**Spoilers for Hacks Season 2 Episodes 1 & 2 Ahead!**
HBO Max‘s Emmy-winning comedy Hacks ended its colossally funny first season with a knot of dread. After making amends with mentor/employer Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), twenty-something comic and writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) realizes she has doomed their flourishing relationship by sticking a knife in Deborah’s back. After the two had an aggressively bad blowup, a drunk and drugged up Ava fired off a vengeful email to a pair of conniving sitcom writers hunting for horror stories about female bosses. Ava laid all of Deborah’s worst traits bare, breaching the duo’s trust and sabotaging what was beginning to look like a real friendship. As Deborah and Ava fly into the future, Ava — and the audience — are left with the realization that as soon as their private plane lands, Deborah will learn of Ava’s misdeed.
Except that’s not quite what happens in the beginning of Hacks Season 2. In fact, Ava’s betrayal doesn’t immediately come to light. She has time to confide in her and Deborah’s shared manager Jimmy (Paul W. Downs), who in turn calls in a frightening number of favors to bury the email. By the end of Hacks Season 2 Episode 2, it seems that Ava has successfully erased any proof of the email. However that’s precisely the moment when Ava decides to blurt out her betrayal to a blindsided Deborah.
Deborah is understandably irate. Jimmy is frustrated that he went through hell for nothing. Ava? Well, Ava has to eat crow from now on, huh?
So why did Hacks co-creators and showrunners Lucia Aniello, Jen Statsky, and Paul W. Downs decide to have Ava tell on herself? And in Episode 2, no less?
“I think it’s something we didn’t want hanging over for too long, but we also didn’t want to resolve it so quickly that it felt like a cheap thing we did at the end of a season for a cliffhanger,” Lucia Aniello told Decider. “We also didn’t want it to be resolved and then it’s done.”
Aniello teased that the repercussions of Ava’s two big decisions — first to send the email and then to own up to it — would reverberate across the entire season. She explained that she, Statsky, and Downs wanted Ava’s choice to not just propel plot, but further character.
“So for Ava, she’s deciding to practice what she preaches. She’s saying to Deborah, ‘You need to be honest with yourself and you need to be honest with the audience,’ and she needs to be honest too. So even though she knows it’s going to be a terrible thing to tell Deborah because it’s so personal and especially since they’ve had this incredible bond in season 1 episode 10 when Deborah shows up at Ava’s dad’s funeral, it is something that she needs to do for their relationship to further in an honest way,” Aniello said.
“Of course, Jimmy has recently gone through absolute hell to get Ava off the hook. She can’t let herself off.”
When Decider spoke with the stars of Hacks, Hannah Einbinder agreed with Aniello’s perspective on the matter.
“I think ultimately the pressure builds and Ava cannot ignore her conscience any longer. She’d rather deal with the consequences of her actions than lie to this person which I think shows a lot of growth for her,” Einbinder said. “I think it just built up to the point where she could not morally continue on without telling her.”
Jean Smart revealed that she thought Ava’s courage was admirable, especially after witnessing Deborah’s behavior at the MMA fight in the Hacks Season 2 premiere.
“She says, ‘Jimmy you gotta help me, I believe she really is capable of killing me,’” Smart said, laughing. “[There’s] blood all over my face.”
As Paul W. Downs summed up the situation: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
“Thank you, Kelly Clarkson,” Aniello deadpanned.
The next two episodes of Hacks will premiere on HBO Max next Thursday.
