What You Need to Know About ‘Hacks’ Season 4

Get ready for big laughs and big drama as Deborah Vance finally gets the late-night LA talk show of her dreams

Tracey Minkin,

AARP

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Published April 10, 2025

Hannah Einbinder and Jean Smart in season 4 of "Hacks"

Hannah Einbinder and Jean Smart are back in Season 4 of Hacks on Max.

Courtesy of Max

In the auspicious beginning of Hacks, Season 4 (premiering April 10 on Max), the superb dark comedy starring Jean Smart, 73, as Las Vegas comic Deborah Vance, Deborah and her protege Ava’s agent Jimmy snaps at Ava, “Blackmail on day one — not good!”

Indeed, Ava (Hannah Einbinder, daughter of SNL’s Laraine Newman, 73) has forced Deborah to hire her as head writer for Deborah’s new late-night talk show. Ava threatened to go public about the fact that Deborah had sex with the network CEO (Tony Goldwyn, 64) just before he gave her the show — the prize she has chased for her entire professional life. But Ava craved that head writer job just as much.

So the squabbling duo carry on one of the most original, laugh-out-loud-funniest generational battles in TV history. When Ava wittily snaps back at Deborah, “It’s their love language,” Hacks co-creator Paul W. Downs told Variety (he also plays their blackmail-hating agent Jimmy). “They’re forced to be together — their destinies are intertwined. Because they’re after the same thing, which is dignity.”

Smart told AARP the reason audiences made Hacks a hit: “They enjoy that headbutting of the generations, and that dynamic between those two characters, because they’re both slightly neurotic. So it’s fun, but there’s also the generational thing everybody can relate to, whether it’s with their parents or a coworker.”

Don’t miss this: Jean Smart talks family, grief and aging: ‘Every day is precious’

Here's a quick Hacks refresher, and a peek at the fun that's coming up:

What’s happened on hacks so far

Hacks debuted in 2021, with Deborah as a comedy legend, a mainstay at the fictional Palmetto Casino. Ava, an LA TV writer fired for an offensive tweet, gets sent to Las Vegas to modernize Deborah’s act. Their frenemy relationship deepens as Deborah gets fired, mounts a comeback, fires Ava, gets her talk show, and passes over Ava for the top writing job. Ava blackmails Deborah and gets it — but who’s better at getting even than Deborah Vance?

What we can expect in Hacks, Season 4?

“I think I’m even meaner to Hannah than I was last year,” Smart told Entertainment Tonight. Ava is destined to get pranked by Deborah, a master prankster who interrupts Ava when she’s on a date. She mocks Ava mercilessly: “You’re not funny enough to dress like Adam Sandler.”

The Season 4 trailer shows them firing one-liners at each other and lining up at a racetrack in sports cars.They’re about to put pedal to the metal in their selfish, competitive, scheming, bruising, yet ultimately oddly loving competition. “The gloves are definitely off,” Smart told TV Insider. “The audience is fastening their seat belts.”

Besides Ava, Deborah has to contend with the TV CEO she bedded (awkward!) and fierce feminist network head Winnie (Oscar winner Helen Hunt, 61, of Mad About You), who does not want Deborah to blow the chance to have a woman rule late night TV for the first time ever.

There’s more to the new season than the Deborah-Hannah fracas

Now that Deborah will be hosting a talk show, expect loads of cameos of celebrities playing themselves. Brilliant costars join the cast: Michaela Watkins,53 (Casual) plays a flustered HR employee trying to make Deborah and Ava play nice. The feuding comics need to create a talk show to attract the Tik Tok generation, so they invite Dance Mom (Mare of Easttown Emmy winner Julianne Nicholson, 53), whose excessively energetic dance videos have gone viral.

The other comic odd couple on Hacks, jittery Jimmy and his kooky yet kind of inspired assistant Kayla (Megan Stalter) have started a new agency, so expect more frothy, offbeat comedy from that relationship — complicated by Kayla’s new assistant Randi (Robby Hoffman of Dying for Sex).

Whatever its future, Hacks has made history

Hacks was nominated for 48 Emmys in three years, and won nine, including three best comedy actress honors for Smart. Her success is a win for comedy fans, and for people over 50. Accepting a 2024 Emmy, co-creator Downs said, “When we pitched the show about two women, one of whom was over 60, we did not know if we would sell it. About 20 percent of our population is 60-plus, and there are only 3 percent of those characters on television, and I would like to see more of them. Because while I’m a great young supporting actor [at 42], I really want to be a good old lead.”

No matter what antics are coming in Season 4, Deborah Vance is one great lead role for Jean Smart. RogerEbert.com’s Brian Tellerico, who’s seen the first several episodes, wrote, “This season reminds you how easily this character could have been a stereotype — just another Joan Rivers impression of an over-the-hill comedienne, and how Smart has imbued her with enough humanity that the actress fades into the character.”

For Smart, it’s her crowning career achievement, after memorable turns on classic sitcoms like Designing Women (1986-93) and an amazing career comeback (after a long dry spell) on prestige shows like Mare of Easttown (2021). “It’s all a wonderful surprise,” Smart told AARP in 2022. "Designing Women was a hit, but the reaction to Hacks has been just enormous. The attention is lovely, but it’s kind of baffling. The advice I would give to other [aging] actors is, you know, just don’t go away. Eventually they’ll find you again.” Then she laughed — sounding a lot like Deborah Vance.