The Better Call Saul season 5 premiere hints it will be Jimmy McGill who tries to solve Gus’ Lalo problem. After being introduced at the end of season 4, Lalo actor Tony Dalton was promoted to series regular for season 5. That means he will have a larger role this year, giving the rest of the main players headaches to deal with. Season 5 premiere “Magic Man” illustrated Lalo has taken it upon himself to investigate cartel activity, highly suspicious of what went down with Werner Ziegler during last season. Gus is so concerned, he decided to postpone construction on the meth superlab until Lalo is taken care of.
Lalo becoming a fixture on Better Call Saul means fans may finally uncover the mystery behind an amusing bit of Breaking Bad throwaway dialogue. Longtime viewers may recall Lalo was first mentioned in the Breaking Bad episode “Better Call Saul,” during the scene where Walt and Jesse capture Saul and threaten him into taking a bribe. Saul is extremely relieved to learn that his kidnappers were not sent by Lalo, suggesting that something went horribly wrong between those two. With Saul aware of both Lalo and Nacho in Breaking Bad, it looks like he’s going to get deeper into cartel business in season 5, possibly handling some things for Gus.
Normally, Mike is who Gus would go to in a situation like this, but tensions are currently high there. At the end of “Magic Man,” Gus offers to keep Mike on his payroll - even though work on the lab is not being done. Mike rejects what Gus calls “a retainer,” and leaves. It’s evident Mike is still upset about what happened with Werner in season 4; he tried to talk Gus out of killing the construction worker, but to no avail. So, it stands reason to believe Mike won’t be associated with Gus very much this season. It remains to be seen what path he follows, but it seems like Gus is going to have to look elsewhere for a Lalo solution. That could be where Jimmy comes in.
Now assuming the Saul Goodman persona, Jimmy is reinventing himself as a lawyer with a very specific client base. He specializes in the shadiest individuals Albuquerque has to offer, going from selling them burner phones to offering legal services. Jimmy doesn’t know it yet, but keeping that kind of company is bound to land him in some hot water sooner rather than later, and he’ll be crossing paths with the Salamanca cartel. At this point, it’s difficult to say how all the pieces go together, but the foundation is there from the aforementioned Breaking Bad episode. Jimmy knows who Nacho and Gus are when he becomes Walt and Jesse’s “criminal” lawyer, implying Gus (or one of Gus’ employees) went to Jimmy for some help regarding cartel business.
For the better part of its run, Better Call Saul’s Jimmy storyline and cartel storyline have operated independently of each other, so this would be a way to cross the streams in a way that hasn’t been done too often on the show. Mining fresh territory for content has to be exciting for the creative team, which has always found a way to put an intriguing spin on Better Call Saul’s developments. As season 5 continues to unravel in the coming weeks, it’ll be very interesting to keep tabs on this subplot and see how Vince Gilligan and company tie everything together. It feels like this is the year the parallel narratives dovetail.
More: Predicting the Fate of Better Call Saul Characters Who Weren’t On Breaking Bad
