Max’s Emmy-winning comedy Hacks returns for a third season on Thursday — two years after season 2 began.

The third season sees Deborah Vance, played by Jean Smart, “riding high off the success of her standup special” while her former writer, Hannah Einbinder‘s Ava, “pursues new opportunities back in Los Angeles,” according to the streamer.

The third season was delayed first because of a health issue from which Smart recovered and then Hollywood’s summer of strikes.

Co-star Carl Clemons-Hopkins, who plays Deborah’s driven business manager Marcus, was confident the cast and crew would sync after all the stops, but tells ABC Audio he wondered if the viewers would hang on. “The concern for me came with, ‘Will the audience still be there? Will they still ride as hard for it?'”

The wait for fans will be worth it, he says. The actor says the show “does an acutely brilliant job of bringing soft landings to hard conversations.”

Clemons-Hopkins adds of the series, “It does a really wonderful job of both celebrating comedy and challenging comedy.”

Much of the humor of the show stems from Smart’s comedian character being, shall we say, slightly behind the times with today’s touchy audiences.

“You know, it’s not just a one generation telling your generation you’re wrong because of this,” Clemons-Hopkins insists. “It’s really people from opposing views having conversations, not always agreeing, but both learning and growing and becoming close and being brought closer because of it. And I think that’s a very, very brilliant thing that the season does.” 

Hacks‘ nine-episode third season kicks off with two episodes on Thursday, with two new episodes dropping each week until the season finale on May 30.

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