Better Call Saul season 5 spoilers follow.
Better Call Saul fans have had one major question since the beginning that has remain unresolved: why isn't Kim in Breaking Bad?
Played by the brilliant Rhea Seehorn, Kim Wexler quickly became a fan favourite, but given her close connection to Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), fans have been increasingly worried that she'll be killed off on the show.
Season five saw Kim become closer than ever to Jimmy's dodgy dealings, even having Kim directly confront the dangerous Lalo (Tony Dalton) to protect Jimmy. Kim and Jimmy even got married to stop her being able to testify against him.
Related: How Better Call Saul's season 5 finale sets up the final season
With only one season to go, we're still no clearer to working out why Kim isn't mentioned in Breaking Bad – and the mystery has to be solved in season six.
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So we thought we'd take a look at some of the most likely fates for Kim in the final season.
She's dead!
The darkest explanation for why we didn't see Kim in Breaking Bad is that she dies in the final season of Better Call Saul.
It'd be a clean way to deal with the mystery, but would also raise some questions over why Jimmy isn't exactly mourning the loss of his wife when we first meet him in Breaking Bad, as it wouldn't be that long after Better Call Saul.
As much as this seems like a simple solution, stars Rhea Seehorn and Bob Odenkirk just don't think this is the way that it'll go.
"I just hope she doesn't die and I hope there's some kind of reconnection that they do after it's all done," Odenkirk explained. "These guys don't make people die just to be dramatic. It's almost easy to make Kim die and then that's a huge shock to their system."
Seehorn added: "I agree with Bob that I think it would be too simple to just kill her off to get rid of her. But then again, the writers continually surprise me when I think, 'Oh well, that's the end of that story!' and then it's not."
She's in jail!
For so much of Better Call Saul, it never looked like Kim would stoop to Jimmy's level and engage in serious criminal activity. Sure, she took part in the odd scam with Jimmy, but she always did right in her legal career.
That all looks to have changed in the season five finale when she seems to genuinely suggest to Jimmy that they ruin the career of Howard (Patrick Fabian), just to get a settlement on the Sandpiper case and a payout.
We always thought the prequel show was about Jimmy turning into Saul, but could it really always have been about Kim breaking bad?
If they really do go through with Kim's plan (and Jimmy didn't exactly seem on board with it), then perhaps it could go wrong down the line and land Kim in jail.
She's just separated from Jimmy!
Along with killing Kim off, this feels like the cleanest way to address the fact that Kim isn't seen at all in Breaking Bad.
At some point during the final season, Jimmy and Kim will simply split up for what could be any number of reasons. Their relationship might simply run its course. Alternatively, Jimmy or Kim might be so offended with the other's actions that they break it off.
A more emotional reason – and one that could add weight to why Jimmy never even mentions Kim again – could be that in order to protect Kim from any wrongdoings, Jimmy has to break up with her and forget she existed in order to keep her safe.
Lalo is sure to play a major role in the final season and if he finds out about Jimmy's dealings with Mike, there's every chance that Lalo would be out for revenge.
She's with the cartel!
A long shot, for sure, but perhaps Kim isn't seen in Breaking Bad because she's off working for the Juárez Cartel.
Perhaps her confrontation with Lalo impressed him enough to make her a friend of the cartel. She doesn't work for Schweikart & Cokely anymore, so her legal services are technically available, even if she says she just wants to do pro-bono work.
And if her suddenly working for the cartel feels like a stretch, consider this quote from the show's co-creator Vince Gilligan before season five launched.
"It's an impending tragedy. I get more and more uncomfortable as a fan watching this show, seeing Kim Wexler head further down this path of very, what I consider to be, self-destructive behaviour," he told Vulture.
While we do see the Juárez Cartel at various points during Breaking Bad before it was taken apart by Gus Fring, it's not unfeasible that Kim was working away in the background during that time.
They're still together!
But what if Jimmy and Kim are actually still together during the Breaking Bad era and we just didn't know it?
It's unlikely given that the revelation will lead every fan to pore over Jimmy's scenes in Breaking Bad to find inconsistencies. She might have been there all along though and Jimmy was just shielding her from his latest dodgy dealings.
Odenkirk admitted to EW that while he doubted it would be the case, he said it was "possible for them to be together in that Breaking Bad era".
The big issue with this is that at the end of Breaking Bad, Jimmy has gone into hiding and he was distinctly alone at the time. Of course, it could be that he was keeping Kim a secret from everyone, so she might have met up with him afterwards.
It would be a sweet conclusion to Better Call Saul if we see more of Jimmy's life as Gene Takovic, and the final shot is of him reunited with Kim. Wouldn't that be nice?
Better Call Saul airs on AMC in the US and Netflix in the UK.
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Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
