Better Call Saul Returns in Early 2022 With Sixth and Final Season

S’all good, man: Better Call Saul will return in early 2022. Filming on the sixth and final season of the Breaking Bad spin-off will start in New Mexico in March after the coronavirus pandemic delayed production on the new season once planned for late last year. The 13-episode sendoff season, about criminal lawyer Jimmy McGill-slash-Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) and his exploits with romantic and sometimes legal partner Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), will pick up from the cliffhanger ending that left unpredictable cartel boss Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton) plotting his revenge in the Season 5 finale, “Something Unforgivable,” in April 2020.

Better Call Saul is targeting a return in the first quarter of 2022, AMC Networks chief operating officer Ed Carroll said during a conference call on Friday. Seasons 1, 2, and 5 all premiered in February, with only seasons 3 and 4 getting later-than-usual starts in April 2017 and August 2018, respectively.

Because of COVID-19 delays, the almost two-year wait between seasons will be the longest gap for Saul. After five 10-episode seasons, the final season will run extended with 13 episodes.

“My fervent hope is that we can stick to the landing the way Vince [Gilligan] led us to stick to the landing on Breaking Bad. I think a really good story usually has its end, and that’s the thing that you remember,” Peter Gould, who co-created Saul with the Breaking Bad creator, previously told Deadline. “It’s like, we’ve put down our marker, we’ve planted our flag that Season 6, when we get to shoot it, is the last season, and it’s going to be a big season, and it’s going to be more episodes than we usually do. It’s going to be 13. We’ve never done 13 episodes of Better Call Saul in a season, ever. It’s going to be big and it’s going to be resolved.”

Because Saul takes place before and sometimes after Breaking Bad, will Season 6 sync up with the original show and bring back Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) one last time?

“Right now, I don’t have the answer to that. I will say, [Breaking Bad sequel movie] El Camino took some of the pressure off that. I loved what Vince did with that movie, and I felt that the scene he had with Walt and Jesse felt like such a perfect good-bye to those characters or a postscript to those two characters. You know, we’ll just have to see if it ends up being part of our story,” Gould said in the April interview, adding the focus is on a cast of characters that includes Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) and Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks).

“If having Walt and Jesse turn out to be two that could be pivotal to the story then, absolutely, we would love to have them,” Gould said at the time. “Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul are two of the busiest guys in show business — that’s the other imponderable, whether they would be able to do it or want to do it.”