Better Call Saul’s main characters, ranked by intelligence
With the last season of Rather call Saul brings the suspense from season 5 to a boiling point, characters have to think very fast to get out of deadly situations. Fortunately, the series is full of very intelligent characters, and seeing them seem is one of the series’ greatest joys.
Updated May 12, 2022 by Mark Birrell: In the strong worlds of business people, lawyers, and criminals in Albuquerque, characters need to be smart to cope, and it is these clashing intellects that end up being the most interesting parts of the show. So much of Better Call Saul revolves around people keeping secrets or not saying what they really think, audiences are often forced into the protagonists’ heads, and they are always fascinating places to be. However, some characters exhibit more complexity than others.
15 Tuco Salamanca
In both Breaking Bad and Rather call Saul, Tuco Salamanca is the first criminal player in major leagues, for which both the main characters and the audience are introduced, just as it is their introduction to the dangerous Salamanca family. Tuco is established quite solidly as both the least intelligent and the most volatile of the whole family, making him a major but inconsistent threat.
Jimmy is able to persuade him to murder two of his accomplices in the second episode of the series, and later Mike is able to capture Tuco in a situation that puts him in jail for a significant period of time. That said, in his rare moments of relative calm, Tuco seems very adept at being a dreaded drug lord.
14 Kevin Wachtell
Kevin Wachtell may be the CEO of Mesa Verde Bank and Trust, but it is a position he is suggested to have inherited instead of having served. Kevin is not a fool and can at least convincingly play the role of the straight-talking leader, but he is almost entirely dependent on his staff to do the right job for him.
Although Kevin is able to see all of Jimmy’s lowest qualities quite clearly, he is not able to see Kim manipulating him during the incident with the call center’s construction site in Tucumcari.
13 Stacey Ehrmantraut
Stacey certainly demonstrates a lot of intelligence as a hard-working mom and nurse, though she has not proven to be overly attentive. It took her a while to figure out that her husband was collaborating with a group of corrupt officers, including her own father-in-law, Mike.
Even after Mike admits this to her, she still does not realize that Mike continues to be involved in illegal activities. However, it’s still a possibility that Stacey knows of Mike’s illegal activities and chooses to ignore them as she needs his help with her daughter, Kaylee.
12 Howard Hamlin
Howard Hamlin, a senior partner at Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill, is very book-smart and a talented lawyer, but he has no street smarts. Despite eventually appreciating Jimmy’s hateful plans against him, Howard is mostly seen as a step behind Jimmy and Kim.
Part of the reason for this, which is also part of the reason Jimmy and Kim seem to hate Howard so much, is that Howard is distinctly self-absorbed. Nevertheless, he tries to do the right thing by people in general, especially his employees, even though it’s hard to see what he really stands for.
11 Clifford Main
Cliff Main is one of the senior partners at Davis & Main, a successful and well-respected law firm in Santa Fe that collaborates with HHM in the Sandpiper Crossing case. Aside from this, Cliff appears to be an old and trusted friend of Howard Hamlin, who often eats lunch with him and shares intelligent – albeit uninteresting – conversations about the legal world.
Although Cliff is often made to be a piece in both Jimmy and Kim’s plans, he seems more indifferent to their dangerous side than he seems to be unaware of it. Cliff may be a little old-fashioned, but not heartless or stupid, he understands what Jimmy is doing when he deliberately tries to get fired from Davis & Main so he can walk away with his bonus, and Cliff keeps cutting off Jimmy from him so quickly as possible. All in all, it’s a smart move.
10 Paige Novick
Paige is the highly intelligent and professional senior adviser to Mesa Verde, who actually serves as Kevin Wachtell’s right hand man, and she had the common sense to fight to hire Kim to help represent them in legal matters.
But when things started to go awry with the construction of a new call center in Tucumcari, Paige seemed unaware that Kim was working against her behind the scenes. It’s possible that Paige, like Rich Schweikart, could really see what’s going on and just chose not to say no because of her friendship with Kim, but she’s mostly seen as a kind of company lackey.
9 Hector Salamanca
Hector is dangerous, clever, and resourceful, but he is not smart enough to know when to hold back and how to run his business using anything other than fear tactics. Therefore, he was only the right hand of Don Eladio. While established as a senior member of the cartel, he was never considered good enough to take over.
Hector is also not smart enough to see Nacho’s plan to kill him despite having been directly under his nose for a long time, not to mention Gus Fring, whom Hector has suspected for a long time, but never is able to reveal.
8 Rich Schweikart
A co-founder of the law firm Schweikart & Cokely, Rich starts out as something of a villain in the series, representing Sandpiper Crossing despite deceiving seniors. But over time, Rich becomes a much friendlier figure and even mentors Kim and takes her into his very successful company.
Of the people involved, Rich is the only person who sees through Kim’s lies in the Tucumcari situation and says something about it, and no less to Kim’s face. But he handles the situation with tact and respect while still being firm. Rich is a realist who is both charming and experienced, and who seems to escape any major fallout from Jimmy and Kim’s actions.
7 Ignacio ‘Nacho’ Varga
Nacho tilts on the moral line, acts as a double agent and takes risks to try to get out of the cartel industry and save his father from harm. He is smart and calculating, like the right hand of Tuco Salamanca. He is in many ways the mastermind behind the operation.
But he has made some mistakes, such as his messed up attempt to kill Hector. Still, he has a way of reassuring the often impulsive Tuco and others. He is the voice of reason among the more intimidating criminals, which makes him smart enough to work with all the characters in the series. In the end, though, he’s just a piece of cake.
6 Mike Ehrmantraut
Always with a seemingly calm demeanor, Mike constantly scans every scene and person and analyzes the situation. It’s the result of many years of work as a police officer, and even though he was corrupt, it required a lot of skill and wisdom to accomplish the things he did.
He continues to use his knowledge, skills and intuition to engage in criminal behavior, always one step ahead of law enforcement and his competition.
5 Jimmy McGill / Saul Goodman
Although so many people underestimate Jimmy, including his own brother, he is really extremely clever. He was able to study hard to pass the law degree while working in the mailroom of his brother’s law firm and has used his knowledge of the law to get all kinds of clients out of the jam or to use loopholes to get what he wants. Garden.
Sure, he may not always use his knowledge in morally acceptable ways, but there is no doubt that he is one of the most intelligent and resourceful characters in the program. Jimmy evades capture long after the events of Breaking Badand fans are still waiting to see how it all ends for him, and some come up with their own theories on Reddit.
4 Eduardo ‘Lalo’ Salamanca
Like Nacho, Lalo Salamanca is a character who is once mentioned very briefly in Saul Goodman’s introductory episode of Breaking Badappears only in Rather call Saul suddenly in season 4. Pretty much from the beginning, Lalo cements himself as not only the smartest of the Salamanca family, but as one of the best and most intelligent villains in both series.
Lalo is just as violent and as ruthless as his relatives, but he also thinks several steps ahead. He has proven to be a worthy opponent for Gus Fring, though it’s hard to see how the timeline for events in Breaking Bad allows him to get to the top in that fight.
3 Gustavo Fring
Breaking Bad shows that Gus is playing a long game and waiting quietly until the perfect time to strike and take revenge on the cartel. He perfectly plans his business by using his fast food restaurant, Los Pollos Hermanos, as cover for his criminal activities.
He has patience and can think out of the box. He generally acts like a seemingly nice and attentive restaurant owner, while he really is a cold and calculating killer. He comes up with sneaky but very clever plans to exterminate enemies and make sure he always gets what he wants.
2 Kim Wexler
Kim Wexler is undeniably one of the smartest characters in Rather call Saul, which demonstrates the ability to argue against Jimmy and Lalo and win. Like Jimmy, she is self-made and incredibly successful. The difference is that Kim does most of it by playing by the rules.
Her relationship with Jimmy defines her in the show as she follows him down into the abdomen of Albuquerque’s criminal world, where the audience is never quite sure how in control of the situation she really is. When she does not show up Breaking BadKim’s fate is still a mystery to fans.
1 Charles ‘Chuck’ McGill
Restless as he was, Chuck was a brilliant legal mind and a co-founder of Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill along with Howard Hamlin’s father.
He graduated magna cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center and became a much-sought-after criminal defense attorney who won a precedent-setting case. He had refined taste and detested Jimmy’s conman ways, as well as his ability to cut corners but still gain the respect of charming people. Although he lacked Jimmy’s ability to communicate it, Chuck saw things as they really were.
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