The ‘Breaking Bad’ Reference In This Week’s ‘Better Call Saul’ Spells Bad News For Kim Wexler

In case you haven’t heard, Better Call Saul has been tearing it up to such an extent this season that there are people out there firing off the hot take that it’s become a superior series to Breaking Bad. I am not one of those people — you will not catch me besmirching Breaking Bad‘s great name any time soon.

Still, though, it just goes to show how far the series has come that it’s being mentioned in the same dramatic breath as its predecessor. It’s also no coincidence that the show has become more and more appreciated as its narrative inches closer towards Breaking Bad‘s timeline, which has been especially true this season.

The series is certainly not shy about its Breaking Bad connections, as Better Call Saul has featured tons of homages to the saga of Walter White. However, in this week’s episode, the echoes of Breaking Bad do not bode well for the series’ best character: Kim Wexler.

Unfortunately for our ride-or-die queen Kim, as Jimmy McGill inches closer to Saul Goodman’s chaos, so does she, as evidenced by this week’s heart-stopping confrontation with Lalo. Obviously, though, what makes Kim’s increasing involvement in the Nex Mexican criminal underworld so tense is that she’s one of the few characters on the series whose fate remains a mystery to the audience. Quite literally anything could happen to her — there was a moment in this week’s episode where I thought she was going to meet her fate Gale Boetticher-style as she answered the door.

This is what makes this latest instance of foreshadowing so ominous, as it may be hinting at what’s to come for Kim, via Uproxx:

 Remember Ted Beneke? The man, who Skyler White was sleeping with in Breaking Bad, that tripped and hurt himself so badly that he had to be hospitalized?

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Note that those oranges are a reference to Godfather, because oranges in The Godfather appear whenever death is in the air. This callback has been made numerous times in other TV shows and movies, including Mad Men and The Wire. That’s exactly how they are used in Breaking Bad, as well. Remember Carol, the woman who dropped oranges out of her grocery bag?

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Breaking Bad has primed us for what to expect when we see oranges. And what did we see in this episode? Oranges basically being murdered. Early in the episode, Kim spends a few minutes making orange juice, which is not only triggering Jimmy’s PTSD, but the orange juice sprays all over Kim’s shirt. That is either some very scary foreshadowing or a remarkable piece of trolling by director Thomas Schnauz

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Considering the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul team is known for their remarkable attention to detail, this simply cannot be chalked up to coincidence, and that is very bad news for everyone’s favorite badass lawyer.

The season five finale of Better Call Saul airs on AMC on Monday at 9 p.m. EST.

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Eric is a New York City-based writer who still isn’t quite sure how he’s allowed to have this much fun for a living and will tell anyone who listens that Gotham City is canonically in New Jersey. Follow him on Twitter @eric_ital for movie and soccer takes or contact him eric@brobible.com