Hacks Season 4 Finale Explained by Creators; Jimmy and Kayla Spinoff Eyed
This story contains spoilers for Hacks Season 4.
Hacks Season 4 Finale, aired tonight on HBO Max, saw Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), go to hell and back.
In Episode 10, “Heaven”, Deborah is under a non-compete agreement with the network that states she cannot perform as a comic for 18 months. Ava (Hannah Einbinder), encourages Deborah to take advantage of the time she has to write a new act and to avoid the spotlight. Deborah, however, sets out to find an legal loophole to allow her to get around the agreement.
Deborah, who is at a loose end for the first time ever in her life pays a visit her former manager Marcus (Carl Clemons Hopkins), hoping to convince him to return to work with her. However, he is now happy to supervise a solar panel material warehouse.
Ava (Christopher McDonald), a colleague of Marty’s, offers Deborah an extended vacation at the Hawaiian hotel in which he is a partner. Ava, however, is shocked to find herself back home after her trip.
Deborah finds a loophole. She negotiates a limited performance in a casino where she will perform using a translator to circumvent the terms of her contract for a late show. Over time, the run extends into a residency, and Deborah lives the high life, partying too much as Ava becomes increasingly disillusioned.
Ava is told to leave her job after yet another argument. She accuses Deb that she’s given up, since she hasn’t written anything new in months. Ava is woken up by frantic calls and texts the morning before her flight to tell her that TMZ had reported Deborah’s death.
She is still alive. It was an accident that an obituary had been prepared in advance, and then accidentally published. Deborah will benefit from the incident, as it gives her the motivation to return to the U.S. to have her final say on the story.
Here, they discuss signs of “character growth” for Deborah, a big evolution in her dynamic with Ava, whether or not they’ll stick to a five-season plan for the series, the potential for a Jimmy-Kayla spinoff, their Kaley Cuoco comedy Kansas City Star that is currently being developed at HBO, and more. 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! It’s a privilege and an honor to be able to continue this show.
LUCIA Aiello
: Yes. 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’ve been writing so there is another tab behind the Zoom 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. In
, “A Slippery Slope”, Deborah gave up her white-whale, which was something that we knew we’d do. It took us four seasons to reach this point. Deborah’s relationship and her career’s ups anddowns have all led to the moment when she decides to put someone else before herself. It’s something we have always planned. We knew from the beginning that we wanted her on the late-night program; we also knew that we wanted to see her 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. We thought it was Season 3 at first. All the tentpoles were there. The only thing that determines when and for how long certain stories are told is how we break up each season with the writers. DEADLINE There were points towards the end of the year where it looked like things could go in a completely different direction. Maybe Deborah exposes the affair she had with network executive Bob after being fired from late night. She might go to Hawaii instead. She could also die for real. What influenced your choice of direction? What informed your choice of direction?[Episode 9]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. We were interested in the fact that Deborah, who was expelled from the entertainment industry and ended up in Vegas, likes to go to places where she can create her own reality. For us in Singapore, she was doing the same. She created a world in which she could live in luxury and perform what she wanted, so she found her own 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. The rest of the series has not been written. It felt like giving him a checkmate was going to put her in a very interesting situation and would also leave her with a lot less power. This is something that we haven’t seen before. We’re trying to place our characters into situations that you’ve never seen before. This is what brought us to the final scene, where Deborah is in a very low place and in a different place than we have ever seen her in. We thought it was especially interesting to see Deborah after the emotional climax she had made in making the right decision in our minds. For us, the place where we left off, we found it most interesting when Deborah Vance is re-energized and excited about life.
We wanted her to be excited about her goal at the end of the season, rather than just saying, “Well that’s that.” “I finished my late night show and that’s it, and I selected Ava.” We didn’t want to end the season that way, because that would have felt like a series final. We wanted to end the season in a different way, so we created an epilogue episode where we explored new things and placed them in a brand-new scenario.
The form of an episode is different for us than the rest. We like to be challenged and make episodes that are unexpected. So for us, it’s a really special episode.DOWNS
: Although we did always talk about those things. Could she escape
, for example? Could she do it? She could she talk about it? The affair would certainly tarnish her reputation and the way she won the show. We were like “can’t do that.” We also knew that in order to reach the point where Ava says “You will never put anyone before your career,” it was important to allow Deborah to do so. 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 accomplishes this incredible feat in 9. It is an emotional and moral triumph for her. We always treat our characters in a real and grounded manner, even though we are a comedy. We wanted to respect the fact that Deborah had dreamed of this her whole life. Even though Deborah knows that it was the right decision to walk away from her job, it is not easy. You’ve been muzzled, and she won’t be able do what she loves most — the thing that she is addicted to — as we have shown, that will really put her into a low position, and put her on the brink of grief and feeling lost, which you can see in Episode 10.
We’ve always found it fascinating that an obituary of a celebrity was leaked. This story has been in the works since Season 1, when we were all fascinated by the story of Alfred Noble who invented dynamite. His obituary accidentally said “The Merchant of Death is Dead.” It was all about the lives that his invention took, which made him think of his legacy. It made him reconsider and he decided to include the Nobel Peace Prize as part of his will.
We thought it was fascinating that a famous character could have this experience, see how their life would be remembered and possibly not like it, but still have the opportunity to change it. This ending reflects the current dynamic between Ava & Deborah. Is this always going to be a love-hate relationship, or have they turned a corner?[the contractual agreement]DOWNS
: I think after what happens in “A Slippery Slope,” they’re so ride or die for each other. I believe they’ve sealed the deal. The two are creatively linked, and Ava, who has stated this before, said that despite the success that she had with On the Contrary, the weekly news program that she was working on, for which she was offered the job of head writer, or the other successes she had in the past she finds so much joy in working with Deborah. Their creative collaboration is what she finds most rewarding. They are at their best. They’ll still have philosophical differences, because they are two women from very different generations and their worldviews will be different. The show is not without its grist. 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. The two are like a bizarro Deborah and Ava. They have both changed, and their relationship has evolved. What will happen to their newly-founded management firm remains to be seen. There’s a lot we can explore with them. I don’t know the answers to all of them.
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. We’re still working towards the end of season five. We have many things in mind for this season. We have a number of stories and characters that we would like to honor. There’s always more to a story than we can tell in a single year. We like to have the show every year. We are still in the process of figuring out what to do. It’s almost done if it doesn’t take five minutes. 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. You’re correct. It would be great fun. We’d be happy to participate, but haven’t been asked. 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 look forward to that? What can you tell 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. Everybody is so nice and they listen to the creatives. We can focus and devote ourselves to Hacks because it exists. While we are super excited about this Kaley show and other things, they don’t take up most of our time. Hacks ….and possibly the Jimmy-Kayla Spin-Off, take up most of our time.
