The first two episodes of the sixth and final season of Better Call Saul aired last night, bringing Bob Odenkirk back as our favorite crooked lawyer Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman. In Season 5, we saw McGill stripping himself of his family legacy and fully adopting the identity that would make him a fan-favorite character in Breaking Bad. Meanwhile, the secret war between Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) and the Salamancas is heating up, with the Pollos Hermanos’ owner ordering a hit on one of the most prominent members of the cartel family.
Picking up immediately where Season 5 left off, Season 6 redefines the game by carefully repositioning all the pieces on the board. There’s a lot to unpack in Episode 1, "Wine and Roses," so let’s jump right into it.
Fring vs. Salamanca
In the breathtaking Season 5 finale, Gus hires a team of mercenaries to break into Lalo Salamanca's (Tony Dalton) home in Mexico. To make sure the hit will be successful, Gus blackmails Salamanca’s general Nacho Varga (Michael Mando), forcing him to get Lalo’s trust and become part of his inner circle, and, when the moment is ripe, open the back door to let the mercenaries in. It's supposed to be a clean operation, but Gus forgets to consider the fact that Lalo is a blood-lusting madman. Using whatever tools he can find, Lalo takes down the entire mercenary team, finds out that Gus sent them, and begins to formulate a plan for getting his revenge.
Better Call Saul’s Season 6 premiere deals with the aftermath of Gus' attack on Lalo’s home. In order to escape, Lalo burns a body beyond recognition and dresses it in his clothes. Of course, the police might check the body and find out that it’s not Lalo’s, but that gives Lalo at least a couple of days, if not a couple of weeks, to silently go back to the United States and take down Gus by surprise. Lalo is so determined to get his revenge that he doesn’t even refrain from killing a couple of innocent villagers just to make sure no one will realize he’s still alive.
As for Nacho, he’s on the run after opening Lalo’s backdoor for Gus’ mercenaries. He knows he’s a dead man if the Salamancas ever find him, and his situation becomes even more desperate once Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) tells him Hector Salamanca (Mark Margolis) has put a bounty over his head. Nacho is a wanted man on both sides of the border, and he’ll have a hard time surviving, especially since the Salamanca Twins (Daniel Moncada and Luis Moncada) believe Lalo to be dead and are on their own path for vengeance.
On the north side of the border, Mike is still having a hard time working for Gus, as Fring seems to be comfortable with the idea of leaving Nacho to rot in Mexico. Gus is worried about covering all his tracks and wonders if Lalo could have survived the attack. At the same time, Mike tries to remind his boss that loyalty goes both ways, and since Nacho risked his neck for Gus, they must bring the young man back home safe. The relationship between Mike and Gus seems to be hanging by a thread, and we are bound to see something change in Season 6 of Better Call Saul. During the events of Breaking Bad, Mike never once questioned Gus, so it’s safe to assume the final season of Better Call Saul will show how Mike is finally convinced of Gus’ honor.
While all the Fring vs. Salamanca war soldiers seem in place, Episode 1 of Season 6 pulls the rug out from underneath viewers and changes everything. Before crossing the border back to the United States, Lalo calls Hector to let his uncle know he’s alive, well, and coming to kill Gus. Hector agrees to keep Lalo’s fake death a secret but leads his nephew on a different path. Hector doesn’t want Lalo to simply kill Gus. Instead, he wants to gather evidence linking Gus with the mercenary attacks, so the Salamancas can take over the United States operations for the cartel. Agreeing to play the long game, Lalo decides to stay in Mexico and hunt down the proof they need: Nacho. It’s an exciting development that’ll force Lalo to race against the Twins to get to Nacho first, while Mike does all he can to save the poor man.
It’s Not All Good, Man
Better Call Saul’s Season 6 premiere mostly keeps Jimmy (now practicing law under the name "Saul Goodman") and his now-wife Kim (Rhea Seehorn) away from the heat of the Fring vs. Salamanca war. The police are still looking for Jimmy after his client, Lalo, paid a seven million dollars bail and fled the country. Jimmy knows that having helped a cartel leader might come back to bite him in the ass, but for now, he’s evading the police by using the law as a shield. So, business as usual.
In “Wine and Roses,” Jimmy is still having a hard time dealing with the aftermath of Lalo confronting them at their apartment, as well as the fact that Kim seems to be toeing the line between honesty and corruption. After Jimmy's involvement with the cartel, near-death, and aiding and abetting in murder, something inside Kim has broken, maybe forever. Kim spends her days focused on her pro-bono career, helping poor people who cannot defend themselves and using her law expertise to do some good. However, at the same time, she keeps pushing Jimmy to embrace his new identity as Saul and act like the conman they know he is.
Kim is also determined to work with Jimmy in a new ploy to ruin Howard Hamlin's (Patrick Fabian) career. In the first season of Better Call Saul, Jimmy uncovers that a chain of retirement homes known as Sandpiper Crossing is stealing money away from their customers. Jimmy builds up a massive case against the company, but, since there’s only so much he can do by himself, he agrees to let Howard’s law firm, Hamlin Hamlin McGill, deal with the issue. Jimmy and Kim are still waiting for the case to be settled, which is when they’ll get a cut from the profits the law company makes. Kim is tired of sitting around, and decides discrediting Howard is the best way to speed up the process. If the leading lawyer on the case gets mired in scandal, HHM will surely accept a deal on behalf of Sandpiper, and everybody will get paid.
There’s a lot of bad blood between Jimmy and Howard over the course of their history. Even so, Jimmy is unsure if he should allow Kim to proceed with her plan. He fears he might have corrupted the purest thing in his life and that his constant meddling with the law might have turned Kim into a crook, just like himself. Even so, Jimmy agrees to help Kim, and in Better Call Saul’s Season 6 premiere, the duo takes the first step on a complex plan by planting drugs in Howard’s locker room in a golf club. Jimmy and Kim time everything so that Howard is caught with drugs by Clifford Main (Ed Begley Jr.), a senior partner of another respected law firm. It’s a subtle move that plants doubt in Clifford’s mind — so subtle that it’s almost undetectable by Howard himself.
It’s still too soon to tell how Kim’s and Jimmy’s plan will develop, but Howard's career and possibly even his reputation are definitely at stake. Unfortunately, Kim was also not a visible part of Breaking Bad, which means their plan could be doomed from the start. Either Kim and Jimmy will part ways for good, due to their latest con or some other scheme, or an even worse fate awaits the brilliant lawyer. We’ll have to keep watching to see where it all goes.