“Hacks” creators on easing Jean Smart's finale concerns and crafting that emotional twist: 'What's worth living for is laughing'

Gerrad HallSat, May 30, 2026 at 12:00 AM UTC

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Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder on the 'Hacks' series finale
Credit: Courtesy of HBO MaxKey Points -

Hacks ended with an emotional roller coaster, following a stunning admission from Jean Smart's Deborah Vance.

Creators Lucia Aniello and Jen Statsky explain how it fulfills their original pitch to studios.

The two discuss how they were able to film in the Louvre following the heist there last October.

This article contains spoilers about the series finale of Hacks.

Jean Smart heard some bad news prior to receiving the script for the series finale of Hacks: Someone told her that Deborah Vance — the comedy legend she's played for five seasons on the HBO Max series — dies in the final episode.

"Which is obviously not true, is never gonna be true," series co-creator Lucia Aniello tells Entertainment Weekly in a pre-finale chat with fellow creator Jen Statsky. "So she was understandably upset by somebody telling her that information."

Smart has some other hopes and dreams for her character. "She kind of envisioned a world where she and Marty's (Christopher McDonald) wedding would be part of the final season," Statsky explains. "Which, hey, lots of people love Deborah and Marty. That just wasn't the story that we were telling with this show."

The rumor wasn't far off, though. As audiences — and Deborah's trusted writer and friend Ava Daniels, played by Hannah Einbinder — discovered early in the episode, Deborah has cancer (something she learned after that doctor's appointment she lied to Ava about earlier in the season) and doesn't want to go through an exhaustive treatment for it. So she asks Ava to go on vacation with her to Paris, before accompanying her to an assisted suicide facility in Switzerland.

Hannah Einbinder as Ava and Jean Smart as Deborah on 'Hacks'
Credit: Courtesy of HBO Max

Aniello, Statsky, and co-creator Paul W. Downs, who also stars on the series as Deborah and Ava's manager, Jimmy, pitched the show to networks knowing exactly how the show would end. Specifically...

"It was the illness," Statsky confirms, "but it was also very much so this idea of [Swiss right-to-die organization] Dignitas and the character, Deborah Vance, being someone who is such a control freak and has for five seasons really tried to control every aspect of her life and struggle with that and learn from that and someone who would be, as we concluded this story, the final boss of letting control go, letting control of career go, letting control of life go, and just realizing that what's worth living for is laughing and writing with your friend."

But before the laughs, she's met with a lot of resistance from Ava, who, after a night of clubbing, stays up to research new treatments and clinical trials. Deborah's mind, though, is made up, despite Ava's plea, "Please don't leave me. Please."

"That was obviously a very emotional scene to shoot, maybe the most emotional scene we've ever shot in the show," Statsky recalls. "Jean and Hannah were so locked in that they were so excellent right out the gate, but it was heavy. It was a heavy, heavy day, a heavy scene. Hannah was so feeling it that she just wanted to go right into it. It was an emotional moment."

Hannah Einbinder as Ava on 'Hacks'
Credit: HBO Max

The scene was filmed near the end of production — "I think the second-to-last shoot day ever," Statsky says — so emotions were already high as they were "grappling with the show coming to an end."

And for that particular line of dialogue (the third time, actually, that Ava has said it over the course of the show), Aniello says it wasn't just something Ava was saying to Deborah, but Einbinder to her Hacks family.

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"She said that she was pulling from her feelings about us leaving her, with the show ending," Aniello explains. "That was what kind of got her there, which is really sad." (Aniello's parents also happened to be on set that day; not knowing what happens in the finale, they reacted like so many viewers upon hearing about Deborah's refusal to seek treatment and end her life: "They were like, 'What?!'")

As Deborah and Ava try to make the most of their Paris vacation — Ava finally gets to eat real bread (a throwback to the season 3 episode where they go on a hike), they shop and haggle in the markets — it's a visit to the Louvre which Deborah has rented out for just the two of them, that almost didn't happen. The series had permission to film at the world-famous museum... until the heist there on Oct. 19, 2025. It wasn't until police concluded that it was an inside job that the museum told production they could no longer film there. But the Hacks location team and producers, says Aniello, were determined to make it happen, engaging in a "crazy back and forth" with the museum. But they had a backup plan.

Hannah Einbinder as Ava and Jean Smart as Deborah on 'Hacks'
Credit: Courtesy of HBO Max

"We go and scout Versailles, and then the Louvre says yes. And then we say to Versailles, 'Okay, we're not doing it,' and they're like, 'Do not ever call us again,'" she recalls. Eventually, the Louvre told them could shoot there, just not on the day that they wanted. Two problems: Everyone was about to leave Paris, and Louvre employees went on strike in January. So the Hacks team had to wait for the results of a union vote, and they finally got their chance... with the restriction that only 10 people, including Smart and Einbinder, could go in (that meant Aniello, who directed the episode, was also Smart's temporary makeup artist).

The museum served as the final location for the series, with Deborah and Ava sharing quality time together as they explored the Louvre's many exhibits (of course Ava would find the Mona Lisa to be "mid"). But it's not the end of the episode. After the rest of the episode's heartbreaking moments, this story ends happily: In the train station, as they're preparing for the final leg of the trip — and Deborah's life — to Switzerland, the two do what they do best, workshop a joke to find the best punchline. When Ava steps away to go to the restroom, Deborah has a life-changing realization: This is what makes her happy and gives her life; she doesn't want to end it after all. She asks Ava, "I may not have 30 years, but I have another hour. Will you help me write it? "

"It's very much so a callback to the pilot where she chases her down the driveway, and she has this spark and this thing that she realizes has lit her up and turned her on and she's weaving through the traffic of the train station to get her to get Ava, and she says the exact same thing: 'That's the better joke,'" Statsky explains of the scene filmed in an active train station in the middle of Paris. "It's the realization that letting go of the control of the career and life and her vanity and everything because what's worth living for is laughing and creating with this special person in her life. And that is what the show has been about, and that is what Deborah and Ava have learned in the course of this show."

Hannah Einbinder as Ava and Jean Smart as Deborah on 'Hacks'
Credit: Courtesy of HBO Max

And so, they're off on a new writing adventure, with the action moving from the Eiffel Tower of Paris to the matching tower of Paris Las Vegas, as the two walk down the boulevard, arms linked, while the iconic Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland duet "Happy Days Are Here Again / Get Happy" plays.

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While it's the last we'll see of the two, Einbinder has casually mentioned that the creator trio told her what would happen in a movie... which, by the way, they have no plans to make.

"It wouldn't be so far in the future. It would be a little bit of a jump," Aniello teases, agreeing with the proposition that Ava, who we saw filming the pilot for Who's Making Dinner at the top of the finale, has found success as a TV writer and creator. "So far, you're correct. How about we say this: It turns out Who's Making Dinner is a hit."

In other words, she's no hack.

on Entertainment Weekly

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