The Better Call Saul Theory That Explains A Lot About Kim And Jimmy In Season 6

Season 6 of "Better Call Saul" is careening toward its highly-anticipated midseason finale before the show lets fans simmer for a few months. The AMC drama is taking a cue from its predecessor series "Breaking Bad" in splitting up its final season; nearly a year passed between Hank Schrader (Dean Norris) realizing Walter White (Bryan Cranston) is Heisenberg in September 2012 and "Blood Money," which aired on August 11, 2013. While "Better Call Saul" won't make fans wait that long, the show will take seven weeks off before airing its final six episodes.

So far, Season 6 covers quite a lot of ground in its first few episodes before settling down in anticipation of a wild final ride. Nacho Varga (Michael Mando) dies, Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) and Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) start putting their plan to discredit Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian) into effect, and Howard actually catches on. Now, the dynamic scheming duo prepares for what they call D-Day — the day of a major hearing on the Sandpiper class-action lawsuit Howard is involved in — while Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton) investigates the superlab's construction all the way in Germany. Nobody knows what might happen in the second half of the season or when these plotlines will resolve, so "Better Call Saul" fans all over the internet are understandably trying to predict what will happen in the Season 6 midseason finale, "Plan and Execution" — and one fan thinks the series drops a major hint toward Kim's fate in "Axe and Grind."

A Redditor posted an intriguing theory on the subreddit r/BetterCallSaul that supposes the flashback in "Axe and Grind," in which a teenage Kim is busted for shoplifting — is a preview of how Kim and Saul's plan to discredit Howard will play out. Kim's mother (Beth Hoyt) scolds her harshly for behaving poorly but winds up letting Kim keep the jewelry anyway; she makes Kim take the fall in order for her daughter's shoplifting to actually work.

"I think Jimmy and Kim's plan will result in Kim having to do this exact same thing – Take the fall for Jimmy, making it clear that the entire Howard scheme was her doing," the Redditor wrote. They went on to suggest that the scheme's fallout will force Kim's absence by the time "Breaking Bad" starts while absolving Saul of any wrongdoing related to Howard.

In the most recent episode, Kim makes a last-minute decision to not attend her potentially career-changing meeting in Santa Fe to attempt to pull off their grand scheme even after Saul suggests putting D-Day on a brief hold. Episode director Giancarlo Esposito told Variety that he thinks the cold open is related to her decision to make that U-turn at its end; he also noted that the earrings Kim receives in the cold open are the same ones she wears throughout the entire series, highlighting the scene's importance to the character's psyche.

"To have her make this decision, is it for love or is it the excitement of the grift? Whatever that is, that U-turn is a perfect analogy for that. It's a U-turn in her life," Esposito said.