Better Call Saul Season 5 Finale: Michael Mando Warns Nacho “Goes to the Heart of the Death Star”

Double agent Nacho Varga (Michael Mando) "goes to the heart of the Death Star" in the Better Call Saul Season 5 finale, "Something Unforgivable," an episode filled with smoke, fire, gunshots — and potentially major casualties. Nacho is caught in the middle of the heating up turf war between Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) and Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton) — who is running the Salamanca cartel for infirm Tió Hector (Mark Margolis) — and nearly won his freedom before Lalo's tense confrontation with lawyer Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) and wife Kim (Rhea Seehorn) in the penultimate episode of the season, "Bad Choice Road," convinced Lalo to head to the border with Nacho in the driver's seat.

"From Nacho's point of view, you know, he wasn't in that room," Mando told TV Guide of the conversation between Jimmy, Kim, and Lalo watched over by Fring's fixer Mike (Jonathan Banks), who was perched nearby with a rifle. "So I don't think Nacho knows exactly what's going on. But I think he feels this huge shift in Lalo after that conversation, and whatever that shift was is definitely not good for him. It made things worse for him. And now he's got to go to the heart of the place that he's been running away from."

Nacho wants out of the game — mostly to protect his innocent father, Manuel (Juan Carlos Cantu), threatened by Fring's men to keep Nacho in line and acting as an informant — but his trip to Mexico has fans worried Nacho won't make it back across the border.

"Nacho goes to the heart of the Death Star," Mando said with a laugh, referring to a key sequence from the original Star Wars. "To put it mildly, he goes to the heart of the whole operation." Besides the risky road trip, Mando added, "I can promise you there's going to be smoke, and there's going to be fire, and there's going to be gunshots."

The tenth and final episode of the season was previewed by Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, who teased "there's so much stuff that's going to happen coming up next."

"I can't wait for audiences to see it. This show is on rails from here on out," Gilligan told Variety. "It just goes, there's just so much stuff going on. And these worlds really continue to collide, like the Hindenburg crashing into Lakehurst, N.J. The catastrophe keeps getting bigger and bigger, between Saul Goodman's world and the world of the cartel and Gus Fring and Mike Ehrmantraut and Nacho Varga and Lalo Salamanca. There's all kinds of big stuff coming up and I can't wait for audiences to see it."

Better Call Saul premieres its Season 5 finale tonight at 9/8c on AMC.