Kim Wexler's Best Better Call Saul Moments Ranked
After six seasons spread out over seven and a half years, "Better Call Saul" is coming to a close. The series fought an uphill battle; as the prequel/successor to one of AMC's biggest hits, "Breaking Bad," "Better Call Saul" had an almost impossible standard to live up to. However, many critics and fans believe that "Better Call Saul" has far exceeded its predecessor in terms of quality, despite falling short of being an awards darling. That all could change at the Emmys in 2022 and 2023, especially given the performance of the show's MVP, Rhea Seehorn.
In "Better Call Saul," Seehorn plays Kim Wexler, a longtime friend of Bob Odenkirk's scrappy Jimmy McGill. The two became lawyers together, though often butted heads due to Kim's good conscience and Jimmy's love of the con. As the two developed a romantic relationship throughout the show, Kim grew more like Jimmy, becoming the brains of many of Jimmy's most diabolical schemes. The character's arc has become one of the most fascinating parts of "Better Call Saul," particularly as the show's ending draws near and Kim's fate becomes clearer.
With one episode left, fans have many now-iconic moments from Kim Wexler to look back on. From her humble beginnings at Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill to her troubling life following the events of "Breaking Bad," these are the most memorable moments involving Kim that "Better Call Saul" fans will be talking about for years to come. Nota bene: spoilers lie ahead for those not caught up on Season 6.
Kim's indecent proposal
In many of Kim's biggest moments in "Better Call Saul," she's zigged when audiences expected her to zag. This is true of the episode "Wexler v. Goodman," which threw viewers a curveball (via TV Insider). The episode's opening seems to allude to a dark turn for Kim's relationship with Jimmy, with a flashback to her childhood showing her claiming independence by walking away from her alcoholic mother's car. Flashing forward to the present, Kim prepares a con against her client, Mesa Verde, involving Jimmy representing a homeowner who refuses to sell his land to the company.
However, given that her employer, Rich Schweikart, is suspicious of her sabotaging Mesa Verde, she expresses doubts to Jimmy, now practicing law under the name Saul Goodman. Instead of calling the plan off, Jimmy goes behind Kim's back and presents the head of Mesa Verde, Kevin Wachtell, with an ad accusing Mesa Verde of plagiarism in their logo. Unless Kevin surrenders to Jimmy's client's demand for a $4 million settlement, the ads will be televised. Suffice it to say, Kevin is played, as is Kim.
When Kim confronts Jimmy later at their home, she accuses him of making her the sucker. In a marvelous scene between Seehorn and Bob Odenkirk, Kim is pushed to her limit with their relationship and their cons. She suggests that they either break up or, in a shocking twist to both Jimmy and the audience, get married.
Kim becomes a killer
Jimmy and Kim's schemes often go awry, but the events of Season 6 episodes "Plan and Execution" and "Point and Shoot" are on another level. After sabotaging Howard Hamlin's public image in order to advance a settlement that will result in a big cashout for Jimmy and Kim, Howard confronts the two at their apartment. His rant is unfortunately cut off by the arrival of the menacing Lalo Salamanca, who kills Howard and threatens the two lawyers, forcing them to follow his directions.
While Jimmy stays behind with Lalo in the apartment, Kim is sent out on her own to take Lalo's car and drive to Gus Fring's house. Following Lalo's instructions, she finds a camera and gun in the glove compartment, which she takes with her as she tearfully approaches Gus's front door. It's a harrowing, life-or-death moment for Kim — one that had audiences on the edges of their seats, wondering if this would be it for her. Fortunately, Mike is there to stop her from pulling the trigger.
Many fans accurately pointed out the meaning behind this scene: that Kim was almost willing to kill a stranger to save Jimmy's life. Though she didn't have to carry it out, it certainly plays into Kim's quiet contemplations in the subsequent episodes.
Kim's car crash
The earlier seasons of "Better Call Saul" go to great lengths to show Kim's drive and ambition when it came to her career. In the penultimate episode of Season 3, titled "Fall," Kim pushes herself as far as she could go, literally. On top of her work with Mesa Verde, she takes on a new client in Gatwood Oil, a drilling company under tax scrutiny. The amount of pressure Kim is putting herself under almost leads her to disaster early in the episode when she narrowly avoids crashing her car into an oil rig at low speed.
Meanwhile, Jimmy prepares to celebrate the Sandpiper settlement, though Kim ignores him as she's running late to a meeting with Gatwood. As she drives, she rehearses her speech, slowly losing focus. In a flash of shots, Kim's face is suddenly scarred, her airbag is deployed, and her car is headfirst in a ditch. She gets out of her car to see all her neatly filed Gatwood Oil documents scattered in the wind.
On first watch, the moment is a near heart attack for fans who were concerned about Kim's workaholic nature. This moment forces her to take a step back for her own good, and in the next episode, she cancels her meetings with Gatwood Oil in favor of some R&R, as well as a trip to Blockbuster Video. As Seehorn puts it in an Observer interview, Kim is tired, and her refusal to slow down "is now beginning to be her undoing."
The birth of Slippin' Kimmy
Season 2 finds Jimmy McGill in a peculiar spot. He's turned down an offer to work for the law firm Davis & Main, an offer Kim helped coordinate. When she finds him, he's staying at a hotel, lounging by the pool ordering cocktails. She fails to understand his decision to walk away from an incredible opportunity, but Jimmy offers to show her by walking up to an obnoxious stock broker at the hotel bar named Ken. Eagle-eyed viewers will recognize Ken from an early episode of "Breaking Bad," where he became the subject of Walter White's ire.
Here, he plays a similar role as Jimmy introduces himself as "Viktor with a K" and asks to settle a debate between him and his sister. Kim quickly adopts the name "Giselle St. Claire," and tries to get Jimmy to not bother the stranger. Ken, seeing the two as potential suckers, invites them to drink with him. As the night goes on, the three drink numerous shots of tequila, and Ken "successfully" cons Viktor and Giselle into signing him on as a broker for their fake grandfather's inheritance. When Viktor and Giselle walk away, Ken is left with the exorbitant alcohol bill.
Jimmy and Kim celebrate their scam outside, with Kim getting her first taste of what it's like to be Slippin' Jimmy. After a pause, she kisses him, and the two surprisingly end up sleeping together. It's fitting their relationship formally begins with a scam.
Kim's plan to save Huell
Their con against Ken wouldn't be their last scheme together. In Season 4, the two join forces again when Jimmy's bodyguard, Huell, is arrested for assaulting a police officer. Kim has enough on her plate with Mesa Verde, but she doesn't trust Jimmy to pull it off without getting himself incriminated. Collecting some school supplies at a department store, Kim calls Jimmy and offers to help.
In the subsequent episode, "Coushatta," Kim sends Jimmy on a bus to Coushatta, Louisiana, Huell's hometown. Along the way, Jimmy ropes several passengers to forge letters to Judge Munsinger demanding Huell's release. The plan works, and the judge forces Kim and Suzanne Ericsen, the assistant district attorney, to come to a settlement. Ericsen, suspicious of a ruse, investigates several of the identities in the letters, finding that Jimmy has dotted his i's and crossed his t's, setting up a fake parish website and organizing several fake phones to impersonate Coushatta residents.
After Kim and Ericsen negotiate Huell's freedom, Jimmy visits Kim at the courthouse. In another zig-zag moment, Kim pushes Jimmy up against a wall and passionately kisses him. Since this episode follows the duo's growing apart, it's surprising that another con has brought them closer together. Later, Kim visits Jimmy outside a potential office, and he attempts to apologize for making his business with Huell her responsibility. In-between drags of a cigarette, Kim tells Jimmy she wants to do it again. For now, the fun's not over.
Kim breaks bad
By the end of Season 5, Kim's journey finds her sinking deeper and deeper into the world of Saul Goodman. After marrying Jimmy, she becomes an extra party to his business with Lalo Salamanca, and soon after abandons her job at Schweikart & Cokely to focus on her pro bono clients. During the Season 5 finale, "Something Unforgivable," Kim is faced with a moral dilemma when Howard tries to persuade her that Jimmy is trying to sabotage his career. Kim simply laughs in Howard's face.
When she returns home to Jimmy, who is traumatized from his experiences in the desert and with Lalo, she's still seething about her confrontation with Howard. She begins to suggest more pranks for her and Jimmy to pull on Howard, which as usual for these two descends into romantic activity. After, Kim is still on the Howard train of thought, and begins conspiring to force a settlement for the Sandpiper case, which Jimmy had previously tried to do in Season 3 (via Entertainment Weekly).
This time, however, Jimmy's not as on board with Kim's delusions of grandeur. He tries to advise against her plan to derail Howard's career, saying it's not like her. Kim's response is as surprising as it is upsetting: she's more than willing to sacrifice Howard's career to net millions in settlement cash. As Kim fires finger guns at Jimmy when she walks away, the audience understands this is a dark moment for our formerly kind-hearted lawyer.
Kim threatens the Kettlemans
It's not long into Season 6 of "Better Call Saul" that Kim, who first showed her true colors in the Season 5 finale, starts causing mayhem. As the first step of their scheme to settle the Sandpiper case, Jimmy and Kim rope in the Kettlemans. These white-collar criminals were the main focus of Jimmy and Kim in Season 1, and they play an important part in tarnishing Howard's reputation in the second episode of Season 6, "Carrot and Stick."
However, to the surprise of Jimmy and Kim, Betsy and Craig Kettleman catch onto their scheme and confront them. Jimmy tries to offer them hush money, but Betsy refuses it in exchange for Jimmy exonerating her husband of his legal troubles from years back. Leave it to Kim to settle this dispute, as she immediately makes a call to the Albuquerque IRS to tell them of her suspicion of tax fraud coming from the Kettlemans. After Betsy hangs up Kim's call, viewers can see on Jimmy's face that this has gone too far.
Kim proceeds to threaten legal action against their business unless they give their customers the money they're owed and to never speak a word about Howard Hamlin to anyone again. In a New York Times interview, Rhea Seehorn and series co-creator Peter Gould likened this moment to a crossroads between Kim's drive for justice and her passion for the con. At this moment, Kim is all in on the dark side.
Kim pulls Mesa Verde
In Season 2 of "Better Call Saul," Kim has a more promising character arc. Halfway through the season, in the episode "Rebecca," she's facing the repercussions of recommending Jimmy to Davis & Main. Howard demotes her to doc review, and Jimmy's attempts to help her are rejected. Instead, Kim resolves to earn her way out of doc review by finding a new client for HHM.
What follows is one of the show's most iconic montage sequences, finding Kim meticulously searching for new clients. She highlights phone numbers; makes polite, if frustrating, phone calls; and tapes Post-It notes all around the HHM offices. Finally, she strikes gold in an old law school friend, Paige Novick, who works for Mesa Verde bank, which is looking to expand. Kim secures a meeting between Howard and Mesa Verde's CEO, Kevin Wachtell.
The montage ends on a sour note once Kevin and Paige leave. Although the meeting went well, Howard rejects Kim's offer to drum up a list of associates for the case, telling her she has enough to work on in doc review. This would be one of the first, but surely not the last, times that Kim's hard work and drive find her drawing the short stick.
Kim weighs in on Chuck vs. Jimmy
A lot of the first 3 seasons of "Better Call Saul" focus on Jimmy's relationship with his brother, Chuck. Although Jimmy is Chuck's primary caretaker due to Chuck's hypersensitivity to electricity, Chuck is also Jimmy's main obstacle in being accepted as a lawyer. Their clash of ideals culminates in a moment in Season 2 Episode 9, "Nailed," where Jimmy doctors Chuck's Mesa Verde documents to tarnish their business relationship with HHM. In Jimmy's mind, the client was procured for the company by Kim, so they belong to her.
Despite Jimmy's cover-up job, Chuck correctly assumes that his error was actually Jimmy's work. While handing Mesa Verde documents over to Kim, Chuck uses this opportunity to both confront Jimmy about his fraud and inform Kim of the deception. The two bicker back and forth in front of her, as Chuck accuses Jimmy of stabbing him in the back. Kim's silence throughout and glares at Jimmy show the audience that she understands the truth about Jimmy and is choosing her words carefully.
However, to Chuck's surprise, Kim disagrees with his theory. She thinks Chuck simply made a mistake, despite his insistence that it's all Jimmy's fault. Furthermore, Kim defends Jimmy to his brother, claiming that all he ever wanted was Chuck's approval. It seems as if Jimmy has fooled even her until they get back in their car, where she proceeds to punch him several times in the arms.
Kim confronts Howard
The finale of Season 3 ends in heartbreak when Chuck sets his house on fire during a relapse of his electromagnetic sensitivity. When Season 4 begins, Jimmy deals with the fallout from Chuck's death. At the end of Season 4 Episode 1, "Smoke," Howard visits Jimmy and confides that he thinks Chuck committed suicide, to which Jimmy reacts with little emotion. Sadly, Jimmy feels no empathy for Chuck, to the shock of both Howard and Kim.
In Episode 2 of Season 4, "Breathe," Kim fills in for Jimmy at a meeting with Howard to discuss Chuck's will. Following the tense scene an episode prior, Kim walks into this meeting with a lot of ire for Howard. Howard tells her that Jimmy can sift through the rubble of Chuck's house for keepsakes, and gives her both a check for $5,000 (Jimmy's minimum share of Chuck's will) and a personal letter for Jimmy's eyes only. The final twist of the knife: Jimmy is invited by Howard to serve on a scholarship board in Chuck's name, something Kim knows Chuck would never want.
Once she and Howard are alone, Kim explodes at him regarding his treatment of Jimmy. She accuses him of trying to make Jimmy feel bad with his theory about Chuck's death and curses him for making her deliver Chuck's final, likely antagonizing, words to Jimmy. Even though Howard expresses genuine guilt and wants to make things right, Kim tells him to leave them alone.
Kim breaks up with Jimmy
The final season of "Better Call Saul" has been a rollercoaster for fans worried about the fate of Kim, Jimmy, and their relationship. After a harrowing experience in Episodes 7 and 8, all is revealed in Episode 9, "Fun and Games," which sees the two recovering from the aftermath of Howard's death and Lalo's failed plan to assassinate Gus. For a very brief moment, it seems like maybe Kim and Jimmy can return things to the way they were.
That is, until Howard's wake, when Kim lies to Howard's widow and perpetuates their con that her former boss was a manic drug user. It's a whole new low for Kim, even after all she's been through. It's equally tragic yet understandable to watch her quit the law entirely. When Jimmy comes home to confront her, he discovers that she's packing all her things. Over tears, Rhea Seehorn and Bob Odenkirk give career-defining performances in this brutal exchange.
The end of Kim and Jimmy's relationship is a long time coming, though Kim's reasoning is more heartbreaking than anticipated. After observing Howard's wake, Kim concludes that the two of them hurt everyone around them. So much pain and sacrifice and chaos could've been avoided if Kim and Jimmy weren't having fun taking Howard down earlier in the season. The biggest tragedy of all is that her decision is the breaking point that turns a man we knew as Jimmy McGill into the heartless criminal lawyer Saul Goodman.
Kim finally lets go
After the breakup, Kim isn't seen again until the penultimate episode "Waterworks." In the show's signature post-"Breaking Bad" black & white, the audience sees Kim's new, mundane life in Florida working for a sprinkler manufacturing company. Her hair is darker, her boyfriend is bland, and she defers to the decisions of others. It all comes crashing down when she receives an unexpected call from Jimmy, who is living in Omaha as a Cinnabon manager named Gene.
After Kim tells Gene to turn himself in, Gene turns the tables and tells her to do the same, since she feels guilty about everything. What Gene probably doesn't expect is for Kim to do just that. She flies to Albuquerque, visits the old courthouse, and files an affidavit confessing to everything: their con to destroy Howard's reputation, his death, and the cover-up by Mike. Kim even goes a step further, taking the affidavit to Howard's widow, Cheryl, to fully come clean, although legally there's not much that can be done without hard evidence.
On the bus ride back to the Albuquerque airport, Kim crumbles under the weight of six years of guilt. It starts with a subtle tearing up until she's full-on sobbing surrounded by strangers. A woman nearby even puts her hand on Kim's arm in empathy. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Vince Gilligan (co-creator and the episode's writer and director) describes the moment as the culmination of Kim's feelings of horror, relief, catharsis, and immense guilt.
Kim stands up to Lalo
If fans have been worried about the fate of Kim Wexler since "Better Call Saul" started, Season 5 was the first time to really put her life into question. After Jimmy gets stuck in the desert with Mike transporting Lalo's bail money, Kim visits Salamanca in prison to gather information. Unfortunately, all this does is make her a party to Lalo's dealings with Jimmy, especially in the episode "Bad Choice Road," when Lalo visits their apartment to force Jimmy to recite his alibi several times out of suspicion.
It's one of the show's tensest moments, as Mike watches the scene from a nearby rooftop with a gun trained on Lalo. However, it's not until Kim steps up that she and Jimmy find out what's really going on: Lalo found Jimmy's car shot up in a ditch. She ruthlessly defends her husband from Lalo's suspicions, and gives the menacing criminal a harsh reality check about the state of his affairs: "If you don't trust your men with your money, you have bigger problems than if you trust Saul Goodman."
Though it seems like this moment is primed for Lalo to take his anger out on Kim, he knows she's right. Surprisingly, he walks out of their apartment without another word, leaving their apartment bloodstain-free... for now.
Kim shares a cigarette with a stranger
"Waterworks" proved to be a standout episode for Kim Wexler in a series full of standout episodes. While most of the time is spent focusing on Kim post-"Breaking Bad," one key moment finds her right before. She pays a visit to Saul Goodman's offices in Albuquerque to sign divorce papers, struck by the shell of a man she once loved paying her little attention.
When she walks outside for a smoke, she's surprised by the fact it's raining in Albuquerque, while the audience is surprised at the presence of Jesse Pinkman, with Aaron Paul in his signature beanie. She lends the stranger a cigarette as Jesse recognizes her from defending his friend Combo, and inquires about the legitimacy of this Saul Goodman guy. Jesse worries that a funny commercial on TV does not a good lawyer make.
Ironically, Jesse's instincts are correct, but Kim has neither time nor patience to tell him why. All she says about whether Saul is good or not is, "When I knew him, he was." As she runs off into the rain, Jesse hangs back, with a recommendation that will eventually land him in way more danger than Emilio could ever dream of. With Kim's relationship with Jimmy at its end, it feels poetic to see her cross paths with Jesse on his way into the world of Saul Goodman.