Breaking Bad creator spoke during a panel in LA and revealed how fans of the show are at the heart of his creative decisions

Better Call Saul's Vince Gilligan: 'We want to reward the fans'

The creator of Better Call Saul has promised to “reward” fans by staying true to the canon established by Breaking Bad.

“The folks who watch this show … they deserve to be rewarded for their strict attention,” creator Vince Gilligan told an audience at the Cary Grant Theater in Los Angeles, at a panel screening of the penultimate episode on Thursday night.

The Breaking Bad spinoff stars Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy McGill, the loose-with-the-law attorney who eventually transforms into Saul Goodman, an ambulance-chasing criminal lawyer. The prequel series begins six years before Breaking Bad, focusing on the lawyer’s pre-Goodman life in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Has Better Call Saul lived up to expectations? Read more

After a screening of episode nine, Gilligan was joined by co-creator Peter Gould and cast members Odenkirk; Jonathan Banks, who plays Mike Ehrmantraut; Michael McKean, who plays Jimmy’s older, more successful brother Chuck; Rhea Seehorn, who plays Jimmy’s friend Kim Wexler; Patrick Fabian, a partner at Chuck’s prestigious law firm; and Michael Mando, who plays Nacho Varga.

During the panel, Gilligan, who wore a yellow shirt printed with the license plate, “LWYRUP”, said he didn’t know the timetable for Better Call Saul yet. He suggested it could overlap with the Breaking Bad years, or tell more of Jimmy’s life after Walter White.

“Do we spend some time during the period, the epoch, of Breaking Bad? Do we show what happened in between the scenes of Walt and Jesse? Is there more to tell in the Omaha years? These are all questions we do not have answers to yet,” he said.

The opening scene of the series, shot in black and white, shows Jimmy living undercover in Omaha, Nebraska, as a manager at Cinnabon. After his shift, he returns home to drink alone and watch his old lawyer ads.

What’s certain, Gilligan said, is that fans can expect to see their favorite Breaking Bad characters return when the time is right.

Gilligan added: “I think it would be a shame if we get through, knock on wood, a healthy number of seasons of Better Call Saul without seeing those gentlemen or without seeing the wonderful actresses. The trick is to not overdo it. The trick is to not stunt it.”

Like all spinoffs, the show faced a challenge in carving its own identity after the success of Breaking Bad, but it has received positive reviews since its debut in February. Gould said the show has evolved from what he envisioned as a half-hour “out-and-out” comedy into something much richer.

“I did not visualize how deep these actors were going to dig into these characters,” Gould said. “And that raised our game.”

Asked if the show was bound to Breaking Bad, Gilligan said the show is beholden to its fans.

“The fans who pay strict attention, we want to honor them for that. We want reward them for that,” Gilligan said. “We will make mistakes. There’s no doubt about that, but we intend not to. We intend to keep them to as small a number of mistakes as possible.”

Pimento airs in the US on 30 March on AMC and in the UK on Netflix