Better Call Saul: There’s a Hidden Easter Egg in That Parking Garage Meeting Between Jimmy McGill and Kevin Wachtell
One of the most satisfying aspects of the Breaking Bad prequel, Better Call Saul, is how well it rewards fans for paying attention. There are enormous opportunities for foreshadowing and subtle references to the original show, from having characters making ominous statements to using specific, Walter White reminiscent graffiti on the side of a payphone. The show was made for sleuths.
These Easter eggs are hidden throughout the entire series. That’s why it’s not even slightly surprising that Episode 6 included yet another bit of hidden symbolism, only this time, it was referencing a classic piece of literature.
[Spoiler Alert: Spoilers ahead for Better Call Saul, Season 5, Episode 6]
Jimmy is helping Kim take down Kevin at Mesa Verde
The trouble between Kevin and Kim started when his company, Mesa Verde bank, decided to build a call center on a piece of property where homeowner Everett Acker was currently living. Mesa Verde had legal rights to the land, but did they have the moral right to take it away from him? These questions forced Kim to question whether she should be defending her client or secretly defeating them.
Ultimately, Kim decided to enlist Jimmy to help her force Mesa Verde to abandon their plans and move the call center. At the last minute, she tried to abandon the con and pay Acker out of her own pocket to make it right. But Jimmy went ahead with their scheme anyway, infuriating Kim and forcing Kevin to make a deal to save his reputation.
Kevin and Jimmy strike a deal in the parking garage
After showing a potentially damaging commercial and threatening a copyright infringement lawsuit, all of which would destroy Mesa Verde’s reputation, Kevin leaves his team of lawyers (including Kim) frantically planning damage control and heads off to secretly find Jimmy and make a deal of his own.
We see Kevin and Jimmy meet up in a parking garage, a setting that’s very familiar to Better Call Saul fans. But there is one detail that some fans might have missed. As Kevin heads to the meeting, we see that the two men are meeting on level 8 of the structure. This detail says more than you think.
The parking garage represents Dante’s depiction of hell from ‘The Divine Comedy’
Dante Alighieri’s narrative poem lives on as one of the great classics of Western literature. In the most famous section, Inferno, Dante takes readers on a journey through the eternal fires of damnation and divides the underworld into “sections” according to the nature of sins.
Level one was made for unbaptized pagans and disobedient Christians. The second level includes the lustful, the third is reserved for the gluttonous, and the fourth is for the greedy. The fifth circle of hell was made for those who sinned out of anger while the sixth was for the heretics. Violent criminals found themselves in the seventh circle.
Jimmy is subtly accused of being a fraud
Kevin and Jimmy find themselves on level 8 amongst the fraudulent. Which makes sense when you consider how Jimmy has been acting lately. In Dante’s epic poem, the only people closer to the devil are those in the ninth circle, the traitors.
It’s just another example of a clever, meaningful reference added to the show just for perceptive fans.
Catch new episodes of Better Call Saul on AMC Monday nights at 9 p.m. ET.
