Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 3 review: It’s the end of the road for Nacho; now give Michael Mando an Emmy!

Also on the episode is the question if Saul wants to be a friend of the cartel or a rat. Fans of Breaking Bad know just how this plays out

Ignacio Nacho Varga has some tough decisions to make

Better Call Saul

Story: Mike manages to smuggle Nacho bag to safe territory after all, but the writing on the wall’s clear for the latter. There’s no way this will play out well for him – the Salamancas want him dead for what he’s supposedly done to Lalo. Gus would also rather not have Nacho breathe, lest he spills the beans on Gus’ involvement in the attack at Lalo’s compound. Stuck between the devil and the deep sea, Nacho decides to make the ultimate sacrifice, his life for that of his father. He will fix the blame of the attack on a third party and get Gus a clean chit with the Salamancas, as long as senior Varga is kept protected.

Review: In only the third episode on the final season of Better Call Saul, we lose one of the best written and most splendidly performed characters on the show – Ignacio Nacho Varga. Yes, his survival instincts took him a long way, far away from the Salamancas, but there’s only one way for it all to play out. Nacho has to talk, but not about Gus’ involvement in the attack on Lalo. Someone else has to take the fall for that, and to make sure there’s no backtracking on this story, Nacho’s story also has to end.

Nacho also realizes that the only way to ensure his father, Manuel Varga, remains safe is by following Gus’ scripted version of events. Therefore, even the relief at seeing Nacho smuggled back to safety from Salamanca territory in Mexico under a false bottom of a truck is short-lived. He is going to be the sacrificial lamb, in what was one of the most tragic moments of the show this season. Nacho would rat out a not-heard-of-before cartel player, Alvarez, as the brain behind the whole operation and give Gus a clean chit and then try and make a run for it, at which point, he would be taken down by one of the henchmen on the scene.

Everything plays out as per plan, for the most part, only Nacho wanted his story to end his story on his own terms. In his final moments, Nacho not only pins the blame on Alvarez, but also tells Hector that he’s in a chair and unable to speak because he’d switched out the older Salamanca’s heart medication for sugar pills. Michael Mando, the man with the eyes that speak a thousand words, is mind-blowingly awesome in this sequence, and every other that he’s been a part of. But if this episode is not Emmy-deserving, then I don’t know what is.

Oh, by the way, Kim and Saul’s operation to take down Howard is still on, although that was the relatively smaller plot point of the episode. Turns out, the Assistant DA’s office is sniffing around Saul’s legal assistance of known members of the drug cartel and want him to snitch on his clients. And they want Kim to get him to do that. So, the question now is if Saul wants to be a friend of the cartel or a rat. Well, we know how that turns out.

Verdict: Terrific story-telling and some heart-breaking moments too. Stream it now!

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