From the beginning of the show, we were always thinking, “How is this guy different from Saul Goodman? How can we show that?” That’s one of the ways we came up with the idea of Tuco getting ready to kill those skate rats way back in episode two of the show. We thought, Jimmy’s gonna defend them, while Saul wouldn’t—he’d be too worried about his own skin. Ultimately the descent of the character, the change that he makes to become Saul Goodman, is an ethical, moral one.

Vince Gilligan: All of us feel a universal human desire that the universe be a just one. It’s important on this show that actions have consequences, and it was just as important on Breaking Bad. Every now and then it seems like we have no control of the world we live in—but we get to control the characters for whom we write. It’s pleasing for me to have there be karma that kicks in, an ultimate justice, because I don’t know if we have that in real life.

Gould: In reality people are often victims of circumstances. On this show and on Breaking Bad, the fault is not in the circumstances but in the characters, and that’s something that didn't become clear to me on Breaking Bad until midway through the first season. When we started working on the show, I thought it was about a character who was a victim, a school teacher who got cancer and as a result went to these great lengths to take care of his family.

Then in one of the relatively early episodes, he has the opportunity to take money from his friends for treatment that would’ve eventually saved his life and family. I remember arguing, “We can’t do this! We’re giving this character a trapdoor! How can he not take it?” But he didn't take it. That was when I realized the story we were telling was about a man’s ego.

And in Better Call Saul, the question is, is Chuck right that Jimmy shouldn’t become a lawyer—is Jimmy with the law like a chimp with a machine gun? Or is it a self-fulfilling prophecy—is Chuck putting his thumb on the scale with the way he’s treated Jimmy?

Gilligan: Maybe Chuck himself shouldn’t be a lawyer, or maybe Jimmy would be a great lawyer had Chuck not steered him with his negativity into Jimmy’s own baser instincts.

Kornhaber: Vince, you mentioned that you think there’s a universal human desire to see justice be done. Do you think that by the end this arc, Saul has that desire, that sense of justice?

Gilligan: I think Saul has a sense of justice just as Jimmy has a sense of justice, but I don’t know that they’re my sense of justice or anyone else’s. You can picture the bank robber who pistol whips the old lady and knocks out the manager and shoots the guard and runs off with the money with his fingers crossed the whole time, [thinking] “Please let me get away with this, I deserve this.” It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

Whether we agree on what justice is, I do think there’s a universal desire to see justice done, and not live in a chaotic, cold, and heartless universe. But who’s to say? Sometimes it does seem like karma is in effect, even though the wheels of justice grind exceedingly slowly. But then again some days it doesn’t. It’s fun to be able to make the universe of Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul tilt that way nonetheless.