‘Better Call Saul’ Star Patrick Fabian on Howard Hamlin’s Fate in Season 6 (Exclusive)

Better Call Saul‘s final season is well underway and as the last episodes unfold with a fervent intensity, the series has audiences on edge with their favorite characters including the ultimate fate of Howard Hamlin played by Patrick Fabian. Following its two-episode premiere last week, which found Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) fueling the transition of Jimmy McGill to Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) with her attempts to take down Howard, Fabian sat down with PopCulture.com to address his character’s direction in the upcoming episodes.

Following Jimmy’s outburst at the country club as a way to drop drugs in Howard’s gym locker after the Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill co-founder’s golf session with Davis & Main’s senior partner, Clifford Main (Ed Beagley Jr.), the outcome was ultimately to create seeds of doubt for Howard’s reputation. Sharing how Howard has always been a “surrogate father” to Jimmy, Fabian tells PopCulture that with the show starting off as a lawyer show and transitioning to a crime drama, there has been an “interesting” convergence between the two.

“It’s a lawyer show for me. Matter of fact, I sit down and watch it just like all the fans on Monday nights at AMC at 9 p.m. on AMC and I’m like, ‘What are we doing in the desert? What are all these guns going on here?’ My parents watch the show too and they’re like, ‘Oh, we like the lawyer part’ and I’m like, ‘I bet,’” he smiled. “[But] I was like, ‘Where do paths cross? Where’s the intersection of those two things?’ And the great thing about the writers, about Peter [Gould] and Vince [Gilligan], is that they don’t do anything just for show or just as a splash to be like, ‘Ooh, wouldn’t it be great if this happened?’ All the things that we find out that happen in Season 6, whether they cross or they don’t cross, are in service to the story that they set up.”

Keeping mum on his character’s own direction, Fabian admits he has always wanted Howard to share a scene with Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) but discloses how Banks doesn’t recommend it — considering the nature of Mike’s line of work. “We were starting to film Season 2 and I called Jonathan Banks, and I was like, ‘Jonathan, I really hope I get to have a scene with you. I’d really like Howard and Mike to have a scene,” Fabian says before sharing a glimpse of his Banks impression. “He just goes, ‘No, you don’t, Patrick. You with me?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, you know what? Maybe you’re right. Maybe that’s not a good idea.’”

Adding how being a part of the show has been a “real pleasure,” Fabian says that with each season, he has been most surprised by how the writers have given Howard “another window of his personality,” an element that has allowed the audience to gain a greater insight into who he is. “I think, the fans to be able to be like, ‘Oh, I hadn’t considered that about Howard or, oh, I hadn’t considered that. That surprises me,’” he said. “That’s happened consistently from the very beginning and that doesn’t change for Season 6. There are definitely going to be windows where people go, like, ‘I didn’t know he was like that either.’”

Fabian credits the writers and showrunners for the show’s mass appeal and reveals he is “very confident” that fans of the show will be “absolutely satisfied with how it all resolves” by Episode 13. “It really delivers on all the things that you want it to deliver and it answers questions and it’s exhilarating, it’s a rollercoaster ride, but nobody wants a rollercoaster to end. They want to go again.”

Better Call Saul Season 6 airs Monday nights on AMC at 9 p.m. ET. All episodes of Better Call Saul are available to stream on AMC+ and Netflix. For more on the series and all your favorite AMC shows, keep it locked to PopCulture.com for the latest.