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Several characters in Better Call Saul walk the thin line between good and survival. And one of the strongest and most moving characters is Nacho Varga.
The story of Nacho takes you through tension, emotion, and sacrifice. It is a story of an ambitious drug dealer who finds himself stuck in the middle of two violent cartels controlled by brutal men. His story is both sad and courageous, implying how another person can act under the pressure of impossible choices. Yet he can learn to retain a little fragment of his soul.
A fascinating way into a dramatic career, through the whole story of Nacho, spanning the six seasons of Better Call Saul, and how a character who was not even seen in Breaking Bad has made such a lasting impression.
What happened to Nacho in Better Call Saul?
Who is Nacho Varga?
In Season 1 of Better Call Saul, Nacho appears as an elder partner in the Salamanca drug enterprise. He is smart, sharp, and more concerned than the others in the cartel world. He is an employee under Tuco Salamanca, who is violent and unstable. At the very inception, Nacho attempts to ensure order and that nobody must be killed unnecessarily, except Tuco, whose inconsistent actions set everyone close to him on fire.
In one of his first actions, Nacho detects promise in Jimmy McGill (the man who would become Saul Goodman) and tries to recruit him into his kidnapping scheme. However, to come out clean, when things get serious, Nacho is arrested, and Jimmy manages to bail him out cleverly. Since then, their lives have been torn apart time and again, in a way that has mostly kept Nacho within the cartel.
Conflicts with Tuco Salamanca
Tuco is the source of Nacho's problems. Nacho is loyal at the beginning of Better Call Saul, yet it does not take him long to realize that Tuco poses a significant threat. The indication of unnecessary violence may tip their operation in the wrong direction due to ultra-aggressiveness on the part of Tuco. Nacho knows that he wants to eliminate Tuco, but does not wish to attract a lot of attention to himself, so he puts an ingenious scheme into operation.
He partners with Mike Ehrmantraut, an ex-policeman and accomplished fixer, so he can goad Tuco into attacking the latter in front of people. The concept is that Tuco will be arrested, but not killed, so that the Salamancas would not suspect that Nacho has something to do with it. It is an effective plan.
Tuco is sent to prison, while Nacho becomes increasingly significant in the Salamanca hierarchy. However, this success comes at a price, as Nacho has now crossed a boundary. He has been betraying a powerful family behind their backs. Once they discover this, he is a dead man.
Hector Salamanca situation
Once Tuco is carted off, Hector Salamanca, the old yet sadistic head of the Salamanca family, begins to take a larger engagement in the drug business. In Better Call Saul, Hector is frightening all by himself as he is controlling, arrogant, and exceptionally violent. He starts to put pressure on Nacho's father, Manuel, who has been in the legal upholstery business, to incorporate his store in the distribution of the drug.
This is the place where we can observe the mild side of Nacho. He adores his father and does not wish to see his father anywhere near the cartel. Hector is not ready to accept a no. Amid the possibility of his father being killed, Nacho decides to take a significant risk by killing Hector, and no one would know.
In one of the most straining plot lines in Better Call Saul, Nacho replaces pills of Hector, which are used to treat heart conditions, with decoy pills in the hope that the older man would die of a heart attack. Later on, Hector succumbs.
He manages to live but is in a vegetative state, the same state we get to see him in in Breaking Bad, being unable to talk and in a wheelchair with nothing but a bell to speak.
Again, Nacho manages to eliminate an adversary. However, as always, there are consequences. Gus Fring, the covert opponent of the Salamancas and a paramount drug lord, discovers Nacho's involvement in Hector's mishap. Gus does not reveal himself. But he blackmails him.
Child labor with Gus Fring
Nacho is a pawn to Gus in Better Call Saul. He keeps Nacho close, making it appear that he trusts him, but in an actual sense, Gus is doing it because he is holding Nacho to ransom. He intimidates Nacho's father, and this makes Nacho do whatever he says. Nacho now finds himself between two inhumane powers: Salamancas and Gus. He is required to tell lies all the time, and any step he takes may cost him his life.
His work is to win the trust of the Salamanca family, particularly Lalo Salamanca, the youngest member and an incredibly unpredictable man in the Salamanca family. Lalo is witty, intelligent, and exceptionally dangerous. He becomes paranoid about Gus and hopes Nacho will report it all. Nacho is in stagnation. Gus will kill him once he receives information about the truth. The same thing will happen if he tells a lie to Lalo and Lalo discovers it. It is a lose-lose situation.
Run away and neglect
As it happens in Season 5 of Better Call Saul, Nacho is very much worn out. He is yet to save his father and live through the two cartels. By the time Lalo arrives at his residence, Nacho has to serve him, but he also gives details to Gus at the same time. Gus wishes Lalo dead, and he tells Nacho to assist him. In an ambush operation in the Lalo compound in Mexico, Nacho is involved in opening up the assassins.
He acts as if he is running away, and Lalo goes to defend himself. The shoot does not go well, Lalo does not die after being hit, and he knows that he was betrayed. Since this instance, Lalo goes out to hunt the traitor. After realizing that his cover is broken, Nacho takes off. He goes to Mexico, where he hides, but he is not a free person. Gus is not going to allow him to escape. Instead, he ends up as a captive prisoner.
Nacho's last offering
The end of Nacho is poignant and determined. Gus should not engage the Salamancas in war, and Lalo is a suspected dead person. Gus has to maintain peace and therefore wants Nacho to confess that he did the work by himself, under pressure from another cartel family. He is willing to sacrifice Nacho to the Salamancas, but only in a way that does not implicate Gus in his activities.
Nacho is ready to accept the plan, on his terms, though. He insists on the security of his harmless father. Nacho is well aware that he has no chance of getting out of the game alive and wants to die with some honor. In a stage handoff, Nacho delivers a false confession to Hector and the Salamancas. But then, he goes out of the script in Better Call Saul. He does not lie to them and opens up that he interchanged pills of Hector and allowed him to suffer.
He explains to them that the entire family is made of murderers. It is just an act of rebellion. Rather than seeing him die a gradual death after he is stripped naked and weakened by the two, Nacho picks up a gun, holds a hostage, and commits suicide by firing a bullet at his head. At that last moment, Nacho gains control over his life in this scene of Better Call Saul.
Nacho's legacy
Nacho Varga was never shown in Breaking Bad (not even in flashbacks), and still his story is regarded as one of the most emotional and humanistic aspects of the Better Call Saul Universe. He was not by any means a hero of sorts. He would deal drugs and be found with killers.
In Better Call Saul, Nacho is someone who attempted to defend people he loved, yet in his heart, he was there. He was smart, bold, and quite tragic. His death was not an issue of failure. It was a decision that let him regain control of his agency in a world where everyone kept trying to take control over him. He did not want to become somebody's pawn in the end.
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The story of Nacho Varga in Better Call Saul is a gradual transition into a world of violence, deceit, and fear. The thing about his journey is that he never desired or sought power and revenge. All he aimed to do was stay alive and protect his father. However, the more he got deep in the cartel world, the fewer options were available to him. Each step of his decision put him in more danger.
However, at the end of Better Call Saul, Nacho did find the courage to find his way out. He ensured that his father would always have a life. He told the truth to those who believed they had total control over him and dared to finish him off their way. The tale about him reminds us that there is always someone who, despite the grim world, will still retain their humanity. Nacho does not appear in Breaking Bad, but his tale alters the face of Better Call Saul forever.
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