‘Better Call Saul’ Renewed by AMC for Final Sixth Season

The fifth season of Better Call Saul isn’t slated to premiere until next month, but the show already has its eye on the big finale. Today, showrunner, co-creator and executive producer Peter Gould announced at the Television Critics Association Press Tour today that the legal drama has been renewed for a sixth season, which will also be the show’s last. The final season will be 13 episodes which will air sometime in 2021.

“From day one of Better Call Saul my dream was to tell the complete story of our complicated and compromised hero, Jimmy McGill,” Gould said at the TCA tour. “We couldn’t be more grateful to the fans and critics who are making this journey possible. Next month we start work on the sixth and final season — we’re going to do our damnedest to stick the landing.”

Gould created Better Call Saul with Breaking Bad showrunner Vince Gilligan. It premiered in early 2015 and is both a prequel and sequel to the acclaimed AMC drug trade drama. It stars Bob Odenkirk, who reprises his role as smooth-talking “criminal” lawyer Saul Goodman. While it largely chronicles the lawyer’s humble beginnings as Jimmy McGill, each season begins with a black-and-white segment that shows his post-Breaking Bad life as Gene, a Cinnabon manager hiding out in Omaha, NE.

Along with Odenkirk, the series has brought back a number of beloved Breaking Bad characters, including Jonathan Banks as Mike Ehrmantraut and Giancarlo Esposito as the ruthless drug lord Gus Fring.

This news also confirms what Esposito told Collider about its finite future back in April.

“It’s tricky with [Gilligan]. If you look at the Breaking Bad model, he said five years, five seasons, but it was really five and six,” a reference to its final season being split in half. “There will be six seasons,” the actor continued. “It seems like that’s the way, the comfortable way, to end this show.”

The ending of Better Call Saul has always been a subject of curiosity among fans, given that each new season brings it closer to the events of Breaking Bad. Odenkirk first made his appearance in the season two episode “Better Call Saul,” and quickly became a fan-favorite.

Over the course of the show’s first four seasons, Better Call Saul has earned 32 Emmy nominations, three Golden Globe nominations, as well as a Peabody Award in 2018.

The fifth season of Better Call Saul will kick off Feb. 23 on AMC.