In the Better Call Saul mid-season finale, after Jimmy McGill and Kim Wexler succeed in their plan to ruin Howard Hamlin’s reputation, a drunk Howard later confronts them primarily to ask them why they did what they did. As Hamlin vows to return the favor, Lalo Salamanca unexpectedly walks through the door. Before Hamlin has the chance to leave the premises, Lalo promptly shoots him in the head, much to the shock of Jimmy and Kim, as he asks to have a chat with his lawyers.

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Those who have followed Better Call Saul from the start now know why Hamlin isn’t around in Breaking Bad. Of all the possible scenarios that could have explained Howard’s absence, that was probably the last way viewers would have wanted to see him go out. Gould explained to Entertainment Weekly that Hamlin’s death was supposed to exemplify how far both Jimmy and Kim have fallen without knowing it. “Maybe I’m admitting too much, but we did not plan for this several seasons ago,” Gould said. “We didn’t really understand this is where it was going to go until we started talking at the beginning of this season. At the end of last season, Kim Wexler shocked us all by suggesting, ‘Hey, maybe we should scam Howard and get the Sandpiper money now, instead of waiting three years.’ In this season, we started to talk about, ‘What is the plan that these two are going to put into action, and what effect is it going to have?’”

Gould continued by discussing the realization they came upon when developing the conclusion to Better Call Saul episode 7. “The more we talked about that, the more we realized that Jimmy and Kim are sort of the bridge between these worlds, the legal world and the world of the cartel and Gustavo Fring and the Salamancas. Being a bridge has a lot of different aspects, and some of them are pretty terrible. In some ways, you know, they’ve opened the door to hell. They didn’t fully understand what they were doing.”

As tragic as it is that Hamlin is dead because of Jimmy and Kim, the one solace to all of this is that now they’re more likely than not to pay the piper with Lalo back in their lives until further notice. Granted, we know Lalo isn’t in Breaking Bad, but neither is Kim for that matter. Ruining Howard was done on their part just for the fun of it more than anything else. Now they’re going to be used in Lalo’s scheme to get back at Gus Fring for his assassination attempt. In other words, what goes around comes around.

Hamlin’s unexpected death also serves as the moment where the audience has lost sympathy for Jimmy and Kim much like they lost sympathy for Walt in Breaking Bad. Jimmy and Kim’s cons beforehand were done either to help their clients or to help themselves. They were doing something wrong for the right reasons. Their con on Hamlin was purely mean-spirited, and now he’s dead because of it. Up to this point, fans were justifiably worried about Kim Wexler’s fate in Better Call Saul. They still are, but at least now, they’ll know that she got what was coming to her.

Better Call Saul will resume its final season on AMC on July 11, 2022.

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Source: Entertainment Weekly