The world of Breaking Bad gave fans refuge for a long time from the acres of bad television that occupied the contemporary atmosphere. When it ended, the desert druglords left behind a legacy to be carried on by Saul Goodman through Better Call Saul. Together, the two series forever revolutionized television drama.
It wasn’t simply Vince Gilligan’s originality that made the series so radically brilliant. Both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul seized our attention and held our imaginations captive despite being heavily grounded, gritty, and closely bound to reality.
It doesn’t come as a surprise that Gilligan wanted to take his artistic creativity a step further and make the two worlds of Heisenberg and Saul Goodman clash in a wild crossover episode.
Vince Gilligan Fulfills His Long-Term Fantasy
Despite being the creator of one of the most treasured and celebrated television projects in recent pop culture history, Vince Gilligan had yet to be satisfied by the worlds that he created. When Better Call Saul took over from Breaking Bad, Gilligan finally knew what had been missing all along.
Director Thomas Schnauz who has been the guiding force behind many a brilliant episode across both eras of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul was tasked with directing an episode of Season 6 that would go on to make history for a completely understandable reason. This was the episode where the world of Breaking Bad finally merged with Better Call Saul, giving the fans an unforgettable treat before ending in tragedy.
In an interview with AwardsRadar, the writer-director Thomas Schnauz of Season 6 Episode 11 titled Breaking Bad recalled how it came into being:
That was our long-term fantasy that we were going to tie these worlds together. In Breaking Bad, Saul was on his knees screaming, ‘It wasn’t me, it was Ignacio.’ We never had a specific way but it all kind of came together in this episode [of Better Call Saul] – that this was the time and the place to do it – to bring back Walt and Jesse and show that moment again where he’s kneeling over that empty grave thinking he’s gonna die…
The responsibility of making Gilligan’s fantasy come true fell on the shoulders of Thomas Schnauz, who went above and beyond in crafting one of the best episodes of visual and emotional storytelling seen across 15 years of television of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul combined.
Better Call Saul Proves To Be a Worthy Successor
In the occupational line of work that often lands one behind bars or in the grave, Breaking Bad presented a world that was littered with fascinating danger and the allure of criminality. The series became so influential in fact that Albuquerque, New Mexico rose to the occasion and erected two bronze statues of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman in honor of the drug lords born out of fiction.
In an era of cross-border drug wars and an urgent crisis on the rise, Better Call Saul proved to be a worthy successor to such a show that made idols out of druglords – an irony that is laughable and almost too absurd to endure. Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn’s Better Call Saul was an experience that completed Breaking Bad, and the audience wouldn’t have had it any other way.
However, enough time has now passed after the saga of Saul Goodman ended on a positively devastating note. It is time for Vince Gilligan to wake up his creative instincts and spin a good old-fashioned tale of a spin-off character from the worlds of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Giancarlo Esposito’s Gus Fring, for one, comes to mind.
Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are available to stream on Netflix.
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