Breaking Bad, one of the best and most popular shows of all time, spawned the spinoff, Better Call Saul…one of the best and most popular shows of all time.
Creator, Vince Gilligan, confirms he has no plans to make any future spinoffs in this universe, while also leaving the door open with a “never say never” tease.
He also said he doesn’t have any ideas for spinoffs even if he did want to do one, and since he rarely plans ahead (he’s the master of successfully closing loose ends like he had planned it though), I’ve come up with a list of the six best ideas for prequel spinoffs that I can think of.
There’s a lot to take into consideration with what would make a good prequel. There’s not only what characters who would be palatable 50+ episodes–I, for one, would not want to spend many episodes following Jack, the neo nazi–but we’d also have to take into consideration which characters w know little enough about to potentially leave the door open for some good surprises. With good enough writing this is always achievable; afterall, we thought we knew Saul Goodman well, but getting into the tragedy of Jimmy McGill let us view the character in a whole new light.
All these all, of course, in the “better call” format, in lieu of better titles.
Better Call Todd
Jesse Plemmons managed to pull off a psychotic yet fascinating shithead of a character. I imagined this being something like Dhamer with a little more charm and mayyyybe a slightly lower body count.
We would unfortunately have to spend a lot of time with his uncle, which I wouldn’t be looking forward to, and his life has a Breaking Bad finale termination date, with the writers possibly having to work hard to make him interesting while we know by the time of Breaking Bad his status only lets him be a future Walter White lackey.
Still this guy clearly has a lot of surprises, and I’m sure a limited series focusing on him would be gripping.
Better Call Gus
Giancarlo Espisito as Gus Fring might be the most interesting character in the entire Breaking Bad Universe. He was captivating all the way through the original series, and while Better Call Saul might have dampened some of his mystique, he still remained a great character throughout the series.
The biggest flaw of hiss series would be that we already have seen so much of the guy. We’ve seen him face likely the two biggest challenges within his kingpin career (how many times can he almost fall to ruin), and we’ve also seen what made him become that way.
The door is still somewhat open to more though. There’s still a lot of unanswered questions surrounding his Chilean connections, and there’s a lot left to know about his personal life–especially with the implication he makes to Walt about having kids (??). It could make a better movie than a series, but I definitely would not complain about more Fring.
Better Call Lydia
Lydia–the character everybody loves to hate, who meets her maker with the long-teased ricin. If there’s any character who we would be shocked to find ourselves empathizing with and maybe loving, it’s her. And making us love these types of characters is Vince Gilligan’s bread and butter.
Like Todd, she has a BB finale end date (unless she miraculously survives Walt’s attack), and it does seem like creating a series about her would be a tough tough tough challenge.
But she’s still mysterious, with connections to all the other major characters. There’s many unanswered questions in regards to her: how did she get connected to this world? Who is the father of her child? How did she develop such a love for stevia? Better Call Lydia could answer all of these and more.
Better Call Dr. Caldera
If you’re wondering who this is, you’re not alone. He’s the Veterinarian, featured in Better Call Saul, secretly in the crime world, who Mike, the Twins and later Jimmy would visit.
You might be wondering why I’m listing such a minor character, featured only in the second series, so high.
Well, for one, we could learn A LOT about him–we know very little, so the journey his character contains so many possibilities. We don’t know his end date. He’s connected to every other major character, which his series could shed more light upon. Plus, not only would we get to see some great crime sequences, but some adorable animals. The contradiction of this could give us something so different but complementary to the existing series.
Better Call Kuby and Huell
One of the biggest disappointments of the Better Call Saul series is that we never got to see a reappearance of Bill Burr’s character, Kuby, and we got a minimal amount of Lavel Crawford’s Huell. This duo together, with the talent behind them, gave us some of the funniest moments in the original series.
This series would probably have a different tone than the others, becoming more comedic, although as we learned from Better Call Saul, anything can have great drama too with these talented writers.
There’s a lot we don’t know about these duo, including both their beginnings and ends, and there’s so many places we could go with them. This could even raise both of these comedians to the same “wow, this guy can pull off drama” level that Bob Odenkirk has risen to. I have zero doubt this would be a great series, with only one other potentially being more great.
Better Call the Vacuum Cleaner Guy
Call and ask for “I need a dust filter for a Hoover Max extract pressure pro model 60.” Ed, the Vacuum Cleaner guy will make you disappear. This is something that stretched throughout both series and even into the movie El Camino. And everytime we got to see him, we knew we were in for a ride.
Now the sad News is Robert Forester is dead, dying right after filming a couple of last appearances as his character, so if this series is made, he would have to be replaced by a different actor or a CG creepy Robert Forester.
But the possibilities for this show are endless. How he found his talent for doing what he does, the number of people he would work with, the drama he would need to encounter to come up with his ultra-strict rules. This could truly be a series very separate from Breaking Bad but also just as gripping (with allowances for cameos of any character…you can even have Skyler or Badger come in just to buy a vacuum). This seems like a proper compromise between entering the familiar world but allowing for a departure.
So these are my ideas. I’d love to hear yours. Who else, if any, would you like to seen get called in the Breaking Bad Universe?
Thanks for reading!
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