Before Better Call Saul even began, Mike Ehrmantraut was considered a fan favorite by Breaking Bad viewers, but the prequel series would eventually change for the better. Beforehand, he was a new take on the action hero trope. The modern action hero archetype is young, buff, and, more than anything, invincible. That last adjective describes Mike well, but because of his old age, Mike was initially underestimated by viewers and his enemies. However, his ability to thwart his adversaries through his sharpshooting and criminal smarts always helped him prevail. Because of that, Better Call Saul didn’t have to do anything to make him more compelling–but it did.
Six episodes into Better Call Saul, Mike was already seen by audiences as one of the Breaking Bad universe’s best characters. However, in Better Call Saul season 1, episode 6, “Five-O,” an episode that featured two of Mike’s best quotes in Better Call Saul, Mike was vaulted up even further in audience estimation. A dive into his backstory made him resonate with fans even more.
Why Mike Became A Fan Favorite In Breaking Bad
Mike didn’t give viewers all that much to think about during his first several appearances in Breaking Bad, but that all changed after season 3’s episode 12, called “Half Measures,” aired. Mike’s most iconic scene happened when he gave Walt a speech about half measures. In that speech, he gave Walt an anecdote about how much he regretted sparing an incessantly abusive husband because it led to the husband killing his wife and how he would never make such a mistake again.
From there on out, Mike’s story only got better, as his dry and dark sense of humor – “I assure you I can kill you from way over here if it makes you feel any better,” remains one of Mike Ehrmantraut’s most badass quotes – along with his ability to call Walt out on what he truly is made fans grow so attached to him that Walt killing him in season 5 only further fermented their hatred for Walt. They could have left it there, and he would have still been a fan favorite, but Better Call Saul added a new layer to Mike.
How Better Call Saul’s “Five-O” Made Him Better
Mike gained new depth when the show delved into his backstory as a former crooked cop who tried and failed to protect his son from crooked cops. This episode took place in a flashback – in a prequel – which answered one of the questions about Mike before he moved to New Mexico. The episode delved into Mike killing two corrupt Philadelphia police officers who orchestrated his son Matt’s murder. While explaining what exactly happened to Matt Ehrmantraut was tragic enough on its own, what made it even worse was discovering why he was killed and his last conversation with Mike before the murder occurred. The tragedy behind not only Mike’s son being murdered, but why he was murdered, and what Mike did to try to stop it only made his story all the more devastating.
Despite killing the two cops, Mike understood why they did what they did. As he explained it, they killed his son because they were worried that he would report them to Internal Affairs, which would make lives their worst nightmare in prison with the criminals they put away. Despite Mike understandably murdering the men who killed his son, he still humanized them, demonstrating that even if he was a murderer, he wasn’t a savage. But it got even worse.
Originally, Matty planned to turn in the dirty cops in his precinct, but Mike stopped him, believing that doing so would only threaten his life. Mike went to extremes to convince Matty to take the money, going as far as confessing that he, too, was crooked. Even if it meant destroying his son’s image of him, Mike only wanted to save his son’s life. His efforts not only failed, but he forever tarnished his legacy in his son’s eyes. Mike received two harsh punishments – losing his son’s respect and then losing his son altogether – for trying to help, and it made viewers empathize with him more, making him an even better character than before.
The Rest Of Better Call Saul Made Mike’s Story Even Sadder
Humanizing Mike even more in Better Call Saul makes knowing his fate in Breaking Bad even sadder. His arc in Better Call Saul was all about how he gradually embraced the criminal underworld no matter how hard he tried to keep it at arm’s length. Anyone who watched Breaking Bad before they watched Better Call Saul knew Mike’s efforts would all be for nothing. By itself, that is among the show’s sadder elements knowing how much Mike loved his granddaughter and yet failed to provide for her thanks to Walter White. However, it gets much worse.
The biggest tragedy behind Matt Ehrmantraut’s death was that the corrupt cops who killed him only did so because they felt that they couldn’t trust him. Mike killed them obviously as revenge for murdering his son, but he also killed them believing he had a moral high ground compared to them because they only murdered Matt out of precaution. Mike ultimately realized that wasn’t the case as he rose through his ranks in Gus Fring’s drug empire. In season 4, German engineer Werner Ziegler proved to be a Matty Ehrmantraut-like loose end when he escaped from the construction site of a meth superlab he was building for Gus. When Lalo Salamanca tracked him down and almost got him to spill the beans, Werner proved he was untrustworthy. While they could have let him live, Mike killed Ziegler out of precaution, proving he was no better than Officers Hoffman and Fenske.
What makes Mike Ehrmantraut’s story so sad is that he was what Walter White tried to convince himself he was: someone whose skills as a criminal forced him into the line of work, but only because he wanted to provide for his family out of a guilty conscience. To think that such a pivotal character in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul only came to be because of Bob Odenkirk’s scheduling conflict with How I Met Your Mother speaks to how miraculous his story arc was.
