‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘Better Call Saul’ Star Giancarlo Esposito Can Imagine a Prequel Featuring Gus Fring
Too much Breaking Bad is never enough.
The Emmy award-winning drama ended in 2013, but even years later fans are still discussing Walter White and re-watching the series from start to finish. So far, there have been two spinoffs of the show.
But these two projects aren’t enough to keep Breaking Bad fans satisfied. One of the story’s former villains says he’d be open to revisiting the series with a spinoff about him. Here’s why Giancarlo Esposito (Gus Fring) thinks Breaking Bad isn’t over yet.
Gus Fring gets brutally murdered by Walter White on ‘Breaking Bad’
Most of the deaths on Breaking Bad include some drama, but none are as explosive — literally — as when Walter White uses Hector Salamanca as a suicide bomber to take out his nemesis, Gus Fring.
In an episode rife with symbolism and meaning, Walt manages to murder Gus after several failed attempts. It’s a gory and necessary development on Breaking Bad.
That final episode of Season 4 serves as the end of the Chicken Man’s story. For obvious reasons, he’s absent from the sequel, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie. But Fring does feature in the prequel series Better Call Saul and could easily inspire an entirely new spinoff based on him. Esposito even hinted he’s open to it.
Giancarlo Esposito thinks Gus Fring’s story could be its own show
Breaking Bad fans know that Gustavo Fring hails from Chile and grew up in extreme poverty. He attended a business meeting with Don Eladio in the late 80s along with his business partner, Maximino Arciniega. There’s some speculation that Max and Gus were in a romantic relationship.
Max gets murdered during a meeting with the cartel heads and Gus’ quest for revenge begins. It’s this plus the rest of his past history that Esposito thinks can be explored further.
“I have this whole storyline in the back of my head that [Gus] came from political royalty,” Esposito told Esquire, according to comicbook.com. “I feel like Gus came from the world of order. And that his order came. He was a military man. Out of the military, he gained the ability to observe. You can’t lead unless you can follow.”
“In my brain, he was high up in a military government,” he continued. “He could have stayed there and ran the country. It was handed to him. But he chose a different path to be his own man and to find his own power, regardless of what he was handed. This is what he chose.”
Gus Fring will be part of ‘Better Call Saul’ Season 6
Breaking Bad is long done, however, Fring’s story is not. The prequel Better Call Saul includes a deeper exploration of how Fring and Walter White eventually cross paths and what it all means.
Esposito is grateful for the part he’s been given and unless a spinoff gets announced, he’s content to finish out the series on a high note. “I don’t have any plans right now to do anything more with the Breaking Bad universe except for helping [Better Call Saul showrunner] Peter Gould and the writers finish up Better Call Saul. Having said that, I have surprised myself in the past, clearly,” Gilligan said during a 2019 Entertainment Weekly interview.
“But I’m starting to think — I used this expression a lot [when Breaking Bad ended] in 2013 — I don’t want to overstay my welcome. I hope I haven’t at this point.”
Most fans can’t get enough Gus Fring. Maybe there could be a spinoff later on down the line.
