, Deborah refuses. “This show has to be bulletproof. It has to work,” she says. “I’ve risked way too much for it not to.” Ava, thinking she’s played her last card, tells Deborah that she’ll die lonely if she keeps pushing people away, and leaves Deborah’s mansion. But some encouragement from Jimmy (Downs), a few days later, changes her mind. If Ava wants to be the shark that Deborah says she needs to be, she’ll put herself first at the expense of her relationship with her mentor, and prove once and for all that she has what it takes to not just get her foot in the door, but kick the door off its hinges.

On Deborah’s first writing day for her show, she shows up to see Ava waiting for her at the studio. Deborah tells Ava that she’s happy to see her, but Ava has other plans. “I realized that it would be really, really bad if people found out that you slept with the chairman of this company right before he gave you your own show. The optics of that are pretty rough, especially since the show needs to be bulletproof, like you said. So… I think I am your head writer after all!”

After Ava reminds her boss that she shtupped the network chairman Bob Lipka (Tony Goldwyn) a few episodes back, the two women stare each other down before a few other execs are ushered into the room. “Shall we begin?” Ava asks. “Let’s,” Deborah responds, with a slight smile that turns into a scowl. It’s a wholly unexpected ending for a season that has otherwise seen the pair becoming closer than ever. But it reminds us that Ava has been listening to all of Deborah’s advice and studying her carefully, not just as a comedic inspiration but as a businesswoman. For Deborah, whose inclination is always to make fun of Ava for her youth and inexperience, it’s a complete surprise. But Ava has learned from the best.

Should Hacks not be renewed, and a fourth season never see the light of day (God forbid), I’d still be perfectly satisfied with this as an ending. As much as Hacks is about letting other people into your life so they can help you grow as a person, it is also very much about the cutthroat nature of the entertainment industry. This ending would fittingly give us a dose of both of these themes, reminding us that Ava and Deborah need one another to succeed not just in their careers, but in their personal lives. It’s just about the most considered, nuanced note that Hacks Season 3 could’ve ended on. But even though it was a clean finale, I do hope that we’ll get the chance to see how messy things could get between Ava and Deborah in one final round.