Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for the finale of Better Call Saul Season 6.

Well, that's it. It's Saul Gone now. After six seasons of riveting television that even surpassed its predecessor, Better Call Saul and the journey of one James "Jimmy" McGill (Bob Odenkirk) came to a close. Following a life full of scams and schemes, television's most tragic trickster put on one final performance that cemented his legacy in profound yet painful fashion.

Coming off of an intentionally anticlimactic scene where he's finally caught in a garbage bin, Jimmy seems like he might be able to slip away once more. In a deeply disturbing sequence where he tells lie after lie about his role in the chaos that took over Albuquerque and manages to weasel his way into a seven-year plea deal, it even seems like he might throw Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) under the bus to save his own skin. However, just as he always has, Jimmy manages to catch us all by surprise once more. In an extended scene, he gets to play the part of the lawyer one last time — only this round, he is putting himself on trial.

After all the destruction and death that he has been a part of, Jimmy ultimately comes clean about everything. He admits to his central and ongoing role in the criminal enterprise, giving one show-stopper of a line with “the fact is Walter White couldn’t have done it without me.” It is a stunning moment, reminding us how Jimmy can put on one hell of a show when he takes the stage. He meticulously covers all the bad acts that he has done and subsequently ensures that he will now spend the rest of his life in prison. It is the most honest he has been in a long while, stripping away all his lies and deception to finally tell the truth. He gives a monologue that is the thematic equivalent of falling on his sword, an act that feels modeled off of one person in attendance who had herself done the same in the prior episode.

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Image via AMC

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Though this scene plays out in front of all the people gathered in the courtroom, including some familiar faces, Jimmy is most concerned about the woman who was once his wife. Just as Kim had told him he should, he gives himself up. After saying nothing would stop him from taking for himself all the way back at the end of Season 1, he does the right thing at great personal cost. The goodness in him makes one final push to the surface to come up for air, though it is just a brief gasp after a lifetime dominated by his time spent in the dark depths. It all comes too late for him to live a life of joy or at least one where he still had his freedom. Jimmy, even with the good heart buried under his often callous exterior, has already done too much and been lost for so long that he isn't ever going to get out clean. There's no reversing what he had done, and he knows that. He makes peace with himself and all his mistakes, throwing one last hail mary pass to attempt to set things right even with the knowledge that he'll be pummeled as a result. The man known for taking falls takes his greatest one yet — not for money, but to make the change his brother Chuck said he never could. That it comes at the end of the road makes it all the more tragic yet no less cathartic.

Following this, Jimmy gets to share one final scene with Kim when she manages to sneak in a visit where he's now being held. The two have a smoke, just like old times, before she leaves him in the place where he will spend the rest of his life. The cigarette and the flame provide some of the few flashes of color in this monochrome world, a reminder of the vibrant connection the two have. This last conversation scene sees both Seehorn and Odenkirk giving understated performances that you can’t tear your eyes away from. While there are many great final chats over the course of the finale, this one cuts the deepest. Visually echoing the very first scene the duo shared together, though this time with the light of a freedom Jimmy will never see shining into the confines of the room, they settle into their old rhythms. They do so with an ease that took us back through time, as if all the years apart had never happened, and they could go right back to where they left off. Almost everything is left unspoken as they are able to steal away one final farewell from the inevitable passing of time that will soon separate them forever. The last line we get to hear Jimmy give in the entire show, delivered with just enough humor to mask the pain, gives this tragedy shape and form. Kim has just said that he will now have to spend 86 years in confinement, a time they both know will extend long beyond his death. Jimmy, taking the cigarette back one final time, repeats the time, though adds that “with good behavior, who knows?” Kim, more familiar with his humor than anyone, chuckles before looking away. In his last words, Jimmy is able to make her smile despite the looming loss that surrounds them on all sides.

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Image via AMC

This is the enduring legacy the show creates for him — not as a conman or a huckster, not as a cartel lawyer, or even as a sidekick to Walter White. While the prequel may have begun with this conception of him, it has now definitively and thoroughly reinvented him. The finale sees Jimmy confront all those varying ideas of who he was, many of which were his own creation, to instead choose a different path. He could have easily gotten away with just seven years and saved himself from a life behind bars. This easily could have been the final direction his life took. Instead, he writes a different final act for himself. After nearly six seasons where he gave his life over to his worst self, Jimmy takes back control from Saul, pulling himself back from the very brink of oblivion and doing so at the last possible moment in a way only he could. It invites us to imagine what his life could have been like if he had done so as a young man when he had his whole future ahead of him. The fact that the show reflects back on Jimmy talking through time travel and the regrets he had makes clear that he is too. Perhaps this is what drives him to one final attempt at salvation.

In the present moment, Kim emerges from the building and locks eyes with Jimmy in the yard. These silently crushing final frames feel like they’re designed to play over and over in your memory from both perspectives. It plays out for less than a minute, though ends up seeming like it lasts an eternity because of how overwhelmingly emotional it becomes. Each of the characters we have grown to understand and care deeply for can’t look away from each other. It is as if they want to forever ensure that they can look back at this farewell for the rest of their lives, to play it back just like the tapes we saw at the beginning of each episode. Jimmy even mimics the finger guns that Kim used to do in a different life, only with his face now etched in pain. They both know this is almost certainly the last time they will ever see each other again. The deep breath Kim takes in response to his silent farewell itself rips the air right out of you. It then cuts to a gorgeous wide shot, showing how even though they are mere feet from each other, it might as well be thousands of miles. Kim then rounds the corner, looking back one last time to get a final glimpse of Jimmy before he vanishes behind it in the closing shot and the series cuts to black. While he had been able to turn back time in how he'll be remembered, adding a final chapter that complicates who he was, there is no undoing everything. Getting to see how Jimmy was willing to pay the price to confront his past made it all the more spectacular of an ending that remains gracefully somber.

In all of television, there aren’t many conclusions that manage to stick the landing in such a magnificent and melancholic fashion. It made for a fitting end for our ol’ friend Slippin' Jimmy, a smarmy yet sad saint who lost his way but remained in search of the righteous path to the very end.