For a show billed as a spinoff, AMC's Better Call Saul has been reluctant to offer too many overt ties to its popular parent series, Breaking Bad — at least in its first season and a half. Although Saul revolves around the origin stories of sleazy lawyer Saul Goodman (née Jimmy McGill) and his grizzled fixer Mike Ehrmantraut, its connections to BB are otherwise tenuous at best. 15 episodes in, and you can count on one hand the number of BB characters other than Jimmy and Mike that have made an appearance on BCS. But are other Breaking Bad characters coming to Better Call Saul Season 2?
Unstable drug lord Tuco Salamanca was one of the spinoff's direct connections to BB in Season 1. The man who terrorized Walter White and Jesse Pinkman throughout the first two seasons of that show returned this year… and brought another memorable BB character with him: his "tío," Hector Salamanca, in the days before his debilitating stroke. But where are Walt and Jesse? For that matter, where are Skylar, Hank, Marie? Will we ever see them on BCS?
Maybe — but not anytime soon, according to creator Vince Gilligan, who told the New York Daily News that he'd love to see the Man Who Would Be Heisenberg make a cameo towards the end of what is "hopefully a very long run" for Better Call Saul in a way that is "most organic and fitting to the storytelling."
While we all await the arrival of Walt and his porkpie hat, here are a handful of minor Breaking Bad characters who could conceivably drop by Better Call Saul in the meantime:
Badger
Jesse's perpetually stoned friend Brandon "Badger" Mayhew was the lovable comedic relief of BCS' parent series. Although he and the-lawyer-formerly-known-as-Jimmy-McGill never crossed paths before the events of BB (when Saul was hired to defend the busted dealer) that's not to say he couldn't have interacted with Mike, or other non-BB characters like Kim or Chuck.
The Cousins
Now that Tuco and Hector Salamanca have both popped up on BCS, surely it's only a matter of time until Tuco's cousins, the terrifying twins Leonel and Marco, drop by as well. The silent hitmen were introduced on BB as unstoppable villains virtually ripped from a horror movie… until Hank put an end to their reign of terror. But they must have been around protecting the Salamanca empire for years before that fateful encounter with the DEA agent in the parking lot.
Emilio
Emilio Koyama was BB's very first antagonist, Jesse's former partner in meth-making who winds up killed by Walt's phosphine gas and has his corpse dissolved by acid in a bathtub early in Season 1. So why is it likely that this minor baddie will guest star on BCS at some point? Because he's the whole reason Walt and Jesse meet the lawyer in the first place, after Jesse told Walt that Saul Goodman had represented Emilio on a couple of occasions. This forgotten character may actually wind of being the connective tissue between the two shows. (We've also already seen his cousin, Krazy 8, delivering cash to Tuco before Mike showed up a couple of episodes ago.)
Francesca
Depending on how long it takes Jimmy to complete his transformation into "Saul Goodman," it may take longer than Season 2 for Francesca to show up; but once he set up shop under his pseudonym, it's inevitable that we'll see his take-no-guff secretary as well.
Gus Fring
Until the moment when (if?) Walt or Jesse stop by BCS, Gustavo Fring — BB's most memorable villain — is probably the biggest character from that series viewers can reasonably expect to make a surprise appearance on the spinoff. It's unclear how much Gus and Saul knew each other before the events of BB; Saul sets up the first meet between his clients and the Pollos Hermanos proprietor through "a guy who knows a guy who knows another guy." But one of those guys in that chain is likely to be Mike Ehrmantraut: sometime between the events of BCS and BB, the fixer winds up working as head of corporate security at Pollos Hermanos… and as Gus' personal enforcer.
Huell
Saul didn't officially hire Huell Babineaux as his bodyguard until Season 4 of BB, so don't expect to see too much of the hulking softie on the spinoff; but that doesn't mean the characters could never have crossed paths before. Perhaps Saul knew to hire Huell as a bodyguard precisely because they'd worked together once before. You never now.
Kuby
If we ever do see Huell on BCS, then it's hard to imagine not also catching a glimpse of his fellow bodyguard, Patrick Kuby, the second member of Saul's "A-Team." Maybe it will turn out that Saul knew to hire Kuby through Mike; like the fixer, Kuby is also a former police officer, so it's conceivable that the two characters might have some connection.
Skinny Pete
Just as it's hard to imagine Huell without Kuby, it's equally difficult to imagine BCS making room for Badger without his longtime friend Skinny Pete. It would be a treat to hear their perpetually stoned banter once again.
Ted Beneke
As the owner of a large company, Beneke Fabricators, Skyler's future romantic partner is exactly the kind of person you might expect to see represented by a firm like Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill — and/or Davis & Main — in the event of any litigation. Seeing Jimmy and Ted interact years before the latter would end up with a broken neck thanks to Saul Goodman's A-Team, Huell and Kuby, would be irony at its thickest.
Which of these characters will wind up guest starring on Better Call Saul Season 2? We have five more episodes to find out, starting with this Monday's hour, "Bali Ha'i"… the promo for which teases the appearance of at least one of the characters on this list:
Images: Ursula Coyote (4), Screengrab (4), Cathy Kanavy, Lewis Jacobs/AMC
