Better Call Saul Star Expected Their Character to Die in Final Season

Better Call Saul ended this year, and since the show was a prequel to Breaking Bad there were some characters whose fates were already sealed. A few of the show's main characters were already set to die in the original series, but all of the newcomers had to spend their years on the series wondering if they were going to last. One such person was Rhea Seehorn who played Kim Wexler, the fierce lawyer and longtime love interest of Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk). Throughout the show's run, she became a fan favorite, and fans were also very concerned about her fate. However, Kim survived, and we even found out what happened to her post-Breaking Bad. In a recent interview with Empire Magazine (via CBR), Seehorn talked about how she and Patrick Fabian (Howard Hamlin) were constantly afraid of their characters dying.

"I had no idea. I definitely thought [Kim] could die," Seehorn shared. "At some point, I started having storylines that weren't just ancillary to Jimmy, and I was thrilled, but I honestly didn't dare to dream. Patrick and I would laugh and flip through the scripts immediately and be like, 'I'm not dead!' It just became a thing of, 'I don't want to get out of this sandbox.' It's the best writing, the best character, and the best people."

Was Kim's Better Call Saul Ending Originally Different? 

While there were no plans to kill off Kim, Seehorn told  Entertainment Weekly earlier this year that they shot different versions of the show's ending. In the finale, Saul ends up further confessing to his involvement in Walter White's empire and he gets a sentence of over 80 years. In the final scene, Kim shows at the prison as his lawyer, and they share a touching final moment. After smoking together as they did in the show's first episode, Kim leaves and passes Saul in the yard. He points fingers guns at her, which is something both characters had done previously in the series.

"Well, we shot a couple of different iterations -- including ones where she shoots finger guns back at him. It was very small and not animated or with a smile, but still – in the end, Peter decided that it looked too much like they were saying, 'Kim is back in the game,' and we really didn't want to give that impression. That moment between them, to me, is much more about the acknowledgment of their bond, that is still there, and the part of their relationship that was true," Seehorn explained. 

"It's very purposely left to interpretation," she added. "Is this him just saying, 'Man, we had a great run and it's okay?' Or is it him saying, 'We're still great together. And we could still do something together. We could still legally do something together.' [Laughs] I took it to mean that he was saying, 'I still believe that we have a relationship.' In whatever capacity that is. Even though the finger guns are representative of the beginning of this horrible downfall scam with Hamlin, for me, in the moment – because he does it in a very different way – it felt like, 'There is still something great about us. Not everything about what we were together is bad. There's something great about the two of us together.' And I took her look to him to be an acknowledgment that it's true, even though she's not ready to say what that means."

Did you think Kim was going to die in Better Call Saul? Tell us in the comments!