Reports of Deborah Vance's death are greatly exaggerated in Hacks season 5 trailer

Deborah will start over—again—when Hacks returns to HBO Max next month.

By Drew Gillis  |  March 23, 2026 | 12:00pm
Image courtesy of HBO Max
TV News Hacks
Reports of Deborah Vance's death are greatly exaggerated in Hacks season 5 trailer

When we last saw Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), she was licking her wounds in Singapore after walking away from her late night dream. TMZ mistakenly published her obituary at the end of the season four finale, which was enough to shake Deborah out of her doom spiral and get her back on track. But when Hacks returns for season five next month, it returns to a world where a lot of people still think Deborah Vance is dead. 

Even if Deborah isn’t dead, her career is still in a pretty bleak spot from what we see in the new trailer for season five. “I have been told that I cannot so much as perform one single joke or I will go to jail,” she tells reporters in one scene for the season five trailer. It certainly seems like she and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) will find some way around this obstacle, given that we see them bouncing between New York, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles, and that Deborah is on the stage telling jokes in at least one of them. “When you’re away from the spotlight, you have time to think about what really matters,” she says to a crowd in what looks like a supply closet. “The spotlight! God, I am glad to be back!” 

Hacks returns to HBO Max on April 9 for its fifth and final season. 

 
Join the discussion...
Keep scrolling for more great stories.