Hacks Was a Death Dream Let no one say the series didn’t go out on its own terms.

By Nicholas Quah

Over the course of its run, Hacks increasingly played like an elegy: a lament for an ecosystem of fame, comedy, and celebrity that is either already dead or, like Deborah herself, terminally ill. Photo: Courtesy of HBO Max

Spoilers ahead for the series finale of Hacks.

They should have killed her. That was my knee-jerk thought at the end of Hacks, as the camera pulled away from Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder walking down the Vegas strip in the final seconds of the series finale. Up to that point, the episode unfolds as a prolonged farewell to Deborah, framed as the diva savoring her last days on Earth, and the effect is lovely: Each detail, whether she’s strolling along a bridge or enjoying Parisian bread, carries the ache of impending loss building toward a devastating, bittersweet inevitability. And then, quite predictably, Hacks swerves away from that pain at the last second.

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