We investigate the recently introduced metastable dark energy (DE) models after the final Planck 2018 legacy release. The essence of the present work is to analyze their evolution at the level of perturbations. Our analyses show that both the metastable dark energy models considered in this article, are excellent candidates to alleviate the $H_0$ tension. In particular, for the present models, Planck 2018 alone can alleviate the $H_0$ tension within 68% CL. Along with the final cosmic microwave background data from the Planck 2018 legacy release, we also include external cosmological datasets in order to asses the robustness of our findings.