Better Call Saul: Vince Gilligan admits he initially didn’t want to bring Breaking Bad’s Lalo back

‘Man, I was wrong’

Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan said he is “embarrassed to admit” that initially, he did not want Lalo to appear in Better Call Saul.

The villain Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton) was first mentioned in a throwaway line in season two of Breaking Bad.

Following the Better Call Saul season five finale this week, Gilligan told Rolling Stone: “I’m embarrassed to admit this now, but back in season one or two, when I was more active on the show, Peter [co-creator Peter Gould] kept saying, ‘We’ve gotta answer who Lalo is,’ and I finally said, ‘I don’t know that we need to answer every single question.”

“And, man, I was wrong. If Peter hadn’t pushed, we wouldn’t have Tony Dalton. We wouldn’t have this amazing character.”

“So, some of the ones that I found the most frustrating to deal with, that I said, ‘Ah, the hell with them. Who cares?’ tend to be the best ones of all.”

In January it was announced that the Breaking Bad character DEA officer Hank Schrader (Dean Norris) Walter White’s brother-in-law would feature in Better Call Saul’s fifth and sixth seasons, with Shrader’s partner Steve Gomez (Steven Michael Quezeda) appearing alongside him.

Robert Forster, who died in October 2019, also made an appearance in season five as Ed the Disappearer – a posthumous cameo he filmed while shooting his surprise appearance in Netflix’s sequel film, El Camino.