Vince Gilligan Dropped Some Cryptic Hints About ‘Breaking Bad’ Characters Showing Up On ‘Better Call Saul’

Ever since the day that prequel to Breaking Bad was announced fans of the series were asking which stars from the show would be appearing on Better Call Saul?

Would a young Jesse make an appearance? That could be tough. How about a younger version of Walter White? You know that’s GOT to happen some day, even in a cameo, right? C’mon!

So far all we’ve gotten is Mike Ehrmantraut and you know what? That’s been pretty okay. The series at this point doesn’t really need any Breaking Bad characters in it other than him and Saul/Jimmy. It would just be even more fun it were to happen.

Turns out that we now know of at least one character from Breaking Bad that WILL be appearing on at least one episode of Better Call Saul.

[WARNING: SPOLERS AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED THIS WEEK’S EPISODE YET]

Speaking at PaleyFest over the weekend, Vince Gilligan and co-creator Peter Gould had this to say (via Deadline)…

The crowd at the Dolby Theatre audibly gasped during the screening of the Monday episode when Mark Margolis, who played the invalid cartel drug-runner Hector ‘Tio’ Salamanca on Breaking Bad from seasons 2 to 4, was revealed to be making his Better Call Saul debut. And he’s seen for before the stroke that renders him mute and incapacitated throughout Breaking Bad, bargaining with Jonathan Banks’ Mike to go easy on his nephew Tuco.

“Right as we were breaking down this episode, we thought, Tuco’s in trouble. Who’s he going to call? Uncle Tio,” said Gould during the panel after the screening “It made sense for this guy to show up. It had to be organic.”

That’s right, folks, good old Uncle Tio came back and without that pesky wheelchair and annoying bell.

As for whether we will get to see even more Breaking Bad characters in the future now that they’ve broken the seal?

Gilligan addressed an audience member who wondered whether they were banking scenes with Breaking Bad cast members to catch them on film before they age too much to suit this prequel series. “It’s an excellent question,” he said. “But it’s not as easy as it sounds. It’d be hard to think that far ahead. We get a lot of credit for thinking like Bobby Fischer and thinking 20 moves ahead, but we really don’t.”

Gould did say, however, that they’d banked footage from Season 1. “There was a whole, lovely sequence we shot in Season 1 and didn’t end up using. You’ll see it on the show in a couple of weeks.”

Cameos were tricky things to wrangle, the creators said, insisting that the temptation to do them was often stronger than it should be. “It’s difficult not to overdo it,” said Gilligan. “We love all these characters and actors from the Breaking Bad universe. The difficulty is maintaining a level of self discipline to stop yourself from saying, ‘Lets have this person walk through the background,’ or, ‘Let’s have this person get splashed by mud as Jimmy drives by.’”

He did tease a Breaking Bad cameo that will never be, though. “We had an idea for the final episode of Season 2, which was a perfect opportunity for a cameo which we didn’t wind up doing.

This even though Gould responded to Gilligan’s statement with, “It killed me though. It would have been so great.”

Bummer, but okay, fine, we can live with that, at least we’ve got someone else from Breaking Bad coming up in a couple of weeks. Walter White though, he’s going to make a cameo at some point, right? Right?! Sigh

In the mean time here are a few Breaking Bad Easter eggs from Better Call Saul that you might have missed to hold you over…


[Deadline]

H/T LadBible

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Before settling down at BroBible, Douglas Charles, a graduate of the University of Iowa (Go Hawks), owned and operated a wide assortment of websites. He is also one of the few White Sox fans out there and thinks Michael Jordan is, hands down, the GOAT.