Better Call Saul finale ending explained

The end of season 6 almost caught up with the events of Breaking Bad, as justice was finally served to Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman/Gene Takovic.

As the dust settles over the finale, here's everything you need to know about Better Call Saul's season 6 ending.

Better Call Saul finale ending explained

The very first thing we see during the finale takes us back to a key moment from season 5 of Better Call Saul – when Jimmy and Mike Ehrmantraut found themselves alone in the desert after having collected $7 million for Lalo Salamanca's bail fund. During a surprisingly intimate conversation about what they'd do with the money if they had a time machine, Jimmy confesses in no uncertain terms that only one thing has ever mattered to him: money.

Following the opening sting, we then jump ahead to where we left things at the end of the penultimate episode, as Jimmy aims to flee from the authorities after he was reported by Marion. He doesn't make it very far, though, before he is found in a dumpster bin – a fitting place for him to be discovered, as Marie Schrader later puts it.

Speaking of Marie (the widow of Breaking Bad character Hank and sister-in-law of Walter White, if you need a reminder), she is one of many familiar faces to appear during the episode. This comes when Jimmy is hearing from lawyers just how bad his sentence stands to be for all the various crimes he has committed – life plus 190 years.

Anyway, at this point, Jimmy puts one of his old tricks into practice, very convincingly delivering an emotional monologue that paints himself as just as much of a victim as Marie in all this. The prosecution lawyers don't buy it, but as Jimmy says, it just takes one of the jury members to be convinced for him to get away, which puts him in a good position to land a plea bargain. And so the lawyer reluctantly agrees – Jimmy will only be sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, a very light sentence compared to what could have been on offer.

At this point, however, Jimmy slightly overplays his hand by bringing up Howard Hamlin while he is trying to add a clause that will see him provided with ice cream every week of his sentence. Believing he is giving them new information about Howard's death that can act as a sweetener, he is told what we already knew: that Kim has already reported the circumstances of the murder. At this point – at the mention of Kim – we see Saul look genuinely broken for the first time in the episode.

The timeline then shifts again, reuniting us one last time with Bryan Cranston's Walter White, with he and Saul sharing a conversation about time machines and regrets. Unsurprisingly, Walter tells the story of Gray Matter – the firm he had set up with his friends – as his biggest regret, but Saul's own choice is rather less exciting. He simply tells the story of a scheme he pulled when he was 22 that resulted in him hurting his knee.

Back in the post-Breaking Bad timeline, Saul is extradited back to Albuquerque where his sentencing hearing will take place. Kim turns up to watch the hearing after she is told of his arrest by Suzanne Ericsen, who also reveals to her that Saul is planning on giving a testimony that will personally affect her, specifically relating to the Howard Hamlin case.

During the trial, Saul gets up to tell his previously rehearsed sob story – only for him to very quickly go off script. Perhaps because he's glimpsed Kim there, his conscience finally seems to get the better of him, and, against the advice of Bill Oakley who has been serving as his legal adviser, he admits to his role in everything, explaining that "Walter White couldn’t have done it without me."

He also brings up Howard Hamlin and admits that he was to blame for what happened, not Kim, even crediting his former partner for choosing to start her life over rather than doubling down as he had done. And in one final admission, he takes responsibility for what happened to Chuck, saying he "saw a chance to hurt him" and took it, essentially stating that he was to blame for driving him to suicide. Naturally, given this confession, the previously agreed seven and a half year sentence is off the table and it looks like he's set to be given the maximum sentence.

After another brief flashback – this time focusing on an exchange between Jimmy and Chuck – we see Jimmy being taken away in a prison van to start his sentence. During the trial, he had originally asked to be referred to as Saul Goodman before deciding to revert to Jimmy McGill after his confession, but on the bus several of the prisoners recognise him as the man from those iconic Saul Goodman commercials and start chanting his name as they arrive at the prison.

Because of his past life helping crooks, Jimmy appears to be popular among the other inmates, and he is seen baking bread at the prison where he looks set to live out the rest of his days. Towards the end of the episode, he is told he has a visit from his lawyer, only to discover that it is actually Kim who has come to see him. They share a cigarette just like old days and she explains her admiration for how he'd initially managed to get his sentence down to seven and a half years. As she leaves, they share one final glance, before Jimmy does his characteristic finger guns gesture.

These final scenes – along with the fact that it was seeing Kim in the courthouse that drove him to finally admit to his wrongdoing – make it clear that despite all his talk about money being the only thing that matters to him and his reluctance to admit to any real regrets, Kim has always been the most important thing for him. She was the catalyst for every change Jimmy went through: her decision to leave him was what fully turned him into Saul in the first place, and her reappearance at the courthouse allowed him to finally have a moment of introspection and revert back to Jimmy.

Better Call Saul is available on Netflix in the UK and AMC in the US. Check out the best Netflix series and best Netflix movies to keep you entertained, or visit our TV guide for more to watch.

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