Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for Season 6 of Better Call Saul.
The opening scene in “Axe and Grind,” the sixth episode of Better Call Saul's final season, is one of the most quietly tragic in the show. Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian), an attorney who serves as the managing partner at Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill, carefully and delicately prepares a morning coffee for his wife Cheryl (Sandrine Holt) with the care of an artist constructing their magnum opus. He tops it off with a foam drawing of the peace symbol, then leaves it on the kitchen countertop for her to enjoy. Except she barely notices it, instead pouring it straight into her travel mug without even a hint of recognition, all while making a sly comment about the guest bedroom that Howard has spent the past 18 months sleeping in. Howard doesn’t say anything, but the look on his face after she’s strolled her way out of the house says more than enough. It paints a grim image of a man desperate to save a marriage he’s too proud to admit is over, and his attempts to keep up the appearance of normality only heightens the tragedy.
One episode later Howard is dead, shot by Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton) in one of the most nonchalant deaths in television history. It comes after Howard confronts Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) and Kim (Rhea Seehorn) in their apartment following weeks of a targeted harassment campaign that culminated in Howard botching a crucial business meeting about the Sandpiper case (a class-action lawsuit that has been at the core of HHM with Season 1). By convincing his business partners that he is a drug addict (achieved by lacing him with a psychotropic drug before the meeting), they ensure the lawsuit is brought to a swift and abrupt end, guaranteeing Jimmy a large cash payment while also destroying Howard’s reputation in the process. After piecing together their con, he marches his way to their apartment, but his revenge-fueled speech is cut short by the arrival of Lalo, who proceeds to shoot him with barely a second glance. Howard’s murder is made to look like a suicide by drowning, and with no one else privy to the truth, his legacy as a narcotic-riddled psychopath is etched into stone above the entrance of the once respected Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill.
It’s a testament to the talents of Peter Gould, Vince Gilligan, and the rest of the Better Call Saul team that they can make Howard’s death one of the most tragic moments in a show that has tragedy etched into its very design. When we’re first introduced to him (way back in the days of Season 1 that seem increasingly innocent with every passing episode), he appears in a more antagonist role, with his smug demeanor and constant belittling of Jimmy ensuring no one will be looking upon him positively.
This reaches an apex in Season 1's “Pimento,” which sees him refusing to allow Jimmy to work on the Sandpiper case even though he was the one to bring it to HHM’s attention. It’s a scene full of empty platitudes and pompous gestures designed to obfuscate a fact that everyone present already knows — that Howard simply doesn’t like Jimmy. While his earlier actions could be explained as an egotistical lawyer who’s spent so long in the world of business that he’s forgotten how to interact with people, there’s nothing to justify such appalling treatment of someone who had only wanted to benefit him and his company. Before Howard has even finished speaking, the first embers of what will become the biggest mistake of Jimmy’s life are beginning to burn, but at this stage there’s little doubt most of the audience will be cheering him on.
But Better Call Saul is not a show that reveals its cards so openly, and even before the credits have rolled on “Pimento,” the scene has undergone a stark transformation. The final scene reveals that it was Chuck (Michael McKean), Jimmy’s brother and the M in HHM, who orchestrated the whole encounter, believing that Jimmy should not be allowed to work at such a prestigious firm. It’s a brilliant scene, and one that allows Odenkirk and McKean to give some of the best performances of their careers, but it’s easy to overlook how it recontextualizes Howard’s actions as well. Rather than being an arrogant lawyer who lets personal feelings get in the way of potential clients, we instead learn that he was just following orders from his business partner, mentor, and (most importantly) friend. The same friend who was too cowardly to say all of this to his own brother’s face and so exploited his relationship with the remaining name partner at HHM to keep his own hands clean. We later learn that Howard disagreed with Chuck’s decision but was unwilling to throw years of goodwill down the drain over just one disagreement, and the fact that he agrees to go along with the plan (knowing full well that it will cause irreparable damage to his relationship with Jimmy) speaks volumes about his respect for Chuck.
But it also establishes a painful image of Howard that only grows worse the more we learn about him. He’s caught between two brothers who love and hate each other in equal measure, unable to do anything but watch as his bull-headed reverence for Chuck drags him into the firing lines of someone he holds no animosity against. Following Chuck’s suicide in the Season 3 finale “Lantern," Howard’s characterization undergoes such a radical change it makes his previous appearances seem like a misremembered dream. Overnight he's a new man, one who spends his restless days and sleepless nights in a state of constant agony while deriding himself for his part in Chuck’s death. The scene where he confides this to Jimmy following the funeral is a rare moment of humility from a man who’s spent his whole life behind expensive suits and a fake tan. It’s a heartbreaking monologue that will have even his most fervent of critics rethinking their perspective on him, but not as heartbreaking as the scene one episode later when Kim berates Howard for his narcissistic speech, turning what should have been an occasion to mourn Chuck into a self-aggrandizing moment designed to guilt people into feeling sorry for him. For the first time in 42 episodes, Howard is lost for words. His voice breaking, he asks what he can do to put things right. “Nothing,” she responds.
From this point on, the Howard Hamlin we see is not the same person who incited such hatred from the audience all those seasons ago. The shadow of his former mentor looms strong, influencing his every decision while continually reinforcing just how much he cared for Chuck. He adopts a more genteel persona and sets about redeeming himself for his past mistakes, even offering Jimmy the job that Chuck had always prevented him from getting. Jimmy’s response? Throwing bowling balls at his car, the first of many (initially) harmless pranks. Even after Howard realizes that Jimmy is the person responsible for said ‘pranks’, he takes the moral high ground by simply rescinding his offer about the job and leaving things there, avoiding the temptation to turn things into an elaborate game of two wrongs make a right. Later he confides to Kim about what her now-husband has been up to, a gallant attempt to do the right thing that instead ends with her laughing in his face about the whole ordeal. The way Howard just walks away, his usual crisp exterior hiding the hurt he feels that his former student has abandoned him so brazenly, is wrenching to watch.
In a final act of tragedy, his most chivalrous moment comes in the same episode that culminates with his death. In advance of the make-or-break meeting between HHM and Schweikart & Cokely, the firm defending Sandpiper Crossing from their lawsuit, Howard meets Irene (Jean Effron), an elderly resident at a Sandpiper care home who serves as the class representative on the case. While Irene is very disconcerted about the situation, agonizing over how long things are taking when (to put things bluntly) someone of her age doesn’t have the luxury of waiting around for the perfect result, Howard is quick to put her concerns to rest. He kindly and respectfully explains to her everything that will happen today, reiterating that she is his boss as opposed to the other way around. When he offers to push her in a wheelchair to the meeting himself, or asks his assistant to make her a cup of chamomile tea with a touch of honey (just the way she likes it), he’s not doing it in a faux attempt to seem nice while contemplating all the money she’s about to make him. He’s doing it because he genuinely cares, a rare lawyer who puts ethics over money and power. Because he’s spent the past six seasons seeing exactly what the cantankerous pursuit of such things does to a person, and he’s come out the other side a better man for it.
But then a couple of hours later he’s dead, shot by a high-ranking member of the cartel after watching the only positive thing in his life crumble to dust right before him. His death serves as a pivotal moment in Jimmy’s transition from good-natured criminal defense lawyer Jimmy McGill to "criminal"’ defense lawyer Saul Goodman, and ensures that anyone familiar with him from Breaking Bad will never see him in the same light again, but it’s important not to forget the person responsible for this change.
Better Call Saul has its fair share of surprising twists, but turning the once villainous character of Howard into the show’s brightest ray of light is perhaps its most surprising. Among a cast of morally corrupt characters who find themselves descending further and further into the world of criminality despite their best intentions, he’s practically the only one to take the opposite route. That his loyalty to someone he had held as a close friend for years was the sin that ultimately led to his downfall is a harrowing thought, and undoubtedly a defining moment in the show. He’s one of the most fascinating characters Gould and Gilligan have ever created, and also Better Call Saul’s most tragic figure.
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