Better Call Saul Never Planned On Killing Off A Certain Key Character
Spoilers for the latest episode of "Better Call Saul" follow.
The closer and closer that "Better Call Saul" draws to the finish line, the more stress and anxiety Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) enthusiasts have felt about how her overall arc on the series would conclude. After all, there's a good reason why /Film's Chris Evangelista's weekly reviews incorporated a "Kim Watch" segment to chart exactly how worried we ought to be with each new episode. As "Breaking Bad" fans are well aware, there really is no such thing as unmitigated happy endings in this universe ... well, other than a few exceptions, at least.
For the vast majority of characters caught up in the wake of the most chaotic forces at work — Bryan Cranston's Walter White in the original series and Bob Odenkirk's Jimmy McGill in the spin-off — there's usually a piper that needs to be paid. But surely an individual as endearing and lovable and important as Kim, Jimmy's (now ex) wife, conscience, and occasional partner in crime, couldn't be destined for the gruesome fate that have taken down many a "Breaking Bad"/"Better Call Saul" character before, right? Well, in an interview with Rolling Stone, creator Vince Gilligan confirmed that Kim's death was never in the cards.
"I think it could have gone any which way, but there probably also was an element of us being loath to kill off her character. There were so many elements of this story that were preordained. You can't kill off Jimmy McGill in his own show, you can't kill off any character whom we know the fate of from 'Breaking Bad.' But with Kim, the sky was the limit. I guess it just didn't feel right to kill her off. That was probably never on the table, honestly."
'You're not gonna kill Kim, are you?'
Now that we know Kim is alive and well in the black-and-white timeline Gene Takovic currently resides in — though in potential legal trouble, now that she's confessed her and Jimmy's roles in the murder of Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian) — it would seem fans can look forward to the series finale without the looming specter of death hanging over Kim's head. To be sure, her dalliances with Jimmy have ultimately cost her the career she loved, her happy life with Jimmy, and, most devastatingly of all, her morals. But there's one line that the creators were never going to cross, even if fans were convinced otherwise. As Gilligan went on to say:
"We certainly kept silently smiling while people stopped us on the street and said, 'You're not gonna kill Kim, are you?' We let people think that maybe we would, but none of us wanted to do it. But figuring out where she wound up, it was in little baby steps, little fits and starts, like every other bit of plotting we do."
The writers on "Breaking Bad" were notorious for never fully planning on the broad scope of the story, instead relying on writing themselves out of corners on the fly (the most famous example being the machine gun in Walt's trunk in the final season). As explained in the above quote, "Better Call Saul" clearly followed in its footsteps. Thankfully, however, they've planned much bigger things for Kim. Thrillingly (and nerve-wrackingly enough), we have one episode left to find out exactly how her story comes to a close.
The series finale of "Better Call Saul" airs Monday, August 15, 2022 on AMC.