Three ghosts and a time machine. The ending of "Better Call Saul" didn't go sci-fi on
us – but it does need some explanation. From that desperate escape to the last cigarette,
here's everything you need to know. Warning: spoilers ahead.
By Better Call Saul's final episode, Jimmy McGill has lived under three
names and identities. He starts as Jimmy, using his birth name,
and is a hardworking lawyer who seemingly can't resist a shortcut or scheme.
He then becomes Saul Goodman, aiding and abetting the murderous rise of drug kingpin Walter White.
Finally, we see him as Gene Takovic, the manager of a shopping mall Cinnabon
who lives in constant fear of his previous identities being discovered.
The final episode, "Saul Gone," gives each of them the ending they deserve.
Gene Takovic died as he lived, hiding from the police in a literal dumpster.
After months of hiding in Omaha, buried under a thick mustache and even thicker glasses,
Gene dips his toe back into the grifter life after being recognized by dim-witted taxi driver Jeff.
However, the erstwhile Slippin' Jimmy doesn't do anything halfway. His schemes become riskier,
his true self comes through a little too much, and before long his cover is completely blown
by Jeff's YouTube-savvy mother Marion, played by comedy legend Carol Burnett.
The final four episodes of the series primarily take place in the Gene Takovic era. This came
as something of a surprise to co-creator Vince Gilligan, who told Rolling Stone,
"We were fascinated by Jimmy McGill [...] and then we wanted to see more of Gene Takovic in Omaha,
so we kind of ran out the clock without even meaning to, and then we realized,
man, the first thing that could go was Saul Goodman. And that's the name of the show!"
It's only fitting that a man who was once so good
at elder law would finally be brought to justice by an elder.
Much like Gus Fring, Gene is both a career criminal and a steadfast and reliable fast
food employee. Even while he's in the custody of the Omaha police, Gene uses his phone call
to contact Cinnabon and let his staff know that he won't be coming in ever again.
"This is how they get you, this is how they get you."
Pacing in his holding cell like an animal, Gene is furious with himself. After working as a
cartel lawyer for years, he is finally caught because of a small-time identity theft scheme.
Lying on the cold floor, he glances up at a crude carving on the cell wall that says
"MY LAWYER WILL REAM UR ASS." Like a switch being flipped, Gene Takovic dies and Saul
Goodman is reborn. Gould, who wrote the script, revealed that he views Gene, Saul,
and Jimmy as three very separate characters, telling Rolling Stone,
"Since this is an episode where he goes from Gene to Saul and, eventually, back to Jimmy,
I was pretty careful to use the name that felt 'right.' at every moment.
I called those moments out in the script."
After months of hiding from the world, Saul Goodman returns. The world's greatest lawyer
finds himself sitting at a table across from a battalion of hardened federal attorneys who
are ready to put him away for life plus 190 years for working with Walter White.
At his side is Bill Oakley, his favorite public defender punching bag turned defense attorney,
but only as an advisor. Saul represents himself,
and his defense is a doozy. With pleading eyes and a trembling voice, he tells the collected
prosecutors that he worked for Walter White under fear of death. Lead prosecutor George
Castellano asks if Saul really thinks a jury will believe his story. Saul shrewdly responds,
"All I need is one."
The scene reflects what many thought the show would be from the beginning,
playing on the character's comic relief and his penchant for legal chicanery. "Better Call Saul"
did have plenty of that, but few expected Jimmy McGill to be such an emotionally rich character,
least of all the actor playing him. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times,
Bob Odenkirk described the start of his journey playing the character, saying,
"So that makes me, as a beginning actor, really have to dig up a lot of stuff and feel a lot of
feelings from my own life in a visceral way that left me feeling pretty shagged out and ragged.”
That scene where Saul lays out his "victim" angle isn't all fun and games, of course. Saul is on
the hook for money laundering, bribery, and being an accessory after the fact to dozens of murders,
including those of Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez. On hand to represent those victims is Hank's wife
Marie Schrader, played by Betsy Brandt. The pain of Hank's death clearly still weighs on Marie,
and she delivers a devastating monologue about her husband. Saul's use of her real pain to
pivot into his own false narrative is one of his most callous moments in the entire series.
"They tell me they found you in a garbage dumpster. Well that makes sense."
This was Brandt's first appearance on "Better Call Saul" and her first
time playing Marie since the end of "Breaking Bad" nine years earlier.
She joins several returning guest stars in the finale, including Bryan Cranston as Walter,
and Michael McKean as Jimmy's brother Chuck. When asked if there were any other actors or characters
from the "Better Call Saul" and "Breaking Bad" universe he wanted to bring back for the finale,
Gould's answer was essentially everyone. As he told Rolling Stone,
"I would have loved to have Patrick Fabian back, to have Dean Norris back.
Anna Gunn would have been great if it fit in the story. I love our entire cast [...] I'm
greedy. We didn't want to make a kind of overstuffed epic, and I hope we didn't."
Just as Saul returns to the law on his own behalf, so does Kim.
First, she delivers her notarized confession to the district attorney and Howard's widow Cheryl
Hamlin in the penultimate episode "Waterworks." Then, she returns to her purposely bland,
indecisive life in central Florida. Still, the act of confession has changed something in Kim,
and she takes a tentative step forward in her life by turning up at a legal aid office.
Kim's fate has been a driving question for the series and its fans from the very beginning.
Kim was one of the few main characters who did not appear in "Breaking Bad,"
and many fans feared the worst, thinking Kim might be killed by the cartel. However,
creator Peter Gould told Rolling Stone that it was important that Kim's journey was her own
and not simply a detail in the Jimmy McGill story.
In the finale, Saul returns to an Albuquerque courtroom, once again wearing an outlandish suit.
Viewers presume some big twist is coming, that Saul has a final stunt to pull,
and that he might not end up serving the seven-and-a-half year sentence he pled down to.
There is indeed a twist coming, but not one that anyone could have guessed.
Saul begins the hearing, which is supposed to be a formality to ratify his plea deal, by re-telling
the story of meeting Walter White for the first time, fearing for his life out in the desert.
Then he stops and, for once, tells the truth. He kept working with Walt for 16 blood-soaked
months because he smelled money. The scene also invokes Jimmy's emotional speech in front of the
bar association at the end of Season 4, which got his law license reinstated and inflicted
Saul Goodman upon the world. In both cases, he is playing to his audience, using his real
emotions to affect the desired outcome. But this time, it's an audience of one, and that's Kim.
"I just wanted her to come here today. I wanted her to hear this."
Interspersed with the main story are three flashbacks to earlier times in both "Better
Call Saul" and "Breaking Bad." During these moments, an important question is considered.
"What would you do if you had a time machine?"
"A time machine?"
The first flashback takes us to the Season 5 episode "Bagman," when Jimmy and Mike face a
harrowing two days in the Mexican desert hauling $7 million in cash for Lalo Salamanca's bail.
Saul also poses the question to Walter White as the two of them await being whisked away by Ed
the vacuum repairman in a scene that takes place during the "Breaking Bad" episode "Granite State."
"If I'm lucky, a month from now, best case scenario, I'm managing a Cinnabon in Omaha."
Gould revealed that he wanted the flashbacks
to show how Jimmy is making a change at long last, telling Rolling Stone,
"The feeling I had about this episode was that it was a little bit like 'A Christmas Carol.'
Gene becomes Saul, and he's visited by three ghosts. And each time he's visited
by one of these ghosts, you realize this guy is trapped in the cycle."
While speaking to others, Jimmy's answers to the time machine question are shallow and facile.
But his real answer is found in the episode's third flashback, a moment from the very
beginning of "Better Call Saul," as Jimmy delivers groceries to his brother Chuck.
Chuck has taken a leave of absence from the law firm he founded with Howard Hamlin's father due
to a debilitating sensitivity to electromagnetic waves. In this moment of brotherly kindness,
Chuck makes a small effort to reach out to Jimmy, but the future Saul Goodman doesn't bite,
leaving Chuck to read H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" by himself in the dark.
As much as the relationship between Jimmy and Kim has come to define the series,
for the first three seasons his relationship with Chuck was arguably more important.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Odenkirk said of Jimmy,
"He's a guy who is showing the audience his need, his hunger for love and respect from
his brother Chuck [...] His heart is open to Chuck, and Chuck crushes him."
It's impossible not to wonder how different Jimmy's life
would have been had his brother still been alive.
Jimmy's truth-telling stunt gets him 86 years in prison,
but it turns out the prison isn't such a bad place for Saul Goodman to end up.
"Better Call Saul."
For one, everyone calls him Saul, and he gets fist bumps as he walks through the halls.
He even gets to nurture his Gene Takovic side by baking bread in the prison cafeteria.
According to Gould, this was always the natural endpoint for Jimmy, as he told Rolling Stone,
"This guy has lived in the justice system, he's made a farce of it, he's played it.
And it just felt like that was the right place to end the series: him behind bars."
Jimmy may be behind bars, but he's not alone, and Kim even visits him,
posing as his lawyer. The two lean up against the back wall of the room and share a cigarette.
It's a quiet, intimate scene that evokes a scene the couple shared in the pilot episode.
The cigarette burns in color against the scene's film noir-inspired black and white filter.
Appropriately, this was the final scene that Rhea Seehorn and Bob Odenkirk filmed together, and it's
both the characters and the actors saying goodbye. After the episode aired, Seehorn told Vulture,
"Oh, what a great gift when your own emotions match up with what
your character is supposed to be feeling."
"Hi Jimmy."
The saga ends with a wistful look and a pair of finger guns from behind bars as Kim leaves
Jimmy to serve his 86-year sentence. Jimmy McGill goes out on his own terms,
atoning for his crimes, and closer to the woman he loves than he has been in years.
Still, "Better Call Saul" leaves the audience with many questions. For instance,
will Cheryl go through with her plan to sue Kim for her role in Howard's death?
"I could sue you in civil court, I could take everything you've got."
Is Jesse doing better in Alaska than Gene did in Omaha? Is this really the last time
Jimmy and Kim will see each other? Will Jimmy accept his prison fate so easily,
or will the old Slippin' Jimmy come creeping up? And are Jimmy's enemies dead,
or is there some associate of the Salamancas that is still out there with a thirst for revenge?
We may never know the answers to these questions, but it was still one hell of a finale.