Better Call Saul Creator Reveals The Alternate Ending He Almost Went With For The Finale
Contains spoilers for "Better Call Saul" Season 6, Episode 13
The "Better Call Saul" Season 6 finale, which is the show's final episode, largely continues the timeline featured at nearly every season's opening and explored in the latter half of Season 6, following the events of "Breaking Bad." First, after a brief flashback sequence at the episode's start, Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) is arrested in Omaha, Nebraska after the elderly Marion (Carol Burnett) tips off her Life Alert agent to his true, criminal identity.
In custody, Jimmy initially bargains for a deal that his judge (Barbara Rosenblat) later refers to as the most generous sentence she's encountered in her career. However, after he hears that his ex-wife/ex-partner in crime Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) came clean about their culpability in the murder of their former colleague Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian), Jimmy spills his guts in court about his past indiscretions, at the cost of a prison sentence that will likely extend through the balance of his life.
Whereas previously Jimmy was estranged from Kim, he effectively wins back her respect with this grand gesture. This sets up the episode's final sequence, in which the pair first shares a cigarette under the guise of Kim providing Jimmy with legal counsel, before they wave goodbye to one another between prison fences that seem to call attention to their vast physical their distance from one another. However, as it turns out, this striking tableau was not always going to be the show's final image.
Better Call Saul almost ended one scene earlier
In an article Entertainment Weekly published shortly after the "Better Call Saul" series finale premiered, interviewer Dan Snierson asked series co-creator Peter Gould about how the production team landed on Kim's departure from Jimmy's prison as the show's final image.
"I spent a lot of time trying to decide whether to end in the interview room scene, with the two of them leaning against the wall, or to end with her leaving the prison," Gould said. "It felt incomplete to me to leave them against the wall. For one thing, it felt like maybe there was more story there in a weird way. And it felt more honest to have her leave the prison because, of course, she does have to leave. But whether she'll be back or not is for the audience to decide."
Gould also mentioned that at one point Kim was going to replicate the finger gun gesture Jimmy makes as she departs, but this idea was nixed due to the erroneous impression it might give that Kim would return to scamming.
In a similar Vanity Fair interview, Gould also happened to mention that the show's staff came up with the idea for Jimmy's imprisonment during Season 4. How Kim would factor into that storyline took them even longer to figure out. Landing on a series ending that felt right, then, seems to have been an ongoing process that lasted late into the production of "Better Call Saul."