A Better Call Saul featurette explores the origins of Gus’ meth super lab and the challenges of integrating it into the spinoff. While the main focus of the show is Jimmy McGill’s slow but steady transformation into Saul Goodman, Vince Gilligan and company made sure the series covered much more material than that. Beginning in season 3, Gus Fring became a recurring player, as Better Call Saul laid the foundation for his drug empire. That subplot continued to develop in last year’s fourth season.
Besides a cameo from Gale Boetticher, the biggest nod came via the infamous super lab where Walter White worked once he became an associate of Gus’ on Breaking Bad. During the last season of Better Call Saul, Mike Ehrmantraut’s storyline involved bringing in a construction team to work on the project. The lab had nearly been completed by the season finale, but there was still a little bit of work to be done and it will likely factor into the remaining seasons of the spinoff.
The super lab was obviously a big deal in Better Call Saul, which explains why there’s a featurette dedicated to it on the season 4 Blu-ray release. Sony released a clip exclusive to Screen Rant, where members of the show’s creative team discussed the lab’s inclusion in the spinoff and what they went through to get it onscreen. Watch the video in the space below:
Since Better Call Saul began in 2015, Gilligan has maintained that any Breaking Bad callbacks or references would be organic to the story at hand so they didn’t come across as fan service. This is why Jesse Pinkman has yet to appear (though he may have already been slyly alluded to) and Walter White is presumably teaching his chemistry classes without a care in the world. But the super lab always felt like a natural fit. By the time Breaking Bad started, Gus was already established as the premier meth distributor, so his operation had been up and running for a while. It makes sense to detail the lab’s beginnings, and it’s clearly something that fascinated Gilligan. It’ll be interesting to see where this plot thread goes in the forthcoming fifth season.
All signs are pointing to Better Call Saul reaching the end of its shelf life in the near future, but there’s still a little wait before everyone ends up in their Breaking Bad starting positions. Giancarlo Esposito hinted that Saul will run at least six seasons, which would give everything enough time to breathe and be fully fleshed out. Gilligan has always been a meticulous planner; it took him until literally the last scene of the fourth season for Jimmy to wholly embrace the Saul path. Gus’ meth empire is blossoming, but it won’t be built overnight. Sadly, fans will have to wait until 2020 to see how things continue.
More: The Breaking Bad Movie Can End Better Call Saul
Source: Sony
