Better Call Saul's Time Jump, Explained: What Year Is It? And How Close Are We To Breaking Bad?
Warning: This post contains spoilers from Monday's Better Call Saul.
Goodbye, Jimmy McGill. Hello, Saul Goodman.
This week's Better Call Saul — after tearing our hearts out with that Kim goodbye scene — ended with a surprise time jump, vaulting us forward to when Jimmy was fully in the fast-talking, flashy suit-wearing Saul Goodman persona we saw in Breaking Bad. (Read our full recap here.) But when was that, exactly? And how soon can we expect to see Walter White and Jesse Pinkman pop up in Saul's life?
We're channeling our inner Mike Ehrmantraut and playing detective here, examining clues not only from this week's flash-forward, but also from previous episodes of Saul and Breaking Bad, to establish a timeline of where we now find ourselves in Saul's story. Oh, and we also put a date to those "Gene in Omaha" flash-forward scenes of Saul's, too, just to bring it all full circle.
So read on to get our best educated guess as to where this latest Better Call Saul time jump leaves us on the calendar, and how far away that is from Saul Goodman's Breaking Bad debut. Spot any clues we missed? Hit the comments and add your evidence to our files.
First, where did we leave off?
We have a pretty good idea of what month and year we left off in Better Call Saul land before the time jump. Remember in the Season 6 midseason finale, "Plan and Execution," when Gus made a donation to charity and held up a big check? We can see the date on the check: June 24, 2004. That lines up with other references throughout Saul that place the series four to six years before the events of Breaking Bad.
That scene with Gus took place not much longer before this week's final scene with Kim and Jimmy, since Gus went into hiding right after that, and then Lalo showed up at Jimmy and Kim's condo when Howard was there... and we all know what happened next. So allowing a few days for Howard's death and memorial, followed by Kim quitting the bar and moving out, let's put that final goodbye between Jimmy and Kim on or around July 1, 2004.
Where did we jump to?
Right after we heard the heartbreaking sound of Kim taping up moving boxes, we cut right to Saul waking up in bed with a strange woman and launching into another day of ethically ambiguous lawyering. He looks like the Saul Goodman we recognize from Breaking Bad: He's driving the white Cadillac with the "LWYRUP" plates, and his hairline has receded significantly, so clearly some time has passed. But how much?
Out first concrete clue comes when we take a closer look at that "LWYRUP" license plate: It has a registration sticker that expires in November 2005, which would put the time jump at about a year, give or take a few months. (It's possible Saul just bought the Caddy, and it's still late 2004, but let's say mid-2005 for now.) That's not our only clue, though...
But wait, there's more!
When Saul pulls into the parking lot outside his law office, he hastily sticks a handicapped placard on his rearview mirror — and we can see the placard expires on November 20, 2008. So now if you can accept that Saul Goodman might be driving around on expired tags, that could put this scene sometime in 2008, a full four years after we left the Better Call Saul timeline and much closer to Saul's debut on Breaking Bad. (More on that in a moment.)
Ah, but there's a twist: The state of New Mexico issues handicapped placards that expire four years after they're issued, matching the timing of a driver's license renewal. That means Saul could've gotten his way back in 2004, for all we know. (They also issue temporary placards that expire a year later — but let's not get too far into the weeds of New Mexico parking regulations, shall we?)
So assuming that Saul doesn't want to get pulled over for a lapsed registration, our best guess places this flash-forward scene somewhere in mid to late 2005.
When does Saul enter Breaking Bad?
Better Call Saul, of course, is a prequel to Breaking Bad, which took place around the time that it originally aired, premiering on AMC in 2008. Saul Goodman made his debut in Season 2's eighth episode, aptly titled "Better Call Saul," as the attorney of Walt and Jesse's meth dealer Badger. This episode takes place sometime in late 2008, and it's supposedly the first time Saul ever met Walt and Jesse. But we know that Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul are set to reprise their roles as Walt and Jesse in Saul's final episodes. So will they somehow cross paths with Saul Goodman back in 2005, three years before they first "meet" him? Or will we simply get another time jump to 2008?
Finally, what about Gene in Omaha?
No, we haven't forgotten about him: Each season of Saul, prior to this one, has kicked off with a black-and-white flash-forward to Jimmy/Saul's post-Breaking Bad life as "Gene," a humble Cinnabon manager living in Omaha. (Check out our full rundown of every Gene scene here.) So where does that fit on the timeline? We got an answer in Season 5 when a panicked Gene, fearing he'd been discovered, switched out his license plate from a Nebraska plate to a Missouri one, and we could see the year on the plate's registration sticker: 2012. That would place those scenes about a year or so after the end of Breaking Bad, when Saul arranged to have his identity wiped and reinvented himself as "Gene."
We haven't seen Gene in Season 6 at all yet, though — and we know we'll see him again sometime in the final episodes. Is it possible that we see "Gene" reunite with Kim, years down the road? We'll find out soon enough: Better Call Saul has just four more episodes left, airing Mondays at 9/8c on AMC, leading up to the Aug. 15 series finale.