Better Call Saul Season 4 Trailer Takes Jimmy And Mike Down A Rough Road

Now more than ever before, the worlds of Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad are beginning to converge.

As part of the continuing smorgasbord of content coming out of San Diego Comic-Con, AMC has released a full trailer for the upcoming fourth season of Better Call Saul. 

From the look of things, the drastic and tragic events of the series' third season seem to have awakened something in our friend Jimmy McGill, as he works to claw his way up from a personal and professional rock bottom. 

We already know that our protagonist successfully ends up as a flag-waving, Constitution-loving Albuquerque huckster. Now we get to see him scrabbling for every handhold on his way to a fateful meeting with Breaking Bad's Walter White.

But first, some table setting. As the trailer conveys, the series is drawing ever closer to the status quo we were introduced to during Saul Goodman's first appearances in Breaking Bad. In particular, it shows Jimmy getting himself (and fixer grandpa Mike Ehrmantraut) in metaphorical bed with the dangerous chicken brother Gus Fring, as well as his uptight meth empire administrator Lydia Rodarte-Quayle. 

In addition to bringing in characters we grew to love and loathe over the course of Breaking Bad, the fourth season of Better Call Saul is also bringing in a character we heard of, but never saw on that series. According to The Hollywood Reporter, an SDCC panel has confirmed that Tony Dalton will be joining the cast of Better Call Saul as Lalo, a character referenced during a pivotal scene in Breaking Bad in which Saul was kidnapped by Walter and Jesse and made to beg for his life. 

As he tried frantically to figure out who had led him to an open grave on the threat of death in the middle of the night, Saul asked Walt and Jesse if Lalo had sent them, insisting that it was Nacho, not him, who they should probably go after. 

At the time, the line was essentially meaningless — but just as Nacho has been brought to life by Michael Mando in Better Call Saul, so too now will Lalo. The panel featured a photograph of Dalton in character, kneeling to speak to the wheelchair-bound crime lord Hector Salamanca.

In these and other ways, Better Call Saul is increasingly starting to rev up toward Breaking Bad territory. But now that we've been with this exceedingly patient series and its characters for so long, the aspect of colliding narratives that once seemed like the series' main appeal is now more along the lines of a fun, barely necessary bonus. 

Either way, much like Breaking Bad did, this fourth season is starting to look like the moment when things start getting truly, deeply serious for our Albuquerque misfits and their small-scale misadventures. After losing his relationship with his brother Chuck, Jimmy is turning further to the dark side, and the tragedy of it all is that we all already know where this goes. Jimmy might survive the series, but Saul Goodman is doomed. All roads lead to Cinnabon.

Better Call Saul is setting up shop with its fourth season premiere on Monday, August 6 on AMC.