6 keys you need to know before watching the sixth season of “Better Call Saul”

Better Call Saul fans are having a great April: on the 19th it will premiere the sixth and final one on Netflix (AMC, the original broadcaster, will have it available the day before). It will be the first part of the end of the transformation of former detainee and dubious lawyer Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman that will have 13 episodes, of which the last six will be seen in July.

The magnificent fifth season left several issues open, and those who saw the trajectory of Walter White, that high school chemistry teacher who became the Scarface of methamphetamine, know that other issues also remain pending: Kim, Jimmy/Saul's wife, does not appear in Breaking Bad, nor does Nacho Varga, who takes risks in the dangerous game of double loyalty between Gustavo Fring and the Salamanca family, two competitors within the Juárez cartel.

The end of the series will also show what happened to Saul Goodman after the fall of Walter White, because in addition to being a prequel he has told, through black and white images at the beginning of the seasons, events after Breaking Bad. In a third incarnation, the fugitive Saul became Gene Takavic, an employee of a cinnamon pastry chain, Cinnabon, in a mall in Omaha, Nebraska.

The opening of the fifth season — spoiler alert — showed the chilling moment when a taxi driver from Albuquerque recognizes Saul/Gene and forces him to repeat his famous lawyer advertising. Although he immediately calls Ed, the vacuum cleaner repairman who does much better at selling fake identities, the one pursued by the DEA regrets and decides to resolve the matter himself.

With performances by Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn as Jimmy/Saul/Gene and Kim, Michael Mando as Nacho, Tony Dalton as Lalo Salamanca, Giancarlo Esposito as Gus Fring and Jonathan Banks as Mike Ehrmantraut, the ending of Better Call Saul will clear all the unknowns. “Concludes the complicated journey and transformation of his endangered hero, Jimmy McGill, into criminal lawyer Saul Goodman,” said Peter Gould, co-creator with Vince Gilligan of this fiction and Breaking Bad.

Here are six keys you need to know before watching season six. S'all good, man!

1. Would you like cameos by Walter White and Jesse Pinkman?

In addition to Gus and Mike, other characters from Breaking Bad have played throughout the five seasons of Better Call Saul: the last season, for example, saw the endearing Hank Schrader (Dean Norris), Madrigal Electromotive executive Lydia Rodarte-Quayle (Laura Fraser) and the laconic twins Salamanca (Luis and Daniel Moncada). Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) are expected to appear in the sixth.

“It would appear if Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould wanted me to be there,” Cranston told Collider in 2020. “I would do it without hesitation. But it hasn't happened yet. There's one more season left. We'll see what happens.” Some time later Gilligan told Variety: “It would be a shame if the show ended without them showing up, wouldn't it?”

The worlds of both series will intersect “in a way that has not been seen before,” he added. In this regard, it is known that Jimmy goes to a restaurant called as the sequel film to Breaking Bad released in 2019, starring Paul: The Way. Connoisseurs of the saga will also remember that Jesse already knew Saul before his adventures with Walter White.

2. Saul/Gene can be stopped

In the last and disturbing flash-forward to Jimmy/Saul's life after Breaking Bad, the resolution of Gene's fate was pending. Suddenly all of Saul's effort to leave his past behind him — abandon his life, change his name, move to a remote place — became futile.

Spoiler alert if you didn't watch season 5.

“Oh, come on, man, you're supposed to say hello to me, I'm a big fan,” says Jeff (Don Harvey), the taxi driver who had briefly appeared in season four, when Gene left the hospital, to the undaunted character of Odenkirk. “When I lived in Albuquerque, with my ex, I saw you everywhere: on billboards, on television.” It is useless for Gene to insist that the man has been confused: “I know who you are. You know who you are,” Jeff argues and asks him to say his famous line “Better Call Saul”.

The new season will also reveal what happened to Jimmy/Saul/Gene after he decided that, although he was at risk of being arrested, he would resolve the matter himself instead of starting over from scratch with a new identity.

3. Why won't Kim continue in the future?

Kim and Jimmy continue with their apparent profiles—she's straight, he's the shady one—until the crisis catches up with her too. Fed up with law firms that commit abuses so as not to lose their rich clients, she wants to use her talent to really help justice be done. But something in his mind seems to be moving. If the system does not protect the law, if large firms commit abuses, why not do it too, for the sake of a legitimate result?

The couple come out closer in season five, which creates concern for the future of Kim, a character who does not continue in Breaking Bad. She can leave him, he can leave her; it wouldn't seem most likely, though. The cartel can kill her. Or she could commit a crime that would lead her to jail for a long time.

Gould barely said: “I think Kim has become disillusioned with the practice of law he knows. Being with Jimmy may have shown him something he already knew or made him more vivid: the possibility of cutting corners. Doing what you think is right and provoking what you feel is justice instead of accepting the rules of the system. We'll see where that takes her. She worries me a little.”

4. Lalo vs. Nacho: the big confrontation

Spoiler alert if you didn't watch season 5.

Lalo Salamanca, the volatile villain who has nothing to envy of his dangerous cousin Tuco, managed to escape Fring's assassination attempt, and in which Nacho collaborated: the owner of Los Pollos Hermanos threatened to kill his father. But Nacho doesn't know: he escaped from Lalo's house in Mexico thinking that everything would go as planned.

So the unpredictable Lalo will be back — like his twin cousins, as seen in a teaser, and the invalid patriarch Hector Salamanca (Mark Margolis) — and will seek revenge. Nor is it in Gus's interest that Nacho is still alive: he could reveal that he ordered the murder in frustration. Given the drama that this narrative line took on in season 5, it will be one of the central ones of the final.

Neither Nacho nor Lalo appear in Breaking Bad, so anything can happen in the confrontation between the two. The two are as much candidates for a charge of lead as they are for a prolonged sentence. If it seems that Lalo has the chance to win because he is crazy, it is worth remembering that Nacho won the blessing of Don Eladio (Steven Bauer), the kingpin of the Juarez cartel.

5. Mike y Gus Fring camino a Breaking Bad

Mike is one of the most memorable characters in the original series, and has played a major role in the spinoff. It is possible that in season 6 he will have some kind of problem with Fring, because of something he said to Jimmy/Saul, but he will certainly complete his task as lead teacher in the lawyer's sentimental-criminal education.

A small fact that was revealed in season 5 about Gus's past in Chile could facilitate further revelations about his years in Santiago during Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. The presence of German Peter Schuler (Norbert Weisser), director of fast food in Madrigal, in one of the recent episodes leaves open the possibility of knowing what they were both doing then and how they survived in a scene that the pollero remembered excitedly.

Gus is also in the early stages of the construction of the most modern laboratory to manufacture methamphetamine known: probably the end of the series will advance on this plot line, important in Breaking Bad. It is already known how his pulse ends with Hector Salamanca.

6. Will Jimmy's rays hurt Howard?

Unlike Mike and Gus, Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian), the former head of the protagonists in law signing Chuck McGill, is one of the least loved characters among the public. Although he didn't get Kim away from the man he loves, Howard will try to stop Jimmy. Given the facts of Breaking Bad, he won't make it; the question is how he will do it and what will happen to him, because he is another character who doesn't make it to the original series.

Spoiler alert if you didn't watch season 5.

Howard no longer intimidates Jimmy, who has even yelled at him — in a scene of importance in his transformation like Saul —: “I move in worlds that you don't even imagine! You can't conceive of everything I'm capable of! I'm way above you! I'm like a god in human clothes! Lightning is coming out of my fingertips!” In addition, Kim, in his existential crisis, supports Jimmy and also thinks obscure ideas about Howard.

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