‘Better Call Saul’: Fans Are Hoping Nacho Introduces Jimmy to Ed the Vacuum Repairman and Escapes the Cartel
“I need a new dust filter for my Hoover MaxExtract PressurePro model 60. Can you help me with that?”
Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul fans know exactly what that phrase means. It’s code for a person requiring a new identity, and at different points, Walter White, Jesse Pinkman, and Saul Goodman have all used Ed “the Disappearer” Galbraith’s pricey yet effective services to disappear into new lives.
Ed doesn’t ask questions beyond how hot the person is and from that, he determines the price of giving them new lives and new identities. The flash-forward scenes we see of Jimmy/Saul masquerading as Cinnabon manager Gene Takovic are all courtesy of Ed’s unique skill set.
Still, we haven’t yet figured out how Jimmy becomes acquainted with Ed the vacuum repairman. Fans are hoping they meet through Nacho.
Nacho will either die or escape into a new life
Ignacio “Nacho” Varga is stuck in a life of crime as a close friend of Tuco Salamanca and key employee for the cartel. We’re first introduced to Nacho in Better Call Saul Season 1 when he talks Tuco out of killing Jimmy after a scam gone wrong.
But we’re in a unique situation knowing how the story ends and noticing how Nacho is nowhere to be found in Breaking Bad. That means he either gets killed sometime before Walter White enters the drug game or he escapes into a new life, which we already know he’s been fantasizing about doing.
Gus Fring knows how to intimidate Nacho
Fring has a vested interest in keeping Nacho close as he’s feeding him information about Lalo. To keep him on his side, Fring threatens the one person Nacho loves most in the world: his father.
The relationship between Nacho and his father Manuel is fraught with tension because he wants his son to stop being involved with illegal activities. Manuel owns an upholstery shop that he was hoping to pass on to his son. But despite their differences of opinion, Nacho fiercely loves his father and tries everything to keep him away from the dangerous people he associates with.
Will Nacho escape the cartel alive?
The situation can’t continue as it is now, with Nacho working for Fring and Lalo without making any mistakes. There’s one moment when Nacho goes into his safe and looks at two fake Canadian passports for himself and his father, which clearly means he’s fantasized about trying to escape into a new life. But will he go through with it?
If Nacho doesn’t use the passports he already has, he might employ the help of Ed the Disappearer to leave for good. And that would explain why he never makes an appearance on Breaking Bad plus fill in the question of how Jimmy makes Ed’s acquaintance. It would be a much happier ending than the more likely tragedy of Nacho being killed by the cartel.
We’ll be watching closely to see how this fan theory plays out, plus curious to see how producers handle future scenes with Ed now that the actor who played him, Robert Forster, died in 2019.
Catch new episodes of Better Call Saul on Monday nights at 9 ET on AMC.
