Better Call Saul recap, Magic Man: What’s going to happen between Lalo Salamanca and Gus Fring?

A tense premiere lays the groundwork for a season of transformation and deadly conflict

Goodbye Jimmy McGill, hello Saul Goodman – or should that be Gene Takavic? Better Call Saul’s fifth season premiere was a tense, enthralling hour of shifting identities, simmering grudges, and tying up loose ends.

Opening with an extended black-and-white flash-forward sequence – by my count, the longest the series has done to this point – the episode, entitled “Magic Man”, included a number of nods to Breaking Bad, most explicitly in a cameo appearance from the late Robert Forster. Forster reprised his role as “Ed”, the vacuum cleaner repairman who provides an illegal witness protection-style relocation service for wanted criminals.

The sight of Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) on the lam, eating by himself at a diner cafe, seems like a nod towards Walter White, while Jimmy’s paranoid hiding-out – peering out the window through a crack in the blinds – visually recalls his late brother, Chuck. But of all the identities that Jimmy tries on in the episode, it’s easy, sleazy Saul Goodman that seems to fit him best.

There has been a lot of talk in the build up to this season about the exciting ways the show’s disparate storylines will begin to intersect. While there’s not much hint of that so far, “Magic Man” does a solid job of re-establishing the stakes, while sketching out the probable areas of conflict for the season ahead.

Here are the other main talking points.

How long can Jimmy and Kim last?

Jimmy’s relationship with Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) has been at the heart of Better Call Saul from the beginning, but it’s starting to seem like it's not long for this world. Kim is the series’ moral centre, a conscientious lawyer who lives by a firm (but flexible) moral code. Her ideals are at odds with Jimmy’s natural shysterism, and, what’s more, he doesn’t seem to realise it.

While Jimmy yammers on about his plans to curry new business as Saul, Kim’s discomfort is written all over her face. When she starts to object, he agrees that plans to offer cut-price rates for repeat offenders would seem “desperate”, completely oblivious to the broader moral implications. “I just can’t see it”, Kim says at the end of the scene. “It’s OK,” Jimmy replies, “you will.”

This tension comes to the fore later in the episode when Kim is struggling to get a not-very-bright client to accept a plea bargain that he’d be foolish to turn down. Jimmy offers to impersonate the prosecutor and stage an angry rant to pressure the client into taking the offer, but Kim shuts him down with a curt “back off”. She adopts Jimmy’s tactic anyway and sells her client the (well-intentioned) lie. Afterwards, she breaks down in the stairwell, wracked with guilt; it’s clear that she and her boyfriend are fast approaching a grave moral impasse.

How is Gene going to “fix it”?

“Magic Man” opened with the tensest flash-forward to date, a roughly 15-minute-long segment in which Jimmy, now living as Cinnabon bakery manager Gene Takavic, starts worrying that his ruse has been discovered. We see him prepare to flee the state, gathering a stash of diamonds, replacing his car’s license plate and obsessively listening to a police scanner.

Eventually, Jimmy decides it is safe to return. All is well, until the taxi driver (played by The Deuce’s Don Harvey) who featured last season returns, and recognises Gene as none other than Saul Goodman, big-time Albuquerque TV lawyer. In a stressful scene, he forces Jimmy to reluctantly affirm his old identity, while two police officers lurk just in view.

It wasn’t a set-up, it seems, although Jimmy won’t be taking any risks; he’s straight onto the phone with Ed, organising a new, doubly-expensive identity do-over. At the last minute, however, he changes his mind, and says: “I’m gonna fix it myself”. Now, as far as we know, Jimmy’s no killer – but how else can he possibly be sure that the cab driver won't talk?

What’s going to happen between Lalo Salamanca and Gus Fring?

Better Call Saul’s drug cartel plotline also continues, with the suave, sinister “Lalo” Salamanca (Tony Dalton) overseeing Nacho’s (Michael Mando) side of the operation. An investigation into inferior, “stepped-on” product leads him to a sit-down with Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) and cartel mediator Juan Bolsa.

Fring’s apology for the product mix-up is met with menacing acceptance from Lalo, but the grievance doesn’t end there. After the Salamanca cousin starts sniffing around Fring’s meth superlab operation, Fring sends the German workers home early, halting construction until Lalo can be “dealt with”.

We know exactly what happens to Fring – we see his demise in gruesome detail in Breaking Bad – but it’s unclear what will happen to Lalo. With the Mexican cartel scrutinising Fring’s every action, it’s likely season four will feature some particularly conniving power plays.

How does Gus get Mike back on board?

Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) finished Better Call Saul’s fourth season by executing the runaway construction worker Werner Ziegler, and it’s clear from this episode that he’s still feeling guilty about it. Having punched construction worker Kai (Ben Bela Böhm) in the face and been reprimanded by a disgusted Casper, the gravel-voiced enforcer turns down the offer of a big-money retainer from Fring, exchanging icy threats with his former employer.

We know that Mike is already working as Fring’s full-time fixer by the events of Breaking Bad, but it remains to be seen exactly how – and why – he comes to reconcile with the fastidious drug baron. Perhaps a mutual hatred of Lalo Salamanca could enough to bring them together again.