Max’s critically acclaimed, incredibly addictive Hacks ended season two with Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) back on top and riding a wave of success after the release of her TV special. The dynamic duo of comedy legend Deborah and struggling comedy writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) found the perfect outlet to showcase Deborah’s evolution as an entertainer and as a person. Audiences ate up the TV special, and it lit a fire under Deborah’s career. How did she react? By firing Ava.
Season three picks up a year after the season two finale. Deborah’s career is still on fire, and Ava has moved on with her life in LA. However, even with the passage of time, emotions are still raw as the new season premieres on May 2, 2024.
Hacks co-creator, co-showrunner, executive producer, and writer Jen Statsky describes the separation as a way to keep Deborah and Ava’s relationship from growing stagnant.
“This idea of separating them would be a next step in their relationship where Deborah would do something that was partly altruistic, partly her being a little bit scared of the closeness that she felt for Ava, and falling back into old ways.
But then this year apart would allow them to reach new career heights, which you see in the premiere episode. They’re both doing better than ever. Deborah is doing better than ever, even though […] she’s now doing so well she doesn’t have to work as hard for it. Ava is doing amazing, even though she’s been in couples therapy. So how good could the year be?” explained Statsky during an LA press conference hosted by Max.
Statsky continued: “But then like this would make it so that okay, now they’ve both reached these new incredible heights of their career and yet they realize they still need each other. Deborah needs Ava to push her. Ava needs Deborah because there is a spark that she doesn’t get from anyone else. And so, for us, that point of where they separated was always very intentional, because we wanted them to kind of go off in their separate ways to realize what they were missing in each other.”
Does Absence Make the Heart Grow Fonder?
According to Jean Smart, even a year apart doesn’t keep Deborah and Ava from falling back into familiar patterns once they get back together.
“I love the way they got back together, because it just felt completely right, just this kind of fake politeness for five minutes and then they start to insult each other. […] But, I mean, I think it was good that they were both off enjoying their lives and accomplishing things that they wanted to accomplish,” explained Jean. “And I’m sure thinking about each other. I mean I had an excuse to say, ’Oh, well, it’d be better for her if I don’t call her.’ But you know, I do think Deborah was a bit altruistic. I think she was trying to do what was right for Ava.”
Hannah Einbinder teased that Ava may have had a much more difficult time adjusting to this forced separation. “While Ava was thriving, certainly, it seems like it was a really heavy weight on her conscious always, when there’s just that one person who is just weighing on your mind. I think Ava’s life, obviously, when we first see her, it’s incredibly together,” offered Einbinder. “But I just think there’s like always that little missing piece without Deborah for her.”
Fans can expect a shift in the dynamic between mentor Deborah and her protégé Ava in season three. Rather than Ava being the one who needs Deborah, season three finds Deborah being the more dependent of the two.
“That’s true. That’s the first time we’ve seen that, really,” said Smart. “Yeah, because Deborah’s at a point where she’s had this great special and everything, but now it’s like, ‘Well, now what do I do? Do I go back to Vegas and do a second-rate club or what do I do? Do I do another bad sitcom?’”
Einbinder believes Ava has shown real personal growth over Hacks‘ three seasons, much of which is attributable to hanging around with Deborah. Deborah isn’t the best role model, but her work ethic is worthy of replicating.
“I think from just between Deborah and Ava, there has been a push and pull of like is Deborah the perfect example for Ava? Maybe in some ways no, but there are a lot of lessons about hard work and cutting your teeth that Deborah has imparted upon Ava. And I think she went into the series kind of in a place of like why is this happening? Why me? I’m getting like canceled. I can’t work.
She’s coming from a place of like not having a lot of strong relationships. And I think through their relationship, Ava is learning about hard work and just like determination and persevering through failure, something she didn’t really deal with much. As it was established, obviously, in the first season, Ava kind of got plucked off the internet and was like a writer pretty quickly, very successful, very young. So, I think she’s had to kind of deal with a wakeup call in that sense,” said Einbinder.
Einbinder added: “She’s always had the spirit of like kind of being a little bit of a contrarian. And she’s kind of settled into that role with Deborah. And I think just having to grow and go through life and go back to LA and right the wrongs that she maybe was a part of in like some of the earlier seasons. She has some good reconciliations with people that she maybe wasn’t respectful towards or really like a solid friend to. […] Still Ava, you know. We love her, we love her.
[…] So I credit a lot of her growth to this relationship. But also, you know, I think maybe she’s learning a couple things from this relationship that are maybe…sometimes they make each other better, but they also make each other worse.”
The Challenges of Shotting Hacks Season 3
The group made it through the Covid-19 pandemic, the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, and Jean Smart’s health scare as a team. Asked during the press conference about the bonds formed coming through such tough times together, Smart replied, “I mean when you go through personal things with people that you work closely with, it does really bond you. And the fact that we work with people who are so incredibly talented, who are also every bit as kind and as nice as they are talented, it’s such a gift. And you think, ‘Well, why can’t it always be that way?’ It should always be that way. But we are, I feel, extraordinarily fortunate in the group of people that we have.”
Hannah Einbinder agreed.
“Yeah, I mean we make a show about the specific depth of the love shared between people who laugh together and it’s kind of meta, because that’s like what we do every day. We are actively doing the thing that we are making this piece of art about. And there is no greater bond than the one between like funny people who collaborate,” said Einbinder. “And it is our love language. And it’s how we deal with everything. And it has, I think, probably gotten us through everything that’s happened. And yeah, the love is real.”
