Hacks Series Finale: Hannah Einbinder Tears Up Over That 'Beautiful' Ending, The Reality Ava Can't Face, And Deborah's True 'Underdog Story'

Spoilers below for Thursday's series finale of "Hacks"! 

On Hannah Einbinder's final day on the set of "Hacks," she found herself inside Paris' world-famous Louvre museum with her co-star, the fabulous Jean Smart. The actresses were perched comfortably on benches looking up at the gallery walls when co-creator and director Lucia Aniello approached them with a very casual request.

"Lucia just came over and was like, 'Just talk.' So we just started talking in character and it was so moving to me. It felt like such an honor that the last time we were on [camera], Lucia was emboldening us to just speak freely as the characters," Einbinder tells TVLine. "Their work is so detailed and beautiful, and they have made such vivid people. We know them so well to the point where they're just giving us the reins. It feels so empowering that the last thing we shot was in our own voices."

While the series finale of the five-season comedy was creatively fulfilling for its talent behind the scenes, it was as impassioned on-screen as well. Some very bad news teed up a stressful swan song for both Ava and "Hacks" fans, at large. Before the women set off on a lavish European adventure, Deborah dropped a bombshell. That mass she had removed? Doctors didn't get it all and the cancer had spread. Making matters more difficult, she didn't want to seek treatment; she wanted to go out on top. Thus, her trip to Europe was her last hurrah because at the end of the excursion, she planned to head to Zurich for a physician-assisted suicide. (You OK, Little Debbies?!)  

In Einbinder's experience, the real-life emotions of saying goodbye — to the show, to her character Ava — were just as heavy as the fictional ones. 

"I literally kind of collapsed," she says, adding that she was incredibly jet-lagged while shooting in France. "This is so like actor s—t right now, but I was just... I'm very sensitive and I think emotionally I had been trying to dole out my energy, because we wrapped in LA, we wrapped in Vegas, we had two Paris wraps because we had a splinter unit going into the Louvre. So just trying to dole out my emotional bandwidth, I feel like I pushed myself past my allotted emotional energy several times towards the end."

At first Ava refused to make the trip with Deborah, but ultimately showed up to the airport to support her friend and boss. (She did force Deborah to agree to take hard drugs with her though, so there's that!) They ate French baguettes, they went shopping, they rode a carousel, and yes, Deborah kept her promise and took molly with Ava at the clerb. But another treatment pitch to Deb begot yet another argument. Deb didn't want to go through with chemo or any other treatment that'd make her feel bad, yet it's a choice that Ava just couldn't reconcile. 

"It's a mixture of immense pain and frustration and anger," Einbinder says of Ava's reaction to Deborah's decision. "I think she has this feeling of like, 'Deborah is not in charge of this decision.' I think she fundamentally pushes back on that because she thinks that Deborah is accountable to other people, and so she's really not able to see it as Deborah's decision, and in that sense, she's not willing to accept it, and that's very hard. So I think in Europe, she doesn't want to leave her and she's not going to leave her, but she's not in acceptance. She's coming in and out of like, 'Oh, we're actually having fun. This is our thing that we do. We're being girls,' and then has these moments where she comes back to the reality that she just cannot face." 

After some grieving, Ava met Deborah at the train station to catch the last ride of the comedian's life. But when the two started riffing back and forth (like they do!), Deborah had an epiphany. She realized that she may not have 30 years left to live, but thought she just might have one more hour — of stand-up, that is. She then asked her partner to help her write it, to which Ava beamed and said, "Always." In a subsequent scene, Ava told Jimmy on the phone that Deborah had consulted a doctor and had a start date for treatment. 

While the show ended on an optimistic beat, Einbinder is still teary discussing creators' Paul W. Downs, Jen Statsky, and Aniello's "beautiful" script. 

"I thought it was classic 'Hacks,' you know? Like, stab a knife to the heart, but then somehow they dig themselves out of it," she says. "I think the ending is beautiful and I think the filmmaking (really, is what I would call it) — like the Vegas/Paris montage, Eiffel Tower moment — it's just so beautifully done. When you read the script, the stage direction in that moment is enough to... I'm choking up thinking about the stage direction! [Laughs] It so beautifully honors the work. [Wipes tears] Crying, no problem, all good."

With the fifth and final season of "Hacks" revolving around Deborah's legacy, I ask Einbinder about the show's own legacy. How will it be remembered years down the road?

"I think it's the true underdog story," she says. "[Deborah's] up against a lot. Don't count the diva out, you know what I'm saying? Always bet on blonde or whatever. [Laughs]

With a few small cracks out of the way, Einbinder notes the importance of the show's intergenerational bonding and the love that collaborators often hold for one another.   

"[Deborah's] a survivor, and I think that the legacy of the show is just about love and about this new type of relationship that we haven't seen a lot of," she adds. "Working love, collaborator love. That is a specific type of bond that we on 'Hacks,' in a meta way, know about. Paul, Jen, and Lucia have the thing that they are portraying in the show with each other, with us. We have it with the crew. They have it with one another. It's a beautiful thing."

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