A 13-year journey came to an end with the series finale of Better Call Saul earlier this year. The sixth and final season gave fans the last they’ll see of Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy McGill, aka Saul Goodman, the conniving lawyer first introduced in Breaking Bad. For years, Odenkirk had consistently garnered great praise for this role, including a recent Emmy nomination for the show’s final season.
Given these accolades, it wasn’t long for Odenkirk’s schedule to fill up after wrapping up his run on Better Call Saul. AMC will keep the actor around for a while longer by having him as the lead star of the upcoming dramedy series Straight Man, featuring Odenkirk in a different kind of role. How successful Straight Man turns out to be remains to be seen, but no matter what happens with this show or any other part Odenkirk accepts in the years to come, he says Saul Goodman will most likely be the role of his “lifetime.”
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“I wanted more time to wallow, and I’m going to wallow for the next ten years or more," Odenkirk tells Empire, still mourning how his journey as Saul Goodman has come to an end. “I know that was probably the role of my lifetime, and that’s a wonderful thing to have had. Some people don’t get that. I will be wallowing the rest of my life.”
Saul Goodman’s Journey Is Over
AMC
While Odenkirk has had some trouble saying goodbye to Saul Goodman, aka Jimmy McGill, he is happy with how the story turned out. It was a ending far unlike the events of the Breaking Bad finale with Bryan Cranston’s Walter White going out with guns blazing. Jimmy McGill conversely owned up to his wrongdoings for the first time in his life, putting him in federal prison for a very, very long time. Odenkirk felt this was the perfect ending.
“I would have predicted an ending with more explosions,” he said. “I’m so glad there weren’t. And yet the weird thing about it to me is that it really came from relaxing your grip on the characters. One of the struggles I had, and Rhea had this too, is that the characters were very emotionally intelligent about almost everybody they interacted with, and yet had these blind spots regarding their own behavior. And in the end the writers granted these characters the self-knowledge that I felt they always had.”
He added, “I thought it was beautiful. When I read it, I was like, ‘Yes, exactly, that’s what should happen.’”
Odenkirk can next be seen in AMC’s Straight Man. There are also reports that he’ll be back in action as a movie star for a planned sequel to Nobody. He’s done as Saul Goodman, but we have not seen the last of Bob Odenkirk.
