Better Call Saul Solves a Major Breaking Bad Mystery

This Better Call Saul article contains spoilers for season 6 episode 11.

Ever since Breaking Bad’s preantepenultimate episode “To’hajiilee” aired in 2013, fans have been wondering whether Saul Goodman’s lovable bodyguard, Huell Babineaux (Lavell Crawford) got away from the criminal underworld to live a better life. The last time we saw the pick-pocketing mastermind, he was told by Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez (Dean Norris and Steven Michael Quezada) to stay put in a DEA safehouse after interrogating him on the location of Walter White (Bryan Cranston). 

The show leaves Huell sitting anxiously all alone in the room, never to be touched upon again in the ensuing three episodes of the show. And why would they? Huell is a minor character, and there was no time to give him any closure. The script has to be as lean as possible, and that doesn’t include putting a bow on the stories of bit parts.

It also led to a variety of memes and fun reactions online in the near-decade since that episode. Fans would tease that Huell was still waiting for someone to come back and get him, even though we can presume that the man would get tired of waiting and take control of his situation by leaving. It makes for good Twitter fodder though, right? 

Well, Better Call Saul finally gave us a concrete explanation for where Huell is in the eleventh episode of the sixth season, “Breaking Bad.” On a phone call with his secretary Francesca Liddy (Tina Parker), Gene Takovic (Bob Odenkirk) wants to know all about where his former associates have been hiding out since their operation blew up back in Albuquerque. 

She informs him that Huell was let go because the DEA was holding him under false pretenses. Huell decides to go back to New Orleans, Louisiana, which is where he grew up. We learned a little bit about Huell’s past and upbringing in the South during Better Call Saul’s fourth season when Jimmy and Kim (Rhea Seehorn) help him walk free after assaulting a police officer. 

So there you have it. Sometimes the answer to a mystery isn’t the most interesting outcome, rather the most obvious one. Huell committed plenty of crimes during his time working with Jimmy/Saul, but none that could lead to indictment directly related to the Walter White case. The DEA basically had to let him go because Hank and Gomie were using him to get closer to Walt, not because he was being investigated for any crimes. 

So even though the majority of characters in this universe fail to receive a happy ending, it would appear that Huell will be one of the rare outliers who will get a second chance at life. Hopefully he doesn’t mess it up, right? I guess we’ll never know. The memes about his eternal existence in a safehouse were funny while they lasted, though.