Bryan Cranston Avoiding Better Call Saul Season 6 Spoilers
Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston says he's just a fan now and doesn't want to know any spoilers for Better Call Saul season 6.
Bryan Cranston says he doesn’t want to know any Better Call Saul season 6 spoilers. Cranston won four Emmy awards for playing Walter White, the antihero at the center of the classic series Breaking Bad. The world of Breaking Bad later returned with Better Call Saul, centered on slimy lawyer Saul Goodman, the alter ego of mail room employee and small-time grifter Jimmy McGill.
Better Call Saul of course features its own highly praised lead performance from Bob Odenkirk – though Odenkirk has not yet received a single Emmy, let alone four. But Odenkirk’s Saul is obviously not the only character from Breaking Bad to make the leap over to Better Call Saul. Other characters from the original show to pop up on the spinoff include bad guy Gus Fring, fixer Mike Ehrmantraut and – briefly – DEA partners Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez. Given these character revisits, fans have long wondered if Cranston would ever follow suit and make a return appearance on Better Call Saul (an easy-enough feat story-wise as BCS takes place in the years before White’s death in the Breaking Bad finale).
If Cranston ever does make fans’ wishes come true and appear on Better Call Saul as Walter White, special steps might have to be taken to protect him from learning any spoilers about the show. That’s because Cranston, like a true fan himself, doesn’t want the show’s developments revealed to him before he watches them unfold on his TV screen. In a conversation from home with the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, Cranston talked about his aversion to Better Call Saul spoilers:
Well, I’m a fan of Better Call Saul, and I am thoroughly happy just being a fan of the show. In fact, when I get together with [show creator Vince Gilligan], I have to say, ‘Don’t slip up and don’t tell me anything that’s going to happen. I don’t want to have it spoiled, my viewing experience.’ And he laughs, but I’m serious. I want to enjoy the show like any audience member.
Cranston saying he wants to enjoy the show like any audience member and even tries to avoid spoilers could be taken as his low-key way of shutting the door on Walter White ever making a Better Call Saul appearance. However, in the past Cranston has said he would “do it in a second” if asked to reprise the role of White on BCS (he of course already did a White return cameo in El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie), and has also revealed that he’s been asked to direct episodes but was never able to work things out schedule-wise. Obviously, if he directs an episode he would then be privy to spoilers.
While it’s amusing to think of Cranston being just another fan of Better Call Saul, he is of course not just another fan. In reality, Cranston’s Walter White still casts a long shadow over the spinoff show, which must endure endless comparisons to the original both in terms of overall quality and in its navigation of Jimmy/Saul’s very White-like antihero arc. Of course, the show threw fans quite a curveball when at the end of season 5 it revealed that Jimmy’s long-time girlfriend and co-conspirator Kim Wexler (a character not from Breaking Bad) may in fact be the story’s true antihero. Indeed, the show’s sixth and final season figures to be the most surprising of all after that shocking Kim reveal. Perhaps that’s why Cranston is even more spoiler averse than ever. And perhaps, with Kim taking center-stage for Better Call Saul season 6, there’s arguably much less need for the show to directly connect back to Breaking Bad. If that’s the case, a Walter White cameo may now be less necessary than ever, allowing Cranston to at last leave White behind him and settle in as just another fan.
