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After a 10-month delay, due to last summer’s Hollywood strikes and Jean Smart‘s health crisis, “Hacks” finally returns with Season 3 this week.

The new season will premiere on Thursday, May 2 with two episodes on Max. The nine-episode season will continue with two episodes each week, up until the season finale on May 30.

The new episodes kicks off after Season 2’s cliffhanger of an ending, which saw veteran stand-up Deborah Vance (Smart) fire Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder), the young writer whose perspective helped push Deborah out of a yearslong creative rut.

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People are like, ‘It felt like it could have been the end,’” co-creator Jen Statsky told Variety last month. “And you’re like, ‘No! No!’”

Instead, set a year after the pair’s dramatic parting, the new season follows Deborah as she rides high off the success of her standup special while Ava pursues new opportunities back in Los Angeles.

Smart and Einbinder star alongside Paul W. Downs, Megan Stalter, Carl Clemons-Hopkins, Kaitlin Olson, Christopher McDonald, Mark Indelicato, Rose Abdoo and Lorenza Izzo. Guest stars this season include J. Smith-Cameron, Helen Hunt, Christina Hendricks, Christopher Lloyd, Dan Bucatinsky, George Wallace, Tony Goldwyn, and Aristotle Athari.

The show was a major success throughout its first two seasons, earning a total of 32 Emmy nominations (and six wins) but many critics have hailed the new season as its best yet.

In her review, Variety TV critic Alison Herman writes that the show is at the “peak of its powers” in the third season, describing the show as “infectiously confident, deceptively smooth and, most importantly, consistently hilarious.”

Stream “Hacks” on Max:

Read More About:

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