‘Better Call Saul’ season 2 finale: Vince Gilligan explains scrapped ‘Breaking Bad’ cameo
Was Gus Fring really going to appear in the “Better Call Saul” finale, only for the writers to change their mind at the last minute? This is a theory that we have been going all-in on for much of the past week, and for a few different reasons. First, there was the comment from Vince Gilligan at PaleyFest that there was a scrapped cameo in the finale from a “Breaking Bad” character. Then, you had the obvious connections between Fring and the cartels. Finally, you had the “Fring’s Back” anagram that was discovered when you rearranged the first letters of all the episode titles this season. That was a fairly intentional move, judging from Gilligan and Peter Gould’s reactions on “Talking Saul” last night.
Yet, even in the face of all of this evidence, it still turns out that our theory wasn’t on the money! That’s why we love this show; they still find a way to surprise us. As Gilligan explained to Entertainment Weekly, it was actually Marie who he at one point wanted to include in the finale:
“We talked about it at length in the writers’ room and I thought it would be a fun idea. Since Chuck was in the hospital and was about to get a CAT scan, I thought it’d be a fun for Hank’s wife, Marie, played by the gorgeous Betsy Brandt to be the one operating the machine, since as we know she’s an X-ray technician. I thought it would be a great and organic opportunity to bring back one of our fundamental Breaking Bad characters, and Peter and the other writers rightly talked me out of it. Not because they don’t love Betsy just as much as I do but it would have distracted the viewer in the moment. It was a big moment in which we wanted to stay squarely inside of Chuck’s head as he goes through the terror and the agony of the scan. If our attention was diverted by Betsy, it would sort of dull the moment as it were, dramatically.”
Gould and the writers are probably correct here, even if it would’ve been fun to see Betsy again. The reality here is that there is still a chance to bring her back at some point in the future, and we still get the sense that the “Fring’s Back” anagram is no coincidence.
(Photo: AMC.)