Better Call Saul Easter Egg Hints At Jimmy & Kim's Unhappy Ending
Better Call Saul's season 6 premiere just dropped a major hint that Jimmy and Kim won't be getting their happy ending. As Better Call Saul's final season begins, audiences still have precisely zero idea why Rhea Seehorn's Kim Wexler doesn't appear in Breaking Bad, and though her later absence would seem to confirm a grim end to their marriage, happier options are (or maybe were) on the table. Maybe Kim spends her Breaking Bad years in hiding, perhaps she simply doesn't appear onscreen, she may even reunite with Gene in Omaha.
Better Call Saul has introduced several visual motifs pertaining to Jimmy McGill's romance with Kim - teeth-brushing, the yellow coffee mug, talking on the bed, etc. Arguably the most important, however, is the tequila bottle stopper. In Better Call Saul season 2's "Switch" Jimmy and Kim pulled their very first scam as a pair, tricking a not-so-charming businessman into buying them an expensive bottle of tequila. It's a fairly innocent scam, relatively speaking, and both enjoyed the thrill, so Kim kept the distinctive spiky bottle topper as a memento to remember her fun dabble into wrongdoing. Upon quitting her high-paid lawyer job in Better Call Saul season 5, Kim makes sure to retrieve the bottle topper from her office before leaving.
Better Call Saul season 6 begins with Saul Goodman's luxury mansion being cleared out. There's no context behind the sequence, nor confirmation of where it sits within the Better Call Saul/Breaking Bad timeline, but the introduction concludes with an ornate dresser being loaded into a van. An item falls out a draw, and as the camera zooms in, the tequila bottle stopper comes into focus. This keepsake has always symbolized Jimmy and Kim as a romantic couple in Better Call Saul. It was after that very scam that they slept together, when friendship finally began blossoming into something more. Though not exactly conventional, the bottle top is analogous to a cinema ticket stub or restaurant bill from a first date, and Kim keeping it close by proves the spiky plug's sentimental value. Better Call Saul kicking off its final season with the image of Jimmy and Kim's tequila bottle stopper - the physical embodiment of their love - rolling into a ditch abandoned and forgotten foreshadows the relationship itself heading exactly the same way.
Though a happy ending was always possible, Kim's omission from Breaking Bad made a bright future for herself and Jimmy desperately unlikely, and their tequila bottle top rolling into a gutter surely proves it. The scene may also tease why Jimmy and Kim ultimately crash and burn. As much as the bottle stopper symbolizes their relationship, it also depicts the side of Jimmy that Kim finds so appealing - the illicit, exciting con artist. Come Better Call Saul's final season, Kim is almost addicted to that thrill, becoming increasingly bold in her scams, and even giving Jimmy cause for concern. Could the abandoned memento imply Kim finally went too far? That the end of the path she started by drinking this very bottle of booze led to a destructive destination?
Also worth considering is when, exactly, this house-clearance scene takes place. The event could fall later in Better Call Saul season 6 but before Breaking Bad, once Jimmy has received his Sandpiper money. Or, the sequence could be happening after Breaking Bad, with Jimmy on the run as Gene, and the authorities stripping his assets. Either way, we know the house belonged to Saul Goodman, and looked more like a bachelor pad than a married couple's home. We also know the tequila bottle stopper was last seen with Kim, yet here it is in Saul's possession. All signs point toward a messy (or, indeed, bloody) split that Jimmy McGill has never quite got over.
Better Call Saul continues Mondays on AMC.