After that first scene in Better Call Saul's Season 5 premiere updated viewers on Jimmy McGill's flash-forward persona Gene Takovic, I whole-heartedly thought the future-set storyline would return at least once more before the finale's credits. Unfortunately, it didn't happen, though it allowed for that much more of all the other characters' hyper-intense drama. (Such as Lalo vs. Kim, Lalo vs. Nacho, or Lalo vs. Anyone Else.) Though Season 6 is still relatively far off from going into production, co-creator Peter Gould has given fans some hope about Gene's future.
In the Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad's shared universe, main characters obviously don't have the best track record for surviving. So as each season has gone by, there's been the pervasive notion that Bob Odenkirk's complex character will eventually get killed off in the black-and-white "present day" timeline. (Don't get me started on innate fears about Kim's potential demise, or we'll be here all day.) Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, here's how Peter Gould semi-soothed fans' worries about Jimmy/Saul/Gene's future.
Anybody who watches the show carefully and is thinking about where this is all going, one of the questions you have to ask yourself is: ‘What does this man deserve?’ Not just: ‘What's going to happen to him?,’ but ‘What would be a deserving end to this? Does Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman/Gene Takovic deserve death? Does he deserve love? What would be the most fitting end for this guy — for the show?’ Obviously the end for everybody is death, but that may not be where we leave this guy. Is there any way for him to win any redemption after everything that he's done?
All things considered, Saul Goodman is not someone who deserves to live the rest of his life free from consequences, and Jimmy also wouldn't get a free pass for how he lived his pre-Saul years. However, Saul's ordeal in the desert for the episode "Bagman," combined with some of the events shown in Breaking Bad, do prove that life has definitely dealt the character a shitty hand time and time again. Don't get me wrong, he deserves all of it, but to Peter Gould's point, I'm not sure that he deserves something worse.
Fans will obviously be interested to see all the ways that Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan craft Season 6 so that it can (presumably seamlessly) connect to the start of Breaking Bad's timeline, likely with some meaningful overlapping. But it's obvious that the co-creators have a definitive endgame in mind for how Jimmy/Saul/Gene's story ends, or else they probably wouldn't have introduced the flash-forwards in the first place. I am sincerely hoping that Kim ends up moving away (and not dying) in Season 6, so that she can one day reconnect with Gene in the finale. It would probably be too cornball for the scene to go from black and white to color if that happens, but you can't tell me that wouldn't rock.
One thing's for sure, no matter what. If Bryan Cranston and/or Aaron Paul do indeed return once again (beyond Netflix's El Camino) as Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, there's no way that Better Call Saul could kill them off. Unless, I guess, if Gene and Jesse get into a giant car accident in the B&W timeline. And now I've bummed myself out by tacking that potential outcome onto the yard-filled bulletin board.
Better Call Saul is available to stream on Netflix, but only up through Season 4, while Season 5 won't arrive on the streaming service until a certain number of days before Season 6 debuts on AMC. It doesn't look like it's streaming anywhere else at the moment either, due to certain deals and restrictions. But while waiting to hear more, join us in shaking our heads at Saul's lack of major Emmy buzz, and head to our 2020 Fall TV premiere schedule to see what else is on the way.
