The Questionable Morality of Nacho Varga (Better Call Saul)

nacho Varga he's a bad guy he's a very bad guy but is he really it depends on your criteria Better Call Saul alongside Breaking Bad explores the moral ambiguity of its characters in almost every decision they make there's an argument that it was the right thing to do either in self-defense or because the other character's life is worthless due to the moral crimes they've committed but then there are certain actions and decisions that truly tip the balance over from relatively good to morally irredeemable most people have no problem saying Gus fraying the salamancas or Walter White are reprehensible but then characters like Mike or Jimmy are more sympathetic we wouldn't say they're good but we do see some good in them and despite Jesse being a murderer and Thief people will still intuitively feel he's a good person who just got caught up with the wrong people and was forced to make decisions that he would never normally make but the entire test of morality isn't meant to be easy it's meant to interrupt practicality and require sacrifice in order to preserve it like when Jesse stood up to Gus against using kids to Peddle their product at that moment Jesse whether he realized it or not was deciding that this moral crime was worth his life but then what about the tragic case of Nacho Varga certain characters like Jimmy and even nashos on Father Manuel view him as a bad guy because of who he Associates with and what he does he has characters like Mike see something different someone sympathetic that's trying to do the right thing so let's examine whether or not Ignacio nacho Varga is a good person starting with the main excuses for his bad behavior and then we can look back at each individual action to determine whether it redeems his questionable ethics [Music] the first factor is that nacho doesn't believe he has a choice that he's suffering from the painful reality that once you're in you can't get out am I getting into anything I'm in it I've got no choice while his father consistently orders him to go to the police and rot out the cartel nacho knows that this will result not just in his death but his father's and maybe his entire family this is what he believes will happen but he does still have a choice he's just choosing to Value his life and or his father's life over the potential harm he perpetuates by participating in a life of crime but knowing that nacho wants to get out and that all of his actions are centered around him trying to get out Alters the complexion of his decisions as a huge component of morality his intention if he was someone that took joy in his position and just wanted more money and power no matter the cost then he would seem like a much worse person however it's worth asking if he was still committing the same crimes at the same rate do his intentions make any difference the whole point of morality is that it's about judging what you actually did not necessarily accounting for what you felt or thought about it before or after this leads directly into the second Factor self-defense nacho views his decision to continue to play ball as an act of self-defense and to protect his family generally speaking self-defense is Justified in a case of you versus your attacker in a life and death situation that has been forced upon you your will to survive takes precedence over the attacker's will to take your life or physically harm you but can self-defense indirectly apply to you harming other people that are not attacking you just because there's an overhanging threat that you might be killed if you don't for instance is it morally acceptable to punch someone because if you don't someone else will kill you what about if they just might kill you you can also extrapolate that out to is it morally okay to punch two or three people to avoid being killed and at what point is it no longer worth it from an individual perspective and a societal perspective how about killing one other innocent person to save yourself or save a family member these lines of thinking are comparable to fill up a foot's philosophical theory of the Train on the railroad tracks if a train is heading down a track no matter what and on one track there is one innocent person and on the other track there are five innocent people ninety percent of people will choose to send the train down the track with one person on it to save five people so it's all about harm minimization but is that what nacho does more on that later and the third excuse for Nacho's behavior is that the people he's harming are morally worse than him this is a very common line of thinking that when it comes to valuing a human life we tend to look at the character of the individual and how much they have personally valued the lives of others the more damage someone does to their fellow man the less Alliance they have to the human race and therefore they deserve to die over someone that has treated everyone with respect and kindness then we enter a more morally gray area when it comes to the people that are in the game once you have chosen this life you know the rules and are now at risk of bad things happening to you the problem is that this is in direct contradiction to the first excuse of not having a choice as it suggests once you make one mistake of getting involved with the wrong people then your life is indefinitely worth less but if it is just about how much harm you've caused in your position then we must remember that nacho has worked side by side with tuko since he was a teenager and has risen the ranks to the point that he has underlings to support him so that suggests he's killed many people before to earn that level of fear and respect not to mention the assaults theft and distribution of harmful narcotics so if we were being consistent we would have to conclude that his life is worth just as little if not even less than most other people in the game as in this business the higher you rise the more morally corrupt you need to be [Music] now let's take a quick look through Nacho's behavior from the beginning of the series to determine whether or not he's on balance a good person the first time we meet nacho is in the desert with tuko he's the one to assist by bringing tuko the toolbox to start torturing Jimmy and the roller skaters unsurprisingly that is bad however nacho is the one to figure out the truth that Jimmy is just a lawyer and using the argument that killing a lawyer could be bad for business he recommends that tuko cuts him loose so from the beginning we can see that his goal is to avoid harming innocent people which is good however although nacho is not seen committing any of the physical violence he appears to be fine with watching tuko Breaking the roller skater's legs without a single objection even though we know tuko does listen to him so although he's a Force for good in this scene he also enables bad later in that same episode nacho asks Jimmy for information about the kettlemans because he wants to steal the one and a half million dollars from their home he says he loves ripping off thieves because they have no recourse as they can't go to the cops but the Cattlemens have done no direct harm to nacho and his plan of stealing the money is entirely for self-gain they might be criminals but so is he and although that makes it feel like a wash this is purely a bad action as he's not planning to give the money back to its rightful owners foreign we then see that nacho is happy to personally use threats to get what he wants regularly threatening Jimmy's life if he rats him out now of course threats are not action but intimidation is a form of force so they count as bad then nacho starts betraying the cartel to make some extra money on the side this has nothing to do with getting out of the game it's just about making money then once he sees that Daniel is no longer protected by Mike and is likely to get caught by the police he yet again chooses to rip off a thief by robbing his home and stealing his father's baseball cards this makes nacho an opportunist who doesn't value anyone but himself which is bad he sniffs out weakness and preys on it just like the rest of the cartel but he also now does it to people that have helped him it's only when Mike shows up and threatens to tell tuko about his side business that he gives back the baseball cards but in exchange for Daniel's vehicle so they can take it to the Chop Shop so he still profited from his bad behavior does Daniel deserve to be robbed for being a criminal no more than the kettlemans and by the same logic no less the nacho deserves to be killed or robbed next nacho wants to hire Mike to kill tuko as he claims tuko is a loose cannon now that he's using again and that he could turn on him any day especially if he finds out about his co-curricular activities when Mike finds a way to avoid killing tuko nacho is surprised and thinks all of this was a lot of work to not pull the trigger and do the world a favor could have gotten twice as much for one tenth the hassle he would have done the world of favor just saying you went a long way to not pulling that trigger this quote alone suggests that nacho has killed many people in the past as he minimizes the morality of murder but it does raise the question is it okay to kill someone that you suspect might kill you one day for instance if Daniel felt so scared that he wanted to hire someone to kill nacho would he be equally as Justified and is it not contradictory that his reasoning is that he doesn't want to be caught for dealing on the side yet he considered Daniel worthy of punishment for helping him do just that but really nacho is applying a self-defense rationale here tuko was giving him no choice as he can't just leave the cartel or he might become a rat and if he stays he's at risk of being killed if he doesn't play ball so nacho views this as a practical necessity to survive but also a moral action as tuko will inevitably kill more people if he remains alive so you could argue you'd be saving dozens of lives by wiping out just one later when nacho confronts Mike about robbing Hector's trucks he sees that Mike is at risk of getting caught and that may lead back to him as Mike knows too much he's emotional but let's not forget that nacho does reach for his gun here Mike warns him against it and he stops but that instinct was still there this is the same conversation nacho reveals he just helped to bury a Good Samaritan out in the desert which explains why he's more on edge but also reveals he's actively participating in the cover-up if he had followed his Instinct and killed Mike it would still be an indirect form of self-defense that maybe he has to harm someone else to save himself but he would then be killing someone and helping bury an innocent person just to look at it for his own well-being that's bad but even with tukogan the tragedy of Nacho Varga is that he still can't get out of the game now he's promoted to Hector's counter so he sandwiched between the lower level dealers and the Don who makes the decisions it used to be tuko forcing nacho to be in the game but now it's Hector when Crazy 8 is short nacho wants to let him off the hook and pay next week which is a good Instinct but once the order comes down from Hector he has to beat him up to teach him a lesson you could say that in a way Hector is really beating him up and nacho is a mere vessel but does that make it okay normally we would say that the person who pulls the trigger is just as if not even more guilty than the person who orders the hit as they're the ones practically doing it so does the same not apply here or is the looming threat of Hector enough to wash everyone else's hands also later when nacho is in Hector's position and Crazy 8 is in his crazy H doesn't have it in him to attack the dealer and nacho has to be the one to do it maybe Crazy 8 isn't big enough or tough enough or he views nacho as a soft touch but he makes a conscious choice to not take violent action whereas nacho does it just to keep up appearances once Hector decides to take over Nacho's father's family business that's too close to the Bone and now nacho decides he needs to wipe out Hector as he knows his father is an honest actor and won't play ball so therefore is at high risk of being killed this decision to murder someone else surprisingly takes a lot of moral boxes he's protecting someone innocent wiping out someone who's committed heinous crimes and giving himself away out of the cartel if he succeeds he does have a choice but he's making the choice to protect the innocent and punish the guilty this should be his way out but instead he's caught by Gus Fring and now has no choice but to do whatever he wants or his father will definitely be murdered he used to just suspect his father could be healed but Gus makes sure it's a known guarantee as much as nacho has done bad things by this stage we can see that he's literally not in control of his own life anymore his choice is either to die and let his father die or do what Gus wants and inform on the salamancas the decision to protect his father requires a huge amount of sacrifice he gets shot in the shoulder and belly so that the salamancas won't suspect him and to earn the twins trust he defends them by risking his life and shooting someone you could say this was self-defense but nacho has now gone out of his way to protect the Salamanca twins he could have just stayed in the car and let nature take its course against two violent murderers but in order to be believable in his informant position he feels he needs to continue to play the part this was a choice but the man he shot was potentially no more guilty or innocent than he is so how many people deserve to die for nacho and his father to live we see this same issue arise again when nacho lets the shooters into Lalo's home and they kill all of his staff most of these people are security so you could argue there in the game although Less in the game than nacho is but the cook and Gardener are innocent individuals and yet nacho enabled their murder to save himself and his father even though he himself Is Not Innocent this is all a moral sacrifice he makes to keep his father safe killing to protect the salamancas almost dying by getting shot and enabling the death of innocent staff members in Lalo's compound yet he's never rewarded for this his father is always looking down on him kicking him out of his home and telling him the only way out is to go to the police not realizing that would lead to him being killed too this makes Nacho's sacrifices even more commendable as he does them all without emotional validation or reward but the actual only way out for nacho is to make the ultimate sacrifice to do and say whatever Gus wants and die and he's willing to do that as long as Mike promises his father is safe he could keep running but this is a choice he makes and it's actually why nacho is a more moral character than anyone else we've seen in the cartel in the Breaking Bad Universe everyone has a story a justification for their actions Waltz would claim he did all of this for his family so they have money when he's gone Mike said the same thing that he knows why he's here that he has people to take care of after he's gone but neither of them ever had to make that sacrifice Walt went out by taking his revenge and Mike went out against his will while trying to escape but nacho stepped up and proved what his real motivation was and what he valued most [Music] he was never the smartest or most effective player in the game he was constantly caught between a rock and a hard place and the more he tried to take the correct actions to get himself out the deeper he was sucked right back in and what's crazy is that if you didn't know better all of Nacho's actions looked like a man who's making a real play for the top dealing on the side trying to wipe out those above him but his actual motivation was always to get out and keep his family safe I'm done I went out actions speak louder than words we are what we do not what we say think or feel it's hard to determine whether nacho Varga was a good person based on all the actions he took and there are so many more crimes he committed that we don't even know about what the cartel really be a better place without him in it no it would still be led by tuko or Hector until Gus found a way to eliminate them it was always an unwinnable battle as soon as one violent boss is taken out they're replaced with someone just as bad or even worse but still as much as he played ball and dished out damage on their behalf in the latter stages of the series Nacho's purpose was always to undermine and destroy the salamancas from the inside and although his father said the only way to redeem himself was to turn himself into the police by the end of his story there's an eerie piece about him regarding his final action as if he finally accepts his fate knowing he tried to do what he could while he could to protect the innocent and punish the guilty but what do you think in the end was nacho Varga redeemed or merely put out of his misery 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 you can't afford that then simply like the video subscribe and leave a comment down below to help the algorithm do its thing

Channel: Just an Observation

Views: 495,512

Keywords: better call saul nacho varga, better call saul nacho morality, nacho morality, morality of nacho, morality of nacho varga, nacho varga michael mando, better call saul philosophy, breaking bad morality, mike, walter white, better call saul, is nacho a good person, nacho varga good person, why nacho is good, why nacho is bad, just an observation, better call saul moral ambiguous, morally ambiguous characters, michael mando, vince gilligan

Id: F87r9p6zHRY

Length: 18min 13sec (1093 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 19 2022