Better Call Saul Is Back for Season 3

Gus Fring's origin story is explored as Breaking Bad's biggest villain makes his long-awaited debut on Better Call Saul

Gus Fring’s origin story is explored as Breaking Bad’s biggest villain makes his long-awaited debut

Season Premiere: Monday, April 10, 7 p.m., 9:12 p.m. & 12:36 a.m., AMC

While the Saul Goodman origin story has long ago transcended its reputation as merely a spinoff series to Breaking Bad, the No. 1 question on every fan’s mind is: When will we see more familiar faces?

In the third season of Better Call Saul, those who have waited for a BB cameo with bated breath will finally be rewarded with one of their favourite characters. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome the one and only Gustavo Fring, who returns as a restaurant franchise owner moving more than chicken wings for profit.

Though actor Giancarlo Esposito would have loved an opportunity to explore his character’s background in a spinoff of his own, he couldn’t resist creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s plea for his return. “Once Vince called me, I was very clear that I loved being with this family of filmmakers,” says the actor. “I am so honoured to be asked to come back and recreate this character.”

Just like with Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) and Mike (Jonathan Banks) the challenge, as well as the appeal, was figuring out where we would find Fring physically as well as emotionally six years before we initially met him. “I had to remind myself, coming back, that we were at a time where he is a little more immature than where we left off,” says Esposito. “He’s still finding his way to the businessman that he is, and finding his way to where he was at with the cartel.”

Fring’s surprise return was almost ruined when some rabid fans visiting Albuquerque on a Breaking Bad tour crashed a location scout that Gilligan and his crew were doing at Los Pollos Hermanos. “We were at this location, trying to figure out how to shoot this thing, and then suddenly I look out the window and I see this Winnebago, this ’83 beige Bounder, pull up in the driveway and my honest first thought was, ‘Isn’t that funny? That’s like the one we used for Breaking Bad‘,” says Gilligan. “It’s this tour and everybody is pouring out of this RV, to go inside. Luckily, there is a back door to this place, and no one even knew we were there.”

But the introduction of Gus Fring isn’t the only thing threatening to make Jimmy’ s life complicated. Last we saw the lawyer, he confessed to his brother Chuck (Michael McKean) that he had sabotaged his case in order to transfer it to his girlfriend Kim (Rhea Seehorn). Unbeknownst to Jimmy, Chuck recorded the conversation, which doesn’t bode well for our protagonist, but may push Odenkirk’s character towards his ultimate destiny. “When you think about what Kim has to do with [Jimmy becoming Saul], I wonder how he doesn’t have someone like Kim in his life anymore,” ponders Odenkirk. “Because I don’t think Saul has anyone in his life who he’s trying to be good for, or be a great, better person for.”

The audience knows that Kim is not a visible part of Saul’s life once he transitions into the Breaking Bad universe, but to Seehorn, that does not necessarily mean that Kim is entirely absent from Jimmy/Saul’s life. “Where is she during that time? I don’t know. Is she not brought up pointedly instead of being absent? I don’t know,” says the actress. “I am a fan of the show, and it’s as riveting to me to watch people hurtle towards a destiny that I know—but still fight—and wonder how they’ll get there. The not knowing, it’s fun as an actor too.”

For the creators of the show, Jimmy’s journey—despite their awareness of where that journey ends—has been a complicated one. “I think, quite frankly, we thought it was going to be easier to write when we started,” says Gilligan. Adds Gould, “It was sort of a puzzle in some ways: How does a guy who is so decent, who’s doing things out of love, become Saul Goodman? For the first two seasons, I think it seems almost an insoluble problem. But I have to say, this season, as it progressed, I started to understand it a little bit better.”

What has brought a surprising amount of joy to the writing process are the creators’ experiments with structure. “I think one of the privileges we give ourselves is moving back and forth in time,” says Gould. “One of the things that’s fascinating about this is we always talk about it as a prequel to Breaking Bad, but in some ways, it’s also a sequel to Breaking Bad, so who knows what we’re going to see.”

Trying to keep the lives of these characters straight is something that occupies the viewers and writers alike, but the one person who is not trying to figure out the future of Jimmy McGill is Odenkirk. “The job is to be present in the moment and not think about where you end up, and not do some version of what’s to come, but rather just experience the moment that [the writers] have put us in, and feel the presence of that moment. I don’t read ahead, and I don’t learn about what’s to come. These guys offered me long ago to look at the outlines of what’s to come, and I don’t. I’ve never looked at them. Listen, it’s been the great joy to just exist in the moment. It’s been a delight.”