Great stars always leave the fans wanting more. End with your best joke, so they’re still laughing when the lights come up.
While there’s a temptation to lament losing a great comedy, “Hacks” hasn’t lost a step since its 2021 premiere, cementing its legacy as one of the smartest, funniest shows of its era, and it’s not gonna get stale before it exits stage right.
It’s simply the best comedy of the 2020s, one that’s so consistently witty that it often makes the troubled state of TV comedy look even worse in comparison. With an all-timer performance from Jean Smart and an ensemble that has only improved over the years, “Hacks” will soon be done as it launches its final run of 10 episodes this week, a closing routine that’s about legacy, friendship, and the power of a perfect punchline.
Starting life as a study of cross-generational comedy, with a young comedian named Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) taking a job as a ghostwriter for a fading Vegas stand-up comedy legend named Deborah Vance, “Hacks” has really grown with its characters. This final season opens with a Vance who had it all and watched it blow up in her face. The fiery end of her talk show run means she’s now the nemesis of Bob Lipka (Tony Goldwyn), the Sarandos-esque power player who has banned Vance from doing basically anything online or on TV. Is this the end of Deborah Vance? If she can’t perform, who is she?
Deborah is at an age when people start to consider their legacy, and hers can’t be bombing her way out of the spotlight. In the hysterical premiere, Vance tasks her team—Jimmy (Paul W. Downs), Kayla (Megan Stalter), and Randi (Robby Hoffman)—with getting her an EGOT, as if that’s just as easy as asking for one. (It leads to one of the most amazingly unexpected extended cameos in the history of the show from a Pulitzer Prize winner.)
After that gambit predictably doesn’t go as planned, Vance pivots to an effort to play a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden, a quest that takes up most of this final season with a few wonderful excursions that HBO doesn’t really want spoiled. It’s not really one to reveal that the writers bring on some new faces, while also allowing some familiar ones to return. I won’t explain how, but there’s basically an entire absolutely incredible episode that feels like a tribute to Kaitlyn Olsen’s fearless comic timing as Deborah’s daughter.
Of course, the writing centers the final arc for Deborah, Ava, Kayla, and Jimmy. There have arguably been stretches of “Hacks” recently that overemphasized an antagonistic relationship between Deborah and Ava, focusing on how frenemies can make great art. Wisely, the final season almost entirely avoids any serious antipathy between our two beloved protagonists, letting them fight the system (and even AI) together, and that unity becomes one of its greatest strengths.
If this were a show that was once about two very different people discovering that they could professionally succeed together in ways that they couldn’t apart, the final season unsentimentally reveals to Deborah and Ava how much they’ve impacted each other personally. The finale is surprisingly emotional, giving just enough wish fulfillment for these beloved characters and anchoring it in a moving plotline that might surprise viewers. Without spoiling, it feels just right in ways that series finales too rarely do lately, allowing us to sense that this world goes on while also serving as a satisfying conclusion.
Smart, Einbinder, Downs, and Stalter are all fantastic this season, but it’s always been the writing that truly elevates “Hacks.” Not only is it shaped by consistently clever dialogue, but it also understands the world of show business in ways that so many programs set behind the curtain fail to. Talent comes with a boozy cocktail of genius and anxiety, a drink with a different recipe for the women of Deborah and Ava’s generations, but one that tastes largely the same. The scripts for “Hacks” understand the ego battles that erupt behind the scenes, but also never feel like they’re “inside baseball” to a degree that ordinary people can’t relate.
Everyone questions their legacy at some point in their lives, like Deborah Vance, and everyone wonders about the role they’ve played in the lives of those who are closest to them, like Ava Daniels. The final season of “Hacks” may be about how Deborah Vance will be remembered, but the show about her was practically flawless.
Entire season screened for review. Premieres on HBO Max on April 9, 2026.
