‘Hacks’ Opens Season 3 with a Scene That Shows Just How Far It’s Come

“Hacks” opened its first episode of its first season with a bravura tracking shot that followed its stand-up star Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) from door to casino floor to backstage to stage of the Palmetto Casino. The opening shot of Season 3 echoes that original — but with several twists.

The biggest one is the reveal that the figure we’ve been following from behind, wearing Deborah’s sequined jacket from the pilot episode, hair done up in the exact same way, is actually a lookalike. She’s one among many Deborah Vance-ettes, so to speak, at the launch of slot machines themed in the actual comedienne’s honor.

More from IndieWire

• Inside the Prosthetics for Robert Downey Jr.'s Multiple 'The Sympathizer' Roles

• 'Monsters at Work' Brought Workplace Existentialism to Monstropolis for Season 2

It’s a strong opening statement from the show’s co-creators Jen Statsky, Lucia Aniello, and Paul W. Downs, one that tells us exactly the ride we’re going to be on in Season 3 of the Max series. “Hacks” isn’t just mining comedy bits. It’s making jokes out of its own established visual language, finding ways to subvert or change the things we think we’re expecting. Aniello, who directed Episode 1 of Season 3, “Just for Laughs,” is heightening the visuals themselves, too.

The false Deborah oner is even more ambitious in scale, beginning as a drone shot before becoming a smooth tracking piece through the glitz of the casino floor. To achieve it, the “Hacks” team needed to execute a hand-off of the camera from the drone to an operator on the ground, and then dodge actual Vegas casino-goers as it followed “Deborah” from behind.

“[The shot] had a reveal but then became scenic and had all those background [elements] that we’re shooting at 4 a.m. in a Vegas casino that wasn’t fully shut down. So a lot of the deep background was just actual Vegas people. There’s couple people who were crossing through the frame, very, very close to the lens and those were just real people, not background actors,” Aniello told IndieWire.

There wasn’t a lot of time to nail the one-shot that lands “Hacks” back in Vegas, either. “It was the very, very last shot of the season that we shot in Vegas. So the time crunch on it was intense,” Aniello said. “It was also like, ‘Is this going to work?’ We did some drone tests and we walked through it, but to have all that stuff work in the moment without being able to fully practice it was definitely scary.”

“It was like a dance,” costume designer Kathleen Felix-Hager told IndieWire. “[The Deborah look from the pilot] feels iconic and we also tracked her from the back in that first shot from Season 1. So I wanted to recall that sort of image so that you would just be very surprised when the drag queen turned around and It was all revealed. It was so fun to shoot.”

The ethos behind the shot, and most of the other decisions in Season 3, was all about finding ways to keep the show fun but also keep doing something new, and even more ambitious, with it. “I think one of the great gifts of getting to do a show into its third season is that you have these incredible Swiss Army knife performers, so to speak. So many of them can do such amazing things,” Statsky told IndieWire. “So for Season 3, I think you’re excited — now the audience knows the characters, their comedy game, their dynamic —  that you can lean into that really rich dynamic, and you can also level them up.”

Leveling up the characters may not mean that they get any better — Ava (Hannah Einbinder) does kick off Season 3 by negligently running her car into a bus, however much success she’s found as a writer for a late-night show in the year between Season 2 and 3. But it has allowed the show’s creative team to expand the characters and visuals to show more sides of both.

For instance, this season the camera treats Deborah’s cabinet of antique salt and pepper shakers in a very different way from their first appearance in Season 1. Here, it’s choppy and close-up and framed from the inside, as opposed to the wide, empty shots of Deborah’s expansive kitchen. It’s both a callback and a visual marker of Deborah’s current simmering, nameless discontent.

“We all like to write very visually and we really talk about a lot of the visuals in the scripts themselves,” Aniello said. “The big challenge is how do you evolve the visual language of the show while it still feels like the show.”

“Hacks’” riffing on its own visual history is part of how it wants to stay fresh. But it feels particularly apt because the show is, according to Downs, a love letter to comedy, its history, and how entertainment has treated, is treating, and probably will treat the people who do it.

“Comedy is obviously what brought us together. Making each other laugh is what really keeps us going,” Downs told IndieWire.

“Hacks” Season 3 premiered Thursday, May 2 on Max with two episodes. New episodes will be released two at a time through May 23, with the finale released May 30.

Best of IndieWire

• The 13 Best Thrillers Streaming on Netflix in May, from 'Fair Play' to 'Emily the Criminal'

• The Best Father and Son Films: 'The Tree of Life,' 'The Lion King,' and More

• The 10 Best Teen Rebellion Films: 'Pump Up the Volume,' 'Heathers,' and More

Sign up for Indiewire's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.