Better Call Saul Season 6 Saved Filming Its Most Emotional Scene For Last
This post contains spoilers for the series finale of "Better Call Saul."
"Better Call Saul" season 6 offers one last bit of wordplay with the title of its 13th episode, the series finale, "Saul Gone." Unfortunately, yes, it's all gone now; "Better Call Saul" has ended, while Bob Odenkirk has already moved onto another AMC show, "Lucky Hank," which our review calls "a series struggling to find itself." However, thanks to its current streaming availability on Netflix, you can always go visit Jimmy McGill, aka Saul Goodman, there — much like Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) goes to visit him in prison at the end of "Saul Gone."
It turns out Jimmy and Kim's final scene together in "Better Call Saul" was also "the very last scene" that the show's cast and crew shot. The night "Saul Gone" first aired, in August 2022, co-showrunner Peter Gould offered a partial post-mortem of the episode in an interview with Vanity Fair. Gould first offered his own interpretation as to why Jimmy has a last-minute change of heart, confessing to all his crimes in court and thereby trading the lighter 7-year prison sentence he's secured for an 86-year life sentence. In her own life outside prison, Kim has had to live with the guilt over the death of Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian), and Gould said:
"To me, [Jimmy] is following her example. If she can put up with all this pain, maybe he can too. Somehow her honesty makes him very dissatisfied with this victory he's had over the system, getting this relatively short sentence for what he's done. It just doesn't sit right with him at that point. And I do think he wants her there to see, because he knows that she's the only person that can understand."
The real meaning of 'Saul Gone'
Jimmy McGill spent most of "Better Call Saul" becoming Saul Goodman, the unscrupulous lawyer viewers met in "Breaking Bad," before creator Vince Gilligan decided to do a prequel series. It's only with an unexpected swerve in the episode "Fun and Games" that Kim Wexler finally leaves Jimmy and the show jumps forward to when he's gone full Saul in the "Breaking Bad" era.
In "Saul Gone," we've caught up to where most of the episode takes place during the black-and-white flash forwards to Saul's post-"Breaking Bad" life as Cinnabon manager Gene Takavic. Peter Gould explained further to Vanity Fair that, by owning up to his crimes before relinquishing his freedom, Jimmy has become himself again and the Saul persona is now gone, though only Kim may know it. This, Gould suggested, is what gives the episode's title its meaning:
"As far as everyone else in prison is concerned, his name is Saul — he's going to live with the name Saul Goodman for the rest of his life, whether he likes it or not. But Kim is the one person who knows that Saul Goodman's gone, and the guy who's left is Jimmy McGill. I think she's the one person who really gets that, and you can see it when he walks in the door. She says, 'Hi, Jimmy.' And the way Bob plays it is so vulnerable and sweet. That was actually the very last scene that we shot for the series, and there was a lot of emotion on the set that day."
Suffice it to say, the finality of Jimmy, not Saul, staring out from behind the prison fence before disappearing around the corner, once and for all, packs a powerful punch.
"Better Call Saul" season 6 is currently streaming on Netflix.