Better Call Saul acts as a prequel to Breaking Bad, focusing on the life Walter White’s crooked lawyer, and the series should end with Saul’s first Breaking Bad scene. Bob Odenkirk’s character was introduced to Vince Gilligan’s world of drugs, science and roof pizza during Breaking Bad’s second season when Badger, one of dealers pushing Walt’s blue meth, got busted by police. Walt and Jesse decide they need a criminal lawyer in the truest sense of the term, and recruit an attorney by the name of Saul Goodman after seeing his desperately cheesy commercial on TV.
Although Saul was never intended to become a major player with his own spinoff series, Breaking Bad fans responded to the character immediately, largely thanks to Bob Odenkirk’s perfect mixture of dramatic and comedic performance, and Saul became an integral part of the Breaking Bad mythos. Better Call Saul has taken the character back to his days as Jimmy McGill, a junior lawyer with honest aspirations to do good work in the profession but, with each passing season, Jimmy has inched closer to his future Saul persona. Better Call Saul has also explored the title character’s life after the conclusion of Breaking Bad. Unfortunately, however, it appears that the spinoff plans to conclude with season 6.
With Better Call Saul ending on season 6 and a Breaking Bad movie also on the horizon, thoughts begin to turn to how Saul’s story will ultimately end. It’s currently unclear how Better Call Saul’s future timeline will play out and there are several different permutations for how that arc could develop. Better Call Saul’s primary timeline, on the other hand, should end where the character’s Breaking Bad story began.
Saul’s debut scene sees the lawyer burst into Badger’s interrogation, giving the investigation officer a hilarious dressing down and offering to represent Jesse’s hapless friend. Immediately after, Saul meets Walter White for the very first time in his strip mall office, with Walt claiming to be Badger’s Uncle. It would be incredibly effective if Better Call Saul’s main timeline ended with either Saul walking into Badger’s interrogation, or with Walt first entering Saul’s office.
Firstly, this would provide a symbolic sense of cyclical storytelling between Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad. If the prequel’s end bled directly into the start of its parent series, viewers would feel a satisfying sense that the two shows were separate halves of the same story, playing on the fact that Jimmy McGill’s arc mirrors that of Walter White. Neither scene would offer an especially dramatic conclusion, but that’s where Better Call Saul’s post-Breaking Bad timeline could step in, providing the spinoff with a less predictable and more climactic finale.
Secondly, this type of ending would ensure that no significant gaps remained in Saul’s story. The Breaking Bad franchise is incredibly well-constructed and attention to detail has been a strength of both shows. If Better Call Saul ended a year or two before the events of Breaking Bad, fans would be left wondering what Jimmy got up to during that blank period, and this would deprive the spinoff of a definitive ending. Having now followed Saul’s story across three separate time periods, it’s important that viewers get a full sense of what happened to the character within those years and ending Better Call Saul where Breaking Bad began would act as a sure sign that the audience has seen everything there is to see about the life and crimes of Jimmy McGill.
More: How Better Call Saul Can Set Up The Breaking Bad Movie
Better Call Saul season 5 premieres in 2020 on AMC and Netflix. The Breaking Bad movie is currently without a release date.
