Better Call Saul Finale - What It All Meant (Ending Explained)

[Music] with better call saw now officially coming to a close it's time to take a look back at what it all meant and determine whether this final episode was the ending jimmy mcgill deserved or not the finale written and directed by peter gould is all about regret throughout the episode jimmy proposes the question what would you do if you had a time machine which at its core is about looking back at your life to the key moment that could have changed everything the moment that could have saved you from this fate mike said he would go back to the day he took his first bribe accepting that once you start you can't stop walt says he would go back to the day he let himself get pushed out of gray matter believing if he had been rewarded enough for honest work he never would have had the motivation to begin this in the first place but for jimmy he seems to struggle to find the answer offering up nothing but a petty slip and fall he pulled at 22 that actually hurt his knee which allows walt to conclude that he was always like this so you were always like this but was he throughout the series creators vince gilligan and peter gould highlight how many opportunities jimmy has to turn back to change his ways where you can visibly see him contemplating his next step now that this path has yet again led him to a dead end but which moment truly would have changed everything if he had chosen to run away with him when they were holed up in a hotel fearing for their lives would that have put a stop to it if he rejected the offer to become friends with the cartel if he never changed his name to saul goodman and instead kept the name mcgill so he would subconsciously still have chuck watching over his shoulder if he hadn't taken revenge on chuck by having his malpractice insurance revoked if he had just learned his lesson after chuck manipulated him into breaking and entering if he had just decided that this was enough when he got handed a fresh start working in the mail room at hhm or all the way back to when he was a child and that slimy grifter conned his father out of 10 if he had just never started stealing money out of the tale so he could be a wolf rather than a sheep the black and white sequences that began each season saw jimmy already living in a prison of sorts the joy and colour of life has been sucked out of him always looking over his shoulder the greats the tiles even the blinds all mirror prison bars as he's living like a caged animal and his daily grind at cinnabun mirrors the same labor performed in jail later in the finale whether his assessment was fair or not as he had restrained his brother's potential at every turn chuck had always pinned jimmy as a crook someone who takes shortcuts and breaks the rules that even if he means well he can't help himself and everyone's left picking up the pieces [Music] and that proved true once again that even though he's barely escaped with his life jimmy can't help but start thinking of opportunities and once he gets identified by a former cab driver in albuquerque he could flee and start over somewhere else but hearing it will cost more money gets his creative juices flowing and he constructs a plan that will simultaneously incriminate his identifier and benefit him it will just involve one more risk which is a theme for jimmy he tends to live in the here and now and not view his behavior as a domino effect instead he has this undying faith in his ability to control himself despite there being zero evidence for it this way he can always justify just one more risk one more chance to prove to himself that he's worth more than everyone else thinks that he can outsmart the system that his brother props up so proudly inevitably he cannot successfully pull off a mall heist and stop there he has to keep going as like mike indicated once you do something small it tends to snowball into something bigger sometimes those choices seem small but they put you on the road you think about getting off but eventually you're back on it so he and jeff start a new scam drugging businessmen with impressive financial portfolios and selling their personal information for cash the more crimes you commit and get away with the more you adapt to that as your status quo and suddenly the next step doesn't seem so dangerous anymore as the risk reward ratio becomes more skewed as the stakes get higher his colleague refuses to rob a cancer patient but because jimmy has seen how walter white was still incredibly dangerous and capable despite suffering from lung cancer he refuses to view him as a victim and decides to break into his home himself it's like he wants to prove that he can get one over on walt through this innocent man and once that decision leads to him being trapped we see his darkest impulse to date emerge even though he doesn't have to go through with it in the end jimmy decides he's morally okay with killing to escape if needs be it seems that being around all these murderers and bloodshed has chipped away at his soul and opened a mental door that used to be closed so we see again how one thing leads to another from robbing a shopping mall to potential manslaughter he's no longer just slipping jimmy he's heading towards murdering jimmy as a viewer this is where he becomes morally irredeemable so when he inevitably gets caught in a dumpster like the human garbage he's become it feels right and although he's capable of negotiating his life sentence down to a petty seven years hearing that kim has already confessed everything about howard's death changes things when he called her in the penultimate episode he was shocked to hear her recommend that he turn himself in and now she's personally accepting the consequences of an expensive civil lawsuit heading her way kim is the only person who ever believed that there was true good in jimmy that accepted him for who he was so he looks to her for moral guidance in a way he doesn't look to others this revelation causes him to pretend he has something especially juicy to confess regarding howard's death this way he can get kim in the room and use this as an opportunity to redeem himself in front of her fact is walter white couldn't have done it without me he initially confesses to everything regarding walter white expecting this to earn at least a smirk of support from kim but she gives him nothing she knows that none of that ever meant anything to him personally as that was all done as saul goodman this makes jimmy realize he has to dig deeper and put the full truth out there so it's permanently on the record in the legal transcripts he states that after what happened to howard kim had the guts to leave town but he's the one that ran away meaning that she followed her moral compass and didn't feel she deserved to show her face around town anymore in essence she couldn't live the lie whereas jimmy ran away from his emotions away from his moral compass and lied to himself and others for years just to hide from the truth he even confesses to stripping his brother chuck of his malpractice insurance stealing the only thing he ever loved away from him and thus catalyzing the chain of events that would lead to everyone's demise his lawyer tells him this isn't a crime but jimmy insists that it is because even if it's not on the books he knows deep down it was wrong it was a crime against humanity after failing to answer multiple times these are his real regrets the reason this is a poetic ending to jimmy mcgill's relationship with the law is that he had made a mockery of the court while he performed as a lawyer and chuck had always revered the law as sacred but here he is using it as a chance to morally cleanse himself at his altar finally recognizing its worth and accepting whatever punishment they see fit all of this earns him 86 years in prison instead of seven alongside kim's respect and attention and at least allows jimmy to live with himself throughout the series a lot of emphasis has been put on the value of a name it's an identity something we either cling to hide in or run away from a name has an impact on our character in the first season howard didn't want jimmy to operate under the last name mcgill and jimmy fought tooth and nail for it as he wanted to be associated with his brother's reputation you can't take my name from me but as their sibling rivalry devolved into bitterness jimmy no longer wanted to be linked to chuck's legacy he wanted to start his own doing things his way so he adopted the name saul goodman a name he had used pulling scams with marco which indicates where his head's at he's going to be the slipping jimmy of the legal system but now that jimmy purges himself before the course he feels worthy of the name mcgill mr goodman the name's miguel i'm james mcgill this is what earns back kim's affection as she married jimmy not saul and she divorced saul not jimmy when she was talking to jesse outside saul's office he asked her this guy any good which can be interpreted as either is he any good as a lawyer or is there any good left in him and kim answered when i knew him he was highlighting how there was good in jimmy but none in saul however whether it's in public or in prison he will never escape his legacy assault goodman that's what he is that's what he created that's who he became [Music] whereas walter white went out in a blaze of glory jimmy mcgill now has 86 years to spend in prison contemplating every wrong turn he ever made no time machines forward or back just the rest of his life ticking by one second at a time filled with a long list of regrets so what did you think of better call saul's finale did you want him to get away with it shot by the police or was finally telling the truth the most suitable ending for a serial liar [Music] if you enjoy content like this and want to see more of it please do consider supporting me on patreon as it really does make a difference to how much content i can pump out or if 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Channel: Just an Observation

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Id: 5GRdJr8rTCs

Length: 11min 17sec (677 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 17 2022