Editor's note: The following contains Better Call Saul Season 6, Episode 9 spoilers.Going into the final season of Better Call Saul, one of the biggest questions on our minds was the fate of the intrepid Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn). We all know that she does not show up in the events of Breaking Bad, though we never quite knew the reasons for why that is. In the most recent episode, “Fun and Games,” we may have gotten at least part of our answer. Following the brutal death of Patrick Fabian’s Howard, Kim and Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) had been spending most of their days trying to get clear of what had happened. They go to work, lie their way through a hollow funeral service, and just pretend that nothing is wrong. This seems to be working for a while. That is, until the final scenes that will forever alter their lives. Kim, the most talented lawyer you could ever have, has quit the bar and will no longer be practicing law. When a distraught Jimmy rushes home, he discovers she is leaving him. Her bags are already packed, and a later scene reveals Saul at some distant point in the future. He has a mansion with all the suits and ties he could ever want, though his life is empty. All the possessions in the world could not fill the vast nothingness that has become his existence.
The ripple effects that stem from this conversation are one of the show’s most heartbreaking elements, though not just because of their breaking up and Jimmy’s subsequent descent. While both actors give equally outstanding performances in what may be their final scene together, it is Seehorn who remains the center of our attention. As Jimmy is panicking and trying to desperately convince her they can still work this out, she is the grounding force of the scene. Even when she is just staring him down, it is impossible to look away as we see what this has all been building to. In particular, the scene that preceded it is just as devastating. Kim leaving the law, the thing she has worked through the entire show to succeed at, was shocking in and of itself. Even when she seemed to turn her back on expanding her work earlier this season, there had always been the hope that she would come back to helping others downtrodden by the system. Yet with the death of Howard, it became clear that salvation was no longer an option for both of them. Kim has finally realized this, too.
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In talking with Jimmy, Kim no longer believes she can do this work both in a literal and deeper sense. She realizes that the two have corrupted each other, and she needs to get as far away as possible. Despite both being kindhearted people underneath their worst impulses, their relationship has now poisoned one of the few bright spots of a person doing good in the show. They brought out the worst in each other. This is painful not just because Kim believes she must leave Jimmy but because of how there was so much potential for her to do good for others. When the rest of the surrounding characters were driven by greed and vengeance, she would fight for justice in an unjust world. She left a cushy job to do it, throwing herself into the unknown in order to better the lives of others who would otherwise be steamrolled without her. Kim now leaving the law while Jimmy stays in it is a testament to the show’s prevailing pessimism, a grim reminder that any hope for justice is slowly slipping away. When the man that is now Saul is going through the motions of his day, there is no triumph in these scenes, only tragedy. In terms of what becomes of both him and Kim, the impact they have left on each other is now only felt in a profound sense of loss.
Even as the show was called Better Call Saul, it has always been made interesting by all those around the titular lawyer. It was built around characters like Kim and her story as much as it was Jimmy’s. She started as the counterbalance to him, became swept up in his schemes, and grew to love them and him, only to realize it had become too much to bear. It is hard to think of a character with a more dynamic and tragic journey. Across every episode of every season, Kim grew and changed in a whole host of intriguing ways. She could be calm under pressure, able to see things more clearly than Jimmy, though even she couldn’t foresee where they would both end up. It is fitting that she is now the one to end it all, a final attempt to pull out of the tailspin that is their tumultuous relationship. The tragedy is that it is too late in many regards. People have died, lives have been ruined, and Kim is forever scarred by all that has happened. Even as she tried to go back to business as usual, she couldn’t do it. For the first time, she has now realized that there is no going back. The person that she could have been is gone, destroyed by the death of someone close to her that she will now carry with her for the rest of her life. No matter how much Jimmy tells her that there will be one day that they wake up and forget that any of this ever happened, Kim knows this will never come to pass.
These final beats where Kim realizes she must leave behind all that she has known, the most significant loss Better Call Saul has seen thus far, is not built around spectacle, or chaos expressed externally. Instead, it is conveyed in a single conversation between two people who have become bad for each other. That Kim had to say this out loud continues to show how astute she could be, able to cut through the noise to arrive at the truth. This propensity for analysis made her a good lawyer and had the potential to make her an even better person. There was the hope that she still could be, though there is the depressing feeling that she now knows that ship has sailed. Her leaving Jimmy is a last-ditch effort, a pulling of the rip cord while he continues to descend. The thing is, there is no stopping the fall once it has started. Kim is now trying to slow it, though there is a prevailing dread that there is no turning back — only now, there is no one to fight the good fight in her stead. It is a dark realization that transcends even beyond Jimmy. Kim Wexler made her own bed, and now she must lie in it, a bleak reality she has become painfully aware of. It is one more astute realization from a character who is known for them, a bittersweetness that can’t temper the tragedy of seeing her fall so far.
