Producers confirm: Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul will appear in final season of Better Call Saul
Series co-creator Peter Gould confirmed that both Walter White and Jesse Pinkman will show up in the final episodes of the Bob Odenkirk-starring prequel
Aux News Bryan Cranston
After years of dancing around it, shrugging elaborately, and increasingly hinting toward it, the producers of Better Call Saul have finally come out and said it: Walter White and Jesse Pinkman will make an appearance in the final season of Better Call Saul.
This is per series producer and co-creator Peter Gould, who confirmed tonight at PaleyFest what he and Vince Gilligan were both hinting at at last night’s premiere: Breaking Bad stars Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul will both be making appearances on the prequel’s final chunk of episodes, due to debut on April 18.
“I don’t want to spoil things for the audience,” Gould said while addressing a panel for the show. “But I will say the first question we had when we started the show was, ‘Are we gonna see Walt and Jesse on the show?’ Instead of evading, I’ll just say yeah.”
Not that it’s necessarily an entirely solved question of how they’ll be worked into Saul Goodman’s story, presumably months, if not years, before they met on Breaking Bad’s “Better Call Saul.” “How or the circumstances or anything, you’ll just have to discover that for yourself, but I have to say that’s one of many things that I think you’ll discover this season.”
Series star Bob Odenkirk tried to get even more coy with his inside info, saying that, “If you can believe it, there’s more,” but Gould cut him off.
In confirming the news, Gould put an official stamp on a statement that he and Gilligan made last night, when they agreed that, “It would be a damn shame if the show ended without [Cranston and Paul] appearing, would it not?”
And, really: The nice thing about having a creative team that’s built up so much narrative goodwill over the last 14 or so years is that, when they promise that this was-probably-inevitable crossover will happen “in a way that you haven’t seen before,” it’s shockingly easy to believe them. We’ll just have to wait to see how it plays out when the final part of Better Call Saul’s sixth season arrives.
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Really not that surprising. BCS has been showing scenes of Saul as Gene since the very first season. Stands to reason that the final season will have scenes that overlap with Breaking Bad at some point to get Saul to that future state with Gene. My guess is we’ll see some familiar scenes from Breaking Bad reshot from Jimmy’s perspective.
we already got one set in the actual Breaking Bad timeline in s4, when we see Saul shredding evidence in his office and making his call to Vacuum Repair Guy. honestly I don’t think there’s any need to actually include Jesse and Walt again but I trust this creative time to do it right
I personally want to see some of the early work Saul does for Walt in Breaking Bad reframed a bit. Like we know Saul sets Walt up with Gus, we don’t really know the details of how that happened and how Saul convinces Mike or Gus to take a chance on Walt. We know Walt and Gus butt heads in S4 but we never really see if Saul faced repercussions from that as well (I’d imagine he does given he recommended Walt to begin with). So on and so forth.Probably isn’t more than 5-10 minutes worth of scenes but would be fun to watch IMO.
In the hands of virtually anyone else, I’d be a little bit “worried” about this but Gilligan? Not only will he do it well, he’ll knock it out of the park. I have zero doubts about this.
Gilligan’s not involved in BCS anymore.
Not day to day but pretty sure he’s still involved with the big picture.
While it’s definitely more Peter Gould’s show than it is Vince Gilligan’s, it looks like Gilligan was at least a little more actively involved in the writer’s room this season after stepping back during seasons 4 and 5.
He is, he’s back for S6 in the writing room and directing.
Great!
Can’t say I’m a huge fan. Sure, BCS is fantastic, but the weakest parts of it are the inelegant flashes of “hey remember BB?” that we get from time to time. Considering the ending of BB and the lack of familiarity these two had with Jimmy starting out, I expect this to be more “it’s Tio’s bell!” than “Lalo Salamanca is an amazing addition”.
Perhaps we’ll learn that Walt and Jesse were good friends with Jimmy long before they met Saul on BB, but they all went together an a tropical vacation and were hit on the head by coconuts, giving them all amnesia.
Yes to this!
Okay. Would’ve been a fun surprise (or at least something you wouldn’t know for sure would happen), but this is another way to do it.
There was certainly a bit of a jolt through the room at the cinema where I watched El Camino, when Walt turned up. I think it took some people a surprisingly long time to realise it was a flash back.
his bald cap was the worst part of the movie
I felt the same way about Hank and Gomez’s return in season 5. The sense of surprise would have been nice, but I guess they need the publicity as well announcing it in advance.
Huh. That took me by surprise. But, I haven’t watched “Next week on…!” teasers since probably Star Trek: TNG.
But it’s so bloody obvious that the question would’ve been more if the show ended and we didn’t see them given it’s meant to tie into the original show.
There are two logical places to insert Walt and Jesse. The first is in the Jesse’s car in the parking lot outside Saul’s office—the scene where Jesse describes Saul as a criminal lawyer. The second is the basement scene where Saul laments that, if he’s lucky, he’ll end up in a Cinnabon in Omaha.
I think we all knew for sure it would happen.
The surprise is that they’re playing the opposite roles. Or, better yet, they’re background actors in a street scene.
I mean we’ve already seen Jimmy at the Cinnabon so it’s reasonable to expect BCS was going to run through his eventual escape (which was Walt’s fault). I’d call this confirmation of what made logical sense rather than an actual reveal.Presumably we’ll see Jesse first since he had worked with Jimmy/Saul before getting tangled up with Walt.
Boring.
In the cinebon section in the last episode they appear as blue tinged force ghosts , along with Kim snd Mike.
Maybe they’ll all die and the final scene will be them meeting up in a church before ascending up into a beam of white light?
I’ll be pissed if they kill Kim. Send her to the vacuum store. Have Kim show up at Cinnabon at the end of BCS. My Kim spinoff: Minding her own business in a midwestern small town she gets caught up in… which in the final season of the series somehow leads her to locating Jimmy at the Cinnabon after his visit to the vacuum store. Tie that bow up.
I thought Common Wisdom had it that she is who Gene saw at the end when he told the Vacuum Cleaner Guy he didn’t need him after all.
Would I want to see a spin off of Kim after the events of BCS (presuming she doesn’t die if course)? Yes. Definitely yes
i would just rather see that actress continue to do interesting and challenging work with different people!
You know that that is Not How This Works!!
I think the reveal should be that Saul went home to Kim every night during the timeline of BB and she’s working at the Auntie Anne’s right across from the Cinnabon in Gene’s timeline.
Or managed to squirrel enough ill-gotten Saul dough that she’s now running the prestigious firm of Wexler, Davis and Main.
Jimmy will probably go get his new car washed and run into Walter there. As for Jessie, who knows. But didn’t Jessie know Saul before Walter or no?
I’m more concerned with how different Aaron Paul looks now. I mean he still looks great, but his face has rounded out quite a bit and his forehead has grown. He basically looked like a kid in the first season of BB. I guess they could do some de-age trickery. Though I don’t think AMC has HBO or Disney money.
Not to be unkind, but watching current day Jesse Plemmons try to pass himself off as BB-era Jesse Plemmons was a bit…distracting.
I was going to say “I don’t think he ever showed up in BCS” but then I realized you meant El Camino. Which, yeah true true. Love the guy he looks A LOT different now.
They had to use all the same tricks as when Elaine was pregnant on Seinfeld
Maybe they’ll hide Aaron Paul’s head behind furniture in BCS?
Yeah, you wanna talk “rounded faces…”
i don’t think it costs that much money to de-age anymore. they’re doing it extensively for that mid-budget nic cage movie that’s coming out and i can’t imagine righteous gemstones and better call saul could possibly have dramatically different budgets.
Yeah you’re probably right. I mean hell, look at what people on the youtubes are doing with deepfakes an such. Crazy. And it’s not like they’re dropping a couple hundred grand on making Bill Hader the T-100 or whatever. Or putting Seinfeld in Pulp Fiction.
No word of this criminal mastermind?
He’s unfortunately been pretty busy on What We Do in the Shadows.
People focus on the day part of it, but there’s actually a lot of walking…
Two Words.Squat Cobbler.
Pretty sure his face collapsed and turned into goo.
I hate surprises which is why I’m so glad I woke up and saw this headline on the A.V. Club’s homepage. Thanks A.V. Club!
“I don’t want to spoil things for the audience,” Gould said while addressing a panel for the show spoiling things for the audience
Why?! Why do this?! Has Spider-Man No Way Home taught us nothing? Speculation is great! Lie to me! I don’t care. I don’t want to count the minutes until they arrive, I want to spend those minutes wondering if they will. Even if it’s the most obvious, worst kept secret in town, the moment they show up is still so awesome.
Hooray, Todd episode!
A decade ago, I went into BoJack Horseman thinking “oh cool, Jesse is in this!” whereas now I actually associate Aaron Paul more with Todd Chavez. Will Arnett is still eternally GOB to me, though.
I missed AD. I keep wondering if I should go back to watch it (I certainly love Jessica Walters cos ARCHER and Will Arnett cos LOTS), but I worry the time has passed and it won’t land the way it would have years ago.
The first three seasons (well, in particular the first two) are genuinely timeless and amazing – if you’re a fan of BoJack you’ll be able to appreciate the weirdly intricate plotting and utmost dedication to continuity and callbacks. The third season is a bit of a step down, and the Netflix seasons are odd – the (original) version of season 4 is genuinely interesting and impressive and really comes together in the 2nd half, but it’s difficult to get into. The recut version is shit though, and season 5 is genuinely so unbearably unfathomably awful it took me about 3 years to ever watch the original seasons again.
Cranston is scheduled to appear in the episode entitled “Saul Gets His Car Washed”
Bryan Cranston has said he turned down an offer to direct some episodes, because he was having so much fun getting to be an unspoiled fan of this world. Hopefully this didn’t wreck that too much.
Final scene of BCS: Gene/Saul/Jimmy walks out onto a dusty stretch of highway. He’s leaving town. As he walks, we hear the roaring sound of an 18 wheeler approaching. Michael Chiklis is behind the wheel, texting someone. Distracted, he can only look up in horror at the last second as the truck hits Gene/Saul/Jimmy. Panicked, Chiklis stops and gets out of the vehicle to check on the man he hit. The camera pans over to the phone and reveals who Chiklis was texting….it’s Don Draper. Screen faces to black. Executive Producer Vince Gilligan
Entertaining: Being surprised by this while watching the show. WoW!Less entertaining: knowing in advance. Next thing is they’ll confirm a spinoff starring Rhea Seehorn.
Thanks, William. After many years, I’m accustomed to AVC spoiling things for me and I know reading anything online carries that risk but one could’ve just as easily said something like “Producers confirm the appearance of additional Breaking Bad characters in the final season of Better Call Saul” and let anyone decide if they want to read more about it (it’s arguably a more compelling tease that could get most people to click rather than giving it away on the homepage—I think I just asked for more clickbait). I didn’t keep pace with the original airings of BCS as I don’t have AMC so I didn’t read about it and was then delighted and usually surprised at the appearance of each successive BB character who showed up. This is one of the core features of the show to most. I know it’s going to be a problem for me as the final episodes start airing but I now presumably have one/some of the biggest moments spoiled.
Yeah they’ve been getting bad for this recently. Of course whenever iiiiii complain everyone shouts me down
Shut up, Drips!
This is being reported in lots of places. I know this is a tough pill to swallow, but the AV Club doesn’t have some Woodman and Bangstein going out and getting entertainment scoops by blowing executives in studio garages like the real journos over at TMZ.The AVClub rips their headlines from Entertainment Weekly and Seventeen magazine.
…which I don’t read. I get it. Still, I don’t see the harm in being a
little bit more thoughtful with what is in the actual headlines.
I think it would have been absolutely inescapable everywhere given how they intend to market it, sadly, so if it wasn’t AV club it would have been practically any other entertainment news source.
Having said that, I am someone who basically never cares about spoilers but this would have been something best left as a surprise. That’s not on AV Club, that’s more on AMC for how they chose to market it.
I hope it’s just the final scene of the Saul portion of the show, where it ends just as Saul meets them for the first time. Anything else would feel a little too much like fan service
“It’s me, sixteen year old Jesse! What? No, I’m not getting grey hairs. That’s just, like, from drugs and stuff.”
With all due respect, there’s no way 2022 Aaron Paul can convincingly play 2007-era Aaron Paul.
Meh, just remind yourself it’s a TV show and try to stay into it
Reminding myself it’s just a show while watching said show kind of defeats the purpose.
Guess you can fast forward or watch something else?
Ok…I’ll play…Saul/Jimmy shows up at Walt’s high school for Career Day. We see Jimmy telling the kids that life is a sham and that the only way you can get ahead in life is by breaking the rules.
Jesse is in the crowd, we see him mouth the words “yo”. Walt is off to the side of the stage looking at Jimmy with disdain but then a subtle smile emerges.