Better Call Saul Writers Worried SPOILER's Fate Went "Too Far"

Warning: this story contains Better Call Saul Season 6 spoilers. Gus Fring's underground meth superlab isn't just where Walter White and Jesse Pinkman cooked crystal in Breaking Bad — it's a grave. In Better Call Saul's final midseason premiere, "Point and Shoot," Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) disposes of the bodies of lawyer Howard Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian) and criminal Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton), both shot dead one episode apart. After Lalo summarily executes Howard during an unannounced drop-in on his lawyers, Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) and Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), the Salamanca drug lord dies at the superlab when he underestimates his rival: "Chicken Man" Fring (Giancarlo Esposito).

According to Better Call Saul writer-director and executive producer Gordon Smith, who wrote "Point and Shoot," writers weighed whether Howard and Lalo ending up buried together underneath the superlab was going too far — even for the Breaking Bad-verse. 

"That came straight out of the writers' room," Smith told the AMC Blog. "We knew we were getting close to the end of the episode. We talked about whether we could end on Jimmy and Kim sitting on the bed with their thousand-yard stares. And I think that would've been a legit way to go!"

Read More: Better Call Saul Reveals Lalo's Breaking Bad Fate

Instead, "Point and Shoot" ends with the macabre reveal that Howard and Lalo were in Breaking Bad all along.

"We really felt like we could give Howard and Lalo a final moment of rest, almost a funeral," Smith explained. "I think both [writer-executive producer] Alison Tatlock and [series co-creator] Vince [Gilligan] both pitched the superlab, and it's the kind of thing you hear and get chills and go — is this too far? Is it too much? And more importantly, does this screw up something we're not thinking about with Breaking Bad? Is there some reason not to do it?"

Smith continued: "So we talked about it a lot, and then we were like no, this is too good and feels right. It adds a little bit of flavor that this superlab was built on a foundation of death. And after we figured out that's where it ended, we broke the [cold open] teaser as a sort of wraparound." 

As for how the Goodmans move forward now that their plan to ruin Howard ended with their mark's inadvertent death, Smith teased, "Slowly. Carefully. Haltingly. Badly."

New episodes of Better Call Saul's final season air Mondays on AMC and AMC+. See where to stream and watch Better Call Saul Season 6 Part 2.