Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are as notorious as Heisenberg himself for establishing two anti-heroes as their protagonists. Even years after their series finales aired, fans still argue over whether we should’ve been rooting for Walter White or whether Jimmy McGill’s descent into the slimy Saul Goodman was inevitable or not.
In addition to having flawed main characters, both shows from creator Vince Gilligan also introduced some pretty heinous adversaries. There’s, of course, the sadistic Salamanca crime family, as well as corrupt chicken restaurant entrepreneur Gus Fring. Depending on who you ask, Walter’s wife Skyler could even be considered an antagonist to her husband’s pursuit of power. However, across both series, there’s one character who carries the most blame for the chaos that ensues: Jimmy’s older brother, Chuck McGill, played by Michael McKean.
Better Call Saul’s Chuck Was The Perfect Antagonist For Jimmy’s Story
Even though Breaking Bad fans already know his fate, Better Call Saul cleverly sets up its protagonist’s fall from grace by juxtaposing the scrappy Jimmy against his brother Chuck, an accomplished lawyer at the law firm Hamlin Hamlin McGill, who struggles with a psychosomatic allergy to electricity.
When the series begins, Jimmy is both relentlessly taking care of his hermit brother while trying to earn his approval as a lawyer in his own right. As later revealed in the first season, Chuck is actually the one standing in the way of Jimmy and legal success, deeming him unchanged from his ways as a petty criminal when he was younger, a.k.a “Slippin’ Jimmy.”
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In subsequent seasons, Jimmy and Chuck’s fractured relationship fuels most of the drama, as Jimmy sabotages HHM in favor of his partner Kim Wexler. When he goes far enough to gaslight Chuck into believing he made a mistake, Chuck refuses to back down and, in one of the best Better Call Saul episodes, “Chicanery,” rants to a courtroom about his lifelong hatred of Jimmy. Though Chuck dies a few episodes later, his ghost haunts Jimmy for the remainder of Better Call Saul, all the way until the series finale, where Jimmy finally comes to terms with his own role in Chuck’s demise.
Howard Hamlin Was Almost The Real Villain In Better Call Saul
Howard Hamlin looking exhausted in Better Call Saul
Even though it seems like Chuck was designed to be the perfect foil for Jimmy’s character arc, the original antagonist of the show was intended to be Patrick Fabian’s Howard Hamlin, Chuck’s protégé and partner at HHM. While Jimmy initially thinks Howard, not Chuck, is keeping him from working with HHM, Howard actually respects Jimmy’s hustle. By the series’ end, Howard turns out to be the most tragic victim of Jimmy’s schemes.
According to Gilligan, the original plan for Chuck and Howard was quite the opposite of how their stories turned out. Here’s what Gilligan shared ahead of the Better Call Saul series finale:
“[We] came to realize, Wouldn’t it be more interesting if Howard—who looks like the bad guy because he’s so polished and handsome and seems to be the king of the world—is not as bad as he appears? And what if Chuck isn’t as supportive of Jimmy as we first think he is?”
For a show in which the supposed ending has been clear since Saul Goodman was introduced back in Breaking Bad, it seems that approaching the series’ writing with curiosity and flexibility to change was ultimately the best thing for the characters. Better Call Saul ended up with a much more interesting protagonist-antagonist relationship between Jimmy and Chuck, whose sibling rivalry inadvertently leads to Jimmy’s own descent into Saul Goodman.
From there, Saul became involved with the similarly proud Walter White, and the entirety of Breaking Bad soon followed. If only Chuck had been a little more forgiving of Jimmy during the events of Better Call Saul, a lot of lives wouldn’t have been destroyed.
Release Date
2015 – 2022-00-00
Showrunner
Peter Gould