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Vanity Fair's largest photographic profile covering the British theatre titled “Empire of the Stage” for the November 1995 issue. Lord Snowdon was tasked with photographing these theatre luminaries, flying back and forth between Britain and New York to capture these shots.

How Deborah helps Ava choose life

As promised, here is my first of two essays that I will publish before Season 2 premieres on May 12th. The next one will be talking about DJ & Aidan as parallels to Deborah and Ava and how they represent a potential happy ending. 

With this essay, I am introducing a new series…to my Ava & Deborah Could Be Endgame series called Why They’re So Important to Each Other. Basically, these are essays where I discuss more closely why Ava and Deborah are so critical to each other’s characters’ arcs. 

If you haven’t already, feel free to check out the rest of my Ava & Deborah essay series on this masterpost here or over on A03. You don’t need to have read any of the other essays to read this one, although I would highly recommend my introduction essay as it clarifies what I’m trying to achieve with this series and what to expect. Obviously, spoilers for season 1 of Hacks. 

Major trigger warning: Obviously, based on the title please know going into this essay that we’re going to talk about heavy subject matter such as depression, drug use, self-harm, death, murder-suicide, suicidal ideation and suicide. I’m not going to lie, this essay gets dark at times, but I promise I’m talking about this to make a hopeful point. I’m going to be frank about these issues, so just know that going into it. We’re also going to talk about canonical deaths, including a suicide, that happen during the show. Please take care of yourself if you have experiences with any of this and if you fear this may affect your mental health, feel free to skip. But I do promise this is going to be a hopeful essay as Hacks is a hopeful show, so I hope you’ll stick around. 

Thank you again @sarahstreep7 for agreeing to be my beta! If you’re interested in reading a fic that talks about these issues, I highly recommend you check out @fleaflofloyd​’s story There’s Just An Empty Space (aka Stilted Monochrome). It’s excellent and you should go read it. 

This essay clocks in at 12,000 words, so this is going to be a long one folks. Enjoy!

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While season 1 gave us a good foundation of Deborah’s character arc, her character wound and a sense of where she’ll go from here, Ava is still a little bit of a mystery. 

Ava made some progress and we got a view on her flaws, but it’s not yet clear what exactly is Ava’s character wound. In other words, why is Ava the way she is and what is it that she needs to internally overcome in order to satisfy her arc. 

Hopefully, season 2 will give us more insight into Ava but I did notice a startling theme surrounding Ava throughout season 1 that could be a clue. 

The theme of death and suicide. 

Ava & The Specter of Death

In a show with two leads who have a significantly large age gap, it is inherently surprising that imagery and associations of death primarily surround the younger character, Ava. 

The two big pieces of evidence that Ava’s arc is associated with death are her first lines are about suicide and the fact that she has 3 mirror characters who all die throughout the season. But before we talk about those bigger pieces of evidence, let’s talk about some smaller details I’ve noticed. 

Hacks 5.09 The Garden // Gaga: Five Foot Two

Like this is part of what Crowley meant by "every man and every woman is a star". It's genuinely interesting to see the charismatic elements of modern evangelical protestantism evolve a similar structure.