Better Call Saul: How Old Chuck McGill Is When He Dies
Jimmy's older brother Chuck is a key character throughout Better Call Saul's first half, but how old is he at the beginning, and when he dies?
How old is Chuck in Better Call Saul? After the game-changing success of Breaking Bad, Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould envisioned Better Call Saul as a prequel, digging into the criminal landscape of New Mexico in the years before Walter White turned his hand to meth production. Specifically, Better Call Saul charts the early days of Jimmy McGill, known later as Saul Goodman. When Better Call Saul begins, Jimmy has good intentions and is attempting to prove his worth as a lawyer. With the spin-off now heading toward its final run, however, Jimmy is a changed man, and a key ingredient in that transformation is Jimmy's brother, Chuck.
Played by Michael McKean, Chuck is the exact opposite of Jimmy - successful, legitimate, and level-headed, even if he does suffer a psychosomatic aversion to electricity. But where Jimmy's heart is usually in the right place, Chuck possesses a hidden cruel streak. At every turn, Jimmy tries to impress his older brother, but Chuck can't stand to see his less scrupulous, annoyingly popular younger brother follow his legal lead by becoming a lawyer. Jimmy and Chuck's feud rumbles on well into adulthood, and reaches a climax when the younger McGill brother makes a fool of his sibling in court, taking advantage of Chuck's mental condition. Due to Jimmy's actions, Chuck takes his own life - unwittingly cementing Jimmy's future as Saul Goodman.
Chuck is Jimmy's older brother, and there's a clear age gap between them, represented both visually and in their personalities, but exactly how old is Chuck McGill? In Better Call Saul's season 4 finale, Jimmy visits Chuck's grave, which reads 1944-2003. This makes Chuck either 58 or 59 at his time of dying, depending on the month. The date on the grave fits with a scene in Better Call Saul season 2's finale (set in 2002), where Chuck is rushed to hospital and his age is given as "late 50s." By comparison, Jimmy is in his early 40s when Chuck commits suicide. The gap between the brothers' ages is consistent with the actors playing them, although both Bob Odenkirk and Michael McKean are playing characters younger than themselves.
While the grave scene and hospital comment appear to make Chuck's age a cut-and-dry matter, Better Call Saul complicates the issue with flashback scenes. In his season 3 death episode, a younger Chuck is played by Gabriel Rush, who sits alongside Hope Whitaker, playing a younger Jimmy. There's only a 10 year gap between the actor and actress, and this is evident on-screen, but working by Chuck's year of birth, the kids' age gap should be far more pronounced. Certain details in Chuck's history also don't add up. In "Rebecca" for example, Chuck states that Jimmy began working in the family convenience store while he was off at college, but Chuck graduated high school at 14, meaning Jimmy McGill would've been taken directly from the birthing suite to his father's cash register.
It seems that Better Call Saul became stuck in two minds with regards to Chuck and Jimmy's brotherly dynamic. On one hand, the spin-off tries to portray the brothers as close during their youth, but forced apart by careers, marriages and questionable life choices. But Better Call Saul also uses the significant age difference between Chuck and Jimmy as one of the many factors driving a wedge between them. The gap helps to explain why Jimmy idolizes his brother so much, while also playing into Chuck's jealousy at watching Jimmy skate through life so freely, always the more popular brother despite being routinely dishonest.