Better Call Saul Season 6

The body count won't stop climbing as 'Better Call Saul' returns for its final six episodes — read our recap of Season 6, Episode 8.

He lets out a final laugh before he dies, and Gus pulls the bullet out of his body armor and tosses it at him. He also stares down at the bodies in the hole, his face twisted with conflict and regret, as the crane covers them up with dirt again. While he goes off on a long rant insulting Don Eladio and the Salamancas, we see a gun hidden nearby — and suddenly, Gus triggers a blackout and grabs the gun while Lalo shoots wildly into the darkness. She gets to Gus’ and pulls the gun out of the glove compartment, walking up to the door and ringing the bell… Gus wants to talk to Kim, and she tells him Lalo tried to send Jimmy, but Jimmy talked him out of it. After a cryptic opening that features a shoe washing up on a beach with footprints leading to Howard’s car parked in the sand, Monday’s premiere picks up right where we left off, with a shocked and terrified Jimmy and Kim standing over Howard’s dead body as Lalo points a gun at them.

'Better Call Saul' Season 6 episode 8 reveals just how Tony Dalton's Lalo Salamanca character ends up in 'Breaking Bad.'

Tony Dalton's name never appears in the credits of any Breaking Bad episode and his poisonous mustached grin never appears in any scene in the series. Before the end of Lalo's final episode, Mike decides to kill two birds with one forklift by burying both Lalo and Howard in the same grave dug out at the construction site. As much as Lalo wanted to kill the man who sent mercenaries into his home to assassinate him, he returned to Albuquerque to get proof of Gus's treachery first, revenge after. That sets the stage for Lalo to finally begin putting his pawns in motion for a climatic end to his cerebral chess match with a justifiably paranoid Gus. The end result may have been predictable, but the Breaking Bad twist was one no one could've predicted. Outside of Saul's wife and smarter better half Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), no other Better Call Saul character has generated as much fanfare as the Mexican mustached menace Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton). And after last night's episode, we finally find out how he makes it into the Breaking Bad timeline in the most unexpected manner. Better Call Saul's time is coming to an end, and that means its timeline inches closer to the Breaking Bad timeline we all know and love.

"Point And Shoot” is a thrilling lead-up to the beloved series' finale.

- And the man most frustratingly denied an Emmy for his Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul work, Jonathan Banks (who has been nominated five times for those shows), gave a typically outstanding performance as Mike ran the three-ring circus of trying to protect Gus while also dealing with some guilt about Jimmy and Kim (and Howard). Mike had pulled the Lalo watch detail off Kim and Jimmy’s apartment, something she screamed at him about when she was at Gus’ compound. Then he got to the McGills’ apartment, saw Howard, and quickly pieced together what must have happened to him. Let’s end with a shoutout that brings us back to the beginning: Gordon Smith, the former Vince Gilligan assistant who created the Lalo character and wrote classic Saul eps like “Five-O,” “Chicanery,” and “Bagman,” as well as this one, does a fine job of driving home the tragedy and randomness of Howard’s death. When he looks at her and begs her to be the one to make the kill, he really just wants her to leave their home, to get away from Lalo and the gun he’s holding on them. Maybe he thinks that to save him, she’ll make it to the house and commit that unforgivable assignment. Gus felt free to spit his tirade at the camera (he addressed Eladio as “you greasy, bloated pimp”), sure he was going to kill Lalo or die himself if he didn’t. Lalo, meanwhile, was just as certain he would emerge victorious from the lab, video in hand. But the look in his eyes when he peers into hers, desperately asking her to go, says that he thinks there’s a good chance he’s saying goodbye to her forever—and that he’s at peace with that decision. And he had, in true Lalo style, a simple, cleverly crafted plan to get it: He would hold Kim hostage, while Jimmy was sent off in his car, with a gun and a camera in the glove box. Home, and the recent events it hosted, is never going to feel like home again. He pleads for Lalo’s sign-off to send Kim on the task and for Kim’s agreement to go and save her life—or at least have the chance to. Jimmy was to knock on Gus’ door, and when he answered it, Jimmy was to unload the gun at Gus and take a photo of his dead body. Jimmy flips the deal around, though, and convinces Lalo to hold him in the apartment with Howard’s dead body, while Kim is given the assignment to go murder a stranger and make it back with photographic evidence within 60 minutes.

The midseason premiere of 'Better Call Saul' season 6 sees the death of one of the series' biggest bads. Read EW's recap.

And while Mike says only one word — a cautionary "easy" — as Howard goes in the ground, the look on his face is almost as good as a eulogy. Can Lalo Salamanca, this series' most terrifying monster, really die down here in the dark, a victim as much of his own hubris as of Gus' relentless quest for revenge?! As we know (and Lalo undoubtedly does, too), there's no way Gus Fring would answer his own door to a would-be assassin in the middle of the night. Blood is still flowing from the bullet hole in Howard's head, and Lalo is telling Jimmy and Kim ( Rhea Seehorn) that they have to focus — which they do, but it's worth noting that Jimmy rises to this occasion in a way that Kim does not. He underestimated Lalo. And every death tonight, beginning (but by no means ending) with Howard, is a death that might have been avoided. "It never happened," Kim echoes back, but her voice is hollow, and I have a feeling that this is the end. And this is exactly what happens, but not before Kim absolutely lights up Mike Ehrmentraut ( Jonathan Banks) for his (admittedly atypical) lapse in vigilance. Her job, her real job, is not to kill Gus Fring. It's to get caught trying, so that Gus realizes — too late — that he's left the laundry and its secret underground meth lab-in-progress undefended. Jimmy will get in Lalo's car, drive to Gus Fring's ( Giancarlo Esposito) house, and use the gun in the glovebox to shoot whomever answers the door. Pro tip, guys: If Lalo Salamanca agrees to a change of plans, then that plan was never really the plan. Lalo explains what will happen next: Kim will stay with Lalo at the condo. And now, this: A shoe, abandoned on the beach, gently rolling around in the surf beneath a golden, hazy California sky.

An already grim ending gets a Vince Gilligan-directed reminder that this is a world where victories are small and the pain lasts longer.

One of the things helping “Point and Shoot” is that Mike is fully activated. In a wave of no-win outcomes likely yet to come, it’s hard to imagine there’ll be many more easy chances to find humanity in the carnage. This one closes with the people brought in to clean up the mess. After how many times her character has referenced guns over the series to date (not to mention wielding ones of the finger variety), there’s a gravity in that realization that’s almost as impactful as her seeing a body fall to the floor on the rug next to her sofa. The guy who tried to kill his boss gets summarily tossed in, while the guy who had no idea what he was involved in gets a gentler toss. As Howard and Lalo get loaded into a dual grave underneath the floor of what will one day be an operational meth lab (Gus’ four bodyguards that Lalo shot in the back presumably get a less-dignified resting place), Mike makes the only distinction he can. Those extra beats to consider a weapon or a zip tie or a madman thirsting for payback are part of the magic of “Better Call Saul,” and it’s unsurprising to see director Vince Gilligan take full advantage of them here. Without knowing what Kim is capable of in other circumstances, Gus recognizes that it would have taken a leverage-less Jimmy a lot more than a simple argument to convince someone that strong-willed to change his plan. On the other hand, Gus adjusting his shirt and jacket, so as to face his own potential execution with dignity, may have been what helped buy himself enough time to distract Lalo and his camcorder. Of course, Kim’s assignment to hunt down Gus (or whoever else opens the door to the Fortress of Fringitude) is a textbook Lalo (and by extension “Better Call Saul”) misdirect, designed to draw The Chicken Man out of hiding. Take the late Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian), who’s only represented by a few of his personal items in the (unsurprisingly poetic) cold open. They look at marked men going rogue from a strictly outlined plan in order to have the freedom to go out on their own terms.

In a screw-turning season 6 part B opening, we've returned to Saul and Kim's (Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn) apartment following Lalo's murder of Howard ( ...

In regards to whether Dalton knew Lalo’s fate was imminent, he told the crowd at Manhattan’s BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, “Pete, and Vince (Gilligan) called me and they told me before we even started (filming) – they said this episode is going to be the last one that you do. Mike and a set of guys head to Saul’s apartment to rescue him, while Gus and another group of guys head to the laundry warehouse which is the front for his meth lab bunker. He chose this life and I don’t think he feels terrible about it. Essentially, Kim and Saul need to “keep telling the lie you’ve been telling.” “You’re the last people to see him alive,” Mike reminds them. And I was like, you guys are killing me in eight? “That is the story you were setting him up for?” Mike wisely asks the couple. He reaches for a gun he has hiding and ‘points and shoots’ till the gun is empty. Gus is confronted there by Lalo who shoots all of his guys, and fires into Gus’ chest (he has a bulletproof vest). Lalo then has Gus take him below. Kim tells Mike what she was instructed to do; however she points to a guy who looks a lot like Gus’ double. There’s a cell phone and a gun Lalo has left for him. Saul has to go and murder someone for him.