Better Call Saul: Hank & More Breaking Bad Characters Returning For Season 5
Better Call Saul season 5 brings in even more major Breaking Bad characters, including Dean Norris' beloved beer-brewing DEA agent Hank Schrader.
Better Call Saul season 5 will feature even more Breaking Bad characters, including Hank Schrader. Bob Odenkirk’s Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman is of course the main character of Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad spinoff that’s about to kick off its fifth season on AMC (and was just renewed for season 6). But the slimy lawyer Goodman isn’t the only major figure from Breaking Bad who has appeared on the show.
In fact, Jonathan Banks’ fixer character Mike Ehrmantraut, who met his end at the hands of Walter White (Bryan Cranston) on Breaking Bad, was on Better Call Saul from the very beginning, and began forging his interesting relationship with McGill early on. Later, the show began bringing in more Breaking Bad characters, most notably Giancarlo Esposito’s cold-blooded drug kingpin Gus Fring and Mark Margolis’ cartel boss Hector Salamanca. Other smaller Breaking Bad characters have also appeared, including Saul’s bodyguard Huell (Lavell Crawford), unhinged drug dealer Tuco (Raymond Cruz) and twin cartel hitmen Leonel and Marco Salamanca (Daniel and Luis Moncada).
As Better Call Saul draws ever closer to merging storylines with Breaking Bad, season 5 will unsurprisingly feature even more characters from the original show. As revealed by AMC Networks on Twitter, Dean Norris’ Hank Schrader, Steven Quezada’s Steven Gomez and Robert Forster’s Ed Galbraith will all make their first appearances on the new season of the spinoff series. See the tweet teasing Hank and Gomey’s presumed first encounter with Saul in the space below:
The return of partners Hank Schrader and Steven “Gomey” Gomez will of course be an emotional experience for Breaking Bad fans, as the beloved characters were killed in the show’s final season during a desert shootout with neo-Nazis. The return of Ed Galbraith, the “disappearer” who helped Saul Goodman and Walter White escape Albuquerque and later in El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie also helped Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), will itself be poignant as actor Forster recently passed away (but obviously not before filming scenes for Better Call Saul).
It remains to be seen exactly what role the above characters will play in Better Call Saul season 5. It seems likely that Forster’s appearance will be more of a cameo than anything, as the show pays final tribute to the well-regarded actor. Hank and Gomez on the other hand could end up playing a fairly significant part as the show sees Saul becoming more-and-more involved with the kinds of underworld characters the two DEA agents would be charged with nabbing. Of course, there are some who dismiss these kinds of character returns as mere fan service, but that really all depends on how big a part they are given in the story. Yes, some Breaking Bad cameos have felt like mere hat-tips, but other characters like Mike and Gus have received further development on BCS, so perhaps Hank and Gomey will also get new chances to shine (and maybe Hank will even get to brew up some more Schraderbrau).
