Hacks had a pretty strong showing at last night’s Emmy Awards. Jean Smart took home her fourth consecutive award for portraying Deborah Vance, while Hannah Einbinder won her first Emmy for her supporting performance and notably became the first winner of the night to swat away host Nate Bargatze’s hostile ticking clock. But the days of Hacks at the Emmys are numbered, as Einbinder confirmed before the show that the upcoming fifth season will be the show’s last.
“It will feel different,” Einbinder said on the Emmys red carpet, per Variety. “We’re going to start [filming] next week, and knowing it’s the last season is really bittersweet. But I think it’s right, you know? It’s nice to do something as many times as it should be done. Not overstay your welcome. Rip it and do it and laugh and cry.”
This isn’t all that surprising. Hacks creators Jen Statsky, Lucia Aniello, and Paul W. Downs had long talked about their five-season plan for the show, but wavered a little bit as the show’s fourth season came to a close earlier this year. “The truth is that we’ve been really lucky to be able to tell the story in the way that the writing requires, and we’re gonna do that again,” Downs told Variety in May. “And so if we can’t get to that final chapter in 10 [episodes], and it might be more — we just don’t know. That’s the truth.” Season four ended with Deborah blowing up the late night show she’d spent her whole career working toward and laying low in Singapore for a few months. In the final moment of the season four finale, she decides to go back to the U.S. and reclaim her status—and now we know she’ll have just ten episodes to do that.
