Better Call Saul is returning with Season 3 on April 10th, and as previously revealed , it will mark the return of Gus Fring . Giancarlo Esposito heralded his triumphant return by delivering, in character, boxes of Los Pollos Hermanos-branded fried chicken and biscuits to those present at the 2017 winter TV Critics Association press tour.

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Los Pollos Hermanos is home to the "best chicken in the world," as the fast food entrepreneur/drug kingpin touted so frequently during his run on Breaking Bad. Better Call Saul co-creator Vince Gilligan let slip during the show's TCA panel that he was scouting the restaurant's Albuquerque location for the first two episodes of Season 3, which he's directing, so that's a hint that we'll be seeing Gus pretty early on.Though Gus's return was cryptically foreshadowed during Season 2, Gilligan and co-creator Peter Gould hadn't yet locked in Esposito for his return. While the process of getting him back on board did take "some time," Esposito said he was "very clear" he wanted to return to the Breaking Bad family on Better Call Saul."Once Vince called me I was very clear I love being with this family of filmmakers," he said on the TCA panel. "I'm excited to be back. ... We unroll [Gus's debut] in a way that will leave you with a thirst. We're in a show that's very unexpected."Of bringing Gus back into the show, Gould said, "There was really only one way to go forward" after Season 2.Gus is a character who was well-explored on Breaking Bad, but Better Call Saul will offer a look at a more "immature" version who is "still finding his way as the business man that he is." When Gilligan and Gould were writing Breaking Bad, they'd never looked back and determined how Saul (Bob Odenkirk) and Mike (Jonathan Banks) would have met Gus originally, which meant they got to come up with that story fresh for Better Call Saul.When asked which character's introduction to Gus was most challenging to write, Gould cryptically answered, "I think that will be an easier question for us to answer after you've seen this season. We don't make big plans going forward, but there's actually a writer's trick that we use, which is we look back at the show and we try to find what do we not understand about what's already there, and that's when we know when we've hit a vein of gold."Beyond Gus Fring's arrival, Better Call Saul also left off on a huge cliffhanger between Jimmy and his brother Chuck (Michael McKean). The TCA panel screened a scene from Season 3 that sees Jimmy meeting with Kim (Rhea Seehorn) after his departure from Chuck's house, and saying, "For 10 minutes today Chuck didn't hate me. I forgot what that felt like."Of course, viewers who watched Season 2's finale know Chuck has ulterior motives, and a big plot thread in Season 3 will be seeing where those motives lead him. Gilligan and Gould have finally gotten to a place where they know how Jimmy McGill transformed into Saul Goodman, and Season 3 will see that story take hold."It's a show where you know where you're headed, where the end result is, end character. Every year -- and this season is no different -- is inching the ball down the field," Gilligan said. Added Gould, "It takes a lot of pressure to turn a lump of coal into a diamond, and it takes a hell of a lot of pressure to turn a good man -- or at least a decent man like Jimmy McGill -- into Saul Goodman."Like they didn't plan out Gus's return early on in Breaking Bad's run, Gilligan and Gould also don't know the answer to another timeline question: where Kim and Chuck are during Breaking Bad's timeline."We have thoughts, but there's nothing written in stone," said Gould to a group of reporters following the panel. "We don't take the answers seriously until we actually have all the pieces leading up, and we can always change things."Something Jimmy struggles with in Season 3 is "how far will he go to keep his relationship with Kim the way he thinks they should be," teased Gould. "Those are the things that drive him, and they drive him to great lengths."Part of the structure of Better Call Saul is that viewers also get brief glimpses forward to a post-Breaking Bad timeline, and Gilligan and Odenkirk teased that will remain the case in Season 3."We always talk about it as a prequel to Breaking Bad, but in some ways it's also a sequel to Breaking Bad, so who knows what we're going to see," said Gould.

Terri Schwartz is Entertainment Editor at IGN. Talk to her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz