Brace yourself, it’s a heartbreaker!
The camera wanders slowly over dirt and deadwood, scrub grass and scattered rock.
It pauses on that desert flower, beautiful and shockingly bright blue against the faded landscape.
Giancarlo Esposito as Gus Fring on ‘Better Call Saul’.Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television
For two whole minutes, we linger here.
Long enough for the sounds of insects and rattling grass to be joined by a clap of thunder.
Long enough for the rain to begin to fall.
The camera pulls back: there’s something here.
Signs of human life, buried by the passage of time, revealed by the falling rain.
The dirt washes away, revealing the contours of a small, curved piece of glass.
But that’s for later.
The pool of oil is his first stroke of luck.
The first call Nacho makes is to his father.
“I just wanted to hear your voice,” he says.
Manuel Varga (Juan Carlos Cantu) says they’ve been through this.
He pleads with his son one last time to go to the police.
“What else is there to say?”
he says, and indeed, there’s nothing.
The only thing left to say is goodbye.
But Jimmy is not one with the universe.
He’s not even one with himself.
As Huell takes Jimmy’s cash, he asks if he can ask something personal.
He’s a lawyer, Huell says.
He makes good money legitimate money.
And so does Kim.
“Why do all this?”
When Jimmy says, “Do you think I should do it?
This is where we leave Jimmy and Kim, until next week.
The rest of this episode belongs to Nacho Varga.
The man, the myth, the legend.
As for Nacho, it’s over.
“Tomorrow,” Mike (Jonathan Banks) says.
There are no final words of advice, no big plans for escape.
And then we come to the end.
As he gets out of the van, he and Nacho exchange a final look.
Then the van rolls on.
“But there are good deaths and bad deaths.”
The thing is, this is true.
Even now, there is such a thing as a good death for Nacho.
That’s not nearly good enough.
He says he would’ve done it for free, that’s how much he hates the Salamancas.
He says Lalo deserved what they did to him.
And then he says, “And you know what else, Hector?
I put you in that chair.”
And we can enjoy these, the last words of Ignacio “Nacho” Varga.
You twisted f—.”
This is where Nacho was supposed to run.
Then he puts the gun to his own temple… and pulls the trigger.
This isn’t a happy ending for Nacho, but it’s a good one.
