How Better Call Saul Has Already Subverted Expectations For Its Final Season
It can be difficult for prequels to maintain the element of surprise, because their very nature means that audiences know how the story ends. There’s no suspense in whether or not Mike and Sulley will land jobs at Monsters, Inc. in Monsters University. The best prequels use the predetermined fate of their characters for dramatic effect, like Anakin Skywalker’s tragic downfall in the Star Wars prequel trilogy.
This technique has been used brilliantly in the Breaking Bad spin-off Better Call Saul, which has acted as both a prequel and sequel to the flagship series. Breaking Bad’s depiction of his eventual unscrupulous practices under the name Saul Goodman has made Better Call Saul’s depiction of Jimmy McGill’s early attempts at a legitimate law career all the more heartbreaking. Similarly, the black-and-white flash-forwards featuring Jimmy’s ultimate post-Breaking Bad fate as a lonely Cinnabon manager named Gene Takovic in Nebraska constantly remind the audience that a happy ending for the character is impossible.
After five critically acclaimed seasons gradually charting Jimmy’s fall from grace, Better Call Saul is set to wrap up its run following its upcoming sixth and final season. The season 5 finale, “Something Unforgivable,” has set the stage for a spectacular ending by subverting fans’ expectations and significantly raising the stakes of the show’s conflicts.
The irresistible Tony Dalton was introduced as cartel boss Lalo Salamanca in Better Call Saul’s fourth season, but he didn’t get a chance to really shine until he joined the main cast in season 5. Since Lalo isn’t around in the Breaking Bad timeline, his presence in Jimmy’s life has quickly become one of the series’ biggest mysteries. Throughout the fifth season, Lalo was arrested, hired Jimmy as his lawyer, made bail with money that Jimmy almost died to retrieve, and began to suspect interference from Gus Fring’s goons.
When Jimmy worried about getting caught in the crossfire of Gus’ gang war with the Salamanca cartel, Mike assured him that Lalo would be assassinated by a highly trained team of killers, thus ceasing to be a problem. Nacho rode with Lalo down to the Salamancas’ compound and left a gate open in the middle of the night to let in Gus’ goon squad. It seemed like this would neatly wrap up the Lalo storyline by the end of the fifth season so that the sixth and final season could focus on the post-Breaking Bad Gene timeline.
However, much to Nacho’s surprise – and to the audience’s surprise – Lalo turned the tables on his would-be assassins. He spotted his gun-toting assailants in the nick of time and managed to escape from the compound through a hidden tunnel underneath his bathtub. Moments later, he returned with an assault rifle and gunned down all the mercenaries Gus sent to kill him. Seeing the gate open, he realized Nacho let them in and stormed off into the night.
Instead of getting Lalo out of the picture, the season 5 finale has made him more of a threat than ever. He knows that Nacho is a double agent working with his closest rivals and his suspicions that Jimmy’s allegiances are torn have been all but confirmed. Where Lalo’s arc will go next is anybody’s guess, but he’ll likely want to return to Albuquerque and go on a vengeful rampage against everyone who’s double-crossed him.
While the timeline of Breaking Bad means that Jimmy, Mike, and Gus will all be safe from Lalo’s wrath, there’s no plot armor protecting Nacho or Kim. Kim already stood down Lalo when he confronted Jimmy about his hellish couple of days in the desert. Now that Lalo has survived an assassination attempt and Kim has hinted that she’s about to “break bad” herself, this might not be their last standoff. At the beginning of Breaking Bad, the Salamanca cartel was on its last legs. In the current Better Call Saul timeline, the family business is still thriving. Whatever happens with Lalo could be key to understanding the Salamancas’ downfall.
Better Call Saul’s final season has a lot of loose ends to tie up, like the taxi driver who recognized Gene and what happened to Kim during the events of Breaking Bad (if she was even alive), but after the explosive season 5 finale, there’s no easy way out of the conflict with Lalo. An enraged Lalo seeking revenge seems like an inescapable threat, so it’ll be interesting to see how the writers resolve it at the same time as connecting the series to Breaking Bad and concluding the saga of Jimmy McGill.
After Vince Gilligan wrote himself and his creative team into a corner with the hugely satisfying payoffs of Breaking Bad, the writers of Better Call Saul were always going to struggle to keep the show’s final season unpredictable. But thanks to the way they structured the penultimate season, fans already have no idea what to expect.
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