Warning: Spoilers ahead for the series finale of AMC’s Better Call Saul
Well, they finally did it. After six seasons and 63 episodes of Better Call Saul, the creative team of Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould managed to deliver a series finale not only worthy of its predecessor Breaking Bad, but perhaps even more evolved.
We all knew that Saul Goodman was not going to go down without a fight. After being essentially caught by Marion in the penultimate episode, “Waterworks,” Saul was on the run and left scrambling in a literal dumpster full of trash for the phone number to Ed’s vacuum cleaner repair and disappearing service when he was finally apprehended by authorities.
Still, he knew how to game the system.
“Where do I see it ending? With me on top, like always,” Saul told his newly minted legal defender from Albuquerque, who had traveled to Omaha to defend his client from a laundry list of crimes, from money laundering to accessory to murder of two federal agents. And true to his word, Saul negotiated the feds down to a reduced sentence of just seven years — a walk in the park, considering everything he had done until that point. Heck, that would have been a reasonable sentence if you consider only the crimes he committed as nondescript Cinnabon manager Gene Takovic.
It was only when Saul attempted to sweeten the deal with the information about the death of Howard Hamlin that he got knocked out with the real haymaker: Kim Wexler beat him to it.
If Saul’s takeaway from his fateful phone call to Kim had been to lash out and double down on his schemes, she took him at face value when he suggested that she just confess to everything. It was only then when he learned that his former love was facing a civil suit from Howard’s ex and would likely be paying for her mistakes, quite literally, for the rest of her life, that Saul finally decided to face the music.
And so, after luring Kim into the courtroom, Saul confessed to everything. His cushy seven-year sentence was thrown out the window in exchange for almost certainly never seeing the outside of a prison cell again, and the pair got to share one final cigarette before probably never laying eyes on one another ever again. It was perfect.
While fitting, it was also a far cry from the ending to Breaking Bad, which saw Walter White’s insatiable appetite for power, revenge, and money driving him until his final moments. “I did it for me, I liked it I was good at it, and I was really alive,” he told his wife and son in the finale, shortly before fleeing from the authorities.
If the ending of Breaking Bad cemented Walt’s transformation to his alter ego Heisenberg, Better Call Saul took viewers from Jimmy McGill to Saul Goodman to Gene Takovic back to Jimmy McGill in an incredible full circle moment. In the end, everyone — including Jesse Pinkman, who finally saw freedom following the series of events that transpired in El Camino — got exactly what they deserved. It’s rare for a beloved series to so perfectly stick the landing; and borderline maddening that Gilligan, Gould, and company could pull it off twice.
As such, fans flocked to Twitter following “Saul Gone” to rave about the finale and praise Gilligan and Gould for delivering such a fitting end to the story of Jimmy and Kim, while also connecting the dots to the former series.
The Kim Wexler appreciation committee was also out in full force. Even if she winds up in debt to Cheryl Hamlin for the rest of her life — like Jesse, Kim is finally free.
And we’ll be thinking about those final shots for a long time…
Just a tremendous couple of series, no notes. And with the Breaking Bad universe having come to a close, we think we speak for everyone when we say we’re waiting on bated breath to see what Gilligan tackles next.