YMMV / Better Call Saul S6 E3: "Rock and Hard Place"

• Accidental Aesop: Don't have loved ones. Nacho fills a similar role to the one Jesse Pinkman did in Breaking Bad, both being young adults in the criminal underworld who find themselves wanting out as they get deeper into it. The main reason why Jesse gets to escape to a new life at the end of his story whereas Nacho dies at the end of his is that Nacho loved his father and refused to allow him to end up as collateral damage. He had many opportunities to run off to Canada and the new identity he had already set up for himself, but it would have been trivial for either Gus or The Cartel to just use his father as leverage to force him back. So, Nacho has to offer himself up to die, just so he can bargain for his father's safety. Jesse, meanwhile, had basically been disowned by his parents and strongly disliked them, so there was nothing to keep him from his new life.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • The ending does leave great interpretation for Nacho truly having earned Gus' respect after honoring their deal, a topic repeatedly brought up by Mike ever since the former entered his fold. Although Gus is initially wary of Nacho when he is seemingly contemplating reneging their deal, after he honors it, Gus seems to be startled throughout his ensuing rant, especially when he takes his own life. Although the closing scene is silent, much of its camera focus is on Gus as he walks off to leave. If one looks closely, his facial expression is one of fury, and the way he angrily pulls the car door suggests he is genuinely angered. Furthermore, the way he contemplates for a moment as Hector is desecrating Nacho's corpse leaves room to speculate on whether he saw himself in Nacho with his dying declaration of hatred against the Salamancas, and if the sacrifice reminded him of Max's own death.
  • When Mike mutters "Do it" under his breath, he clearly has Bolsa in his sights. Not Nacho. Was he urging Nacho to pull a Taking You with Me? Preparing himself to lay down cover fire and help kill the cartel men? Or, considering his open contempt for how Gus has treated Nacho, is he willing to kill everyone and damn the consequences?
  • As he makes the decision to kill himself, Nacho gazes out into the distance straight ahead. There has been considerable debate about whether he was simply staring ahead as he makes his decision or if this is his attempt to die while looking at Mike in the distance, as he's the one person at the confrontation who doesn't want Nacho to die.
• Award Snub: Michael Mando gave a brilliant performance, but was not nominated for an Emmy.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • The flower that sprouts where Nacho's body falls represents not only the end of one of the most tragic characters in the entire saga, but that the execution meeting is a turning point that will doom everyone involved. Gus's betrayal of Nacho (and Mike's failure to save him) end up leading to the events of Breaking Bad taking root... and appropriately, the flower is blue.
  • In an interview, Michael Mando drew a parallel between Nacho's fate and the ancient practices of Pre-Columbian Civilizations:
    "When I first got this part, I wanted to honor the New Mexican culture, and it was really important for me to play a character that was not a stereotypical brown-skinned bad guy. And I remember wanting to go all the way back to the histories of the Aztecs and the Mayans. And then I saw a documentary that didn’t portray them in the best light. They said that they believed in Human Sacrifice. They would commit human sacrifice for the gods to bring down the rain, and it sounded very barbaric. And then I heard a Latin American historian tell that same story, but he left out a really important detail. The strongest men in the village competed in a sport that the whole community watched, and it was the winners who willingly sacrificed themselves for the Gods to bring down the rain. So their relationship with life, death and the afterlife was very, very different from our Western understanding and fear of death. It wasn’t so much about if you die, it’s about when you die and what you die for. So I thought it was unbelievably beautiful that the episode starts with the rain falling down on this purple flower that also symbolizes enlightenment."
  • Mike is camped in the distance with his sniper rifle during the desert meeting with the Cartel. He will be the last man standing of those assembled at the meeting before following the others into the grave, with the fall-out of Ignacio's death taking the longest to reach him.
• Fridge Horror: The tortures that the Salamancas intended to inflict on Nacho, plus his being brought to the same location where Ximenez Lecerda had been executed, ends up casting the latter's death in an even darker light than it already was. Whereas it had previously been easy to imagine that Lecerda's undignified screaming before his death was just the result of him being a Minion with an F in Evil, now it's much easier to imagine that the Salamancas did horrible things to him beforehand, especially considering that he spends his final moments frantically denying that he had anything to do with Mike's hit on his truck.
• Nausea Fuel: Nacho having to submerge himself in oil to avoid being detected by the Twins. He then comes out hours later coughing and vomiting; imagine just how sickening having all of that oil seeping into parts of your body.
• Shocking Moments: While there was never any doubt Nacho could die before and during the production of this series considering his complete physical absence from Breaking Bad, few expected him to die in merely the third episode of a thirteen-episode Grand Finale. This is enforced by Saul namedropping Nacho as culpable in something huge during his frantic attempts at bargaining with Walt and Jesse, implying something significant happened between the two, but they never met again after the latter introduced him to Lalo.