Why walter shot mike

Before Mike built a life in New Mexico, he was a corrupt cop in Philadelphia for many years. His son, Matty, followed in Mike's footsteps by joining the department where he was partnered with Troy Hoffman Lane Garrison. Like Mike, Troy was a corrupt member of the department. When he was offered a kickback from fellow officer Jack Fensky Billy Malone , Matty was brought into the deal. After initially rejecting, Troy and Jack viewed Matty as a liability , so they set up an ambush to kill him.

After figuring out the truth, Mike avenged his son's death. Through a Better Call Saul flashback in season 1, Mike led Troy and Jack to believe he was drunk after telling them he knew the truth about the murder. When the pair tried to kill him too, Mike used a hidden gun to eliminate Matty's killers. The man had trouble keeping the details of the lab a secret, which he was warned about multiple times. After sneaking out of his living quarters, Werner inadvertently revealed intel on the lab's construction to Lalo Salamanca Tony Dalton.

With the crime family serving as one of Gus' biggest enemies, Gus had no choice but to punish Werner. Mike fought for the engineer to have a chance to return to work, but Gus had his mind made up. Knowing his fate, Werner asked for one final walk outside to look at the stars. While he did so, Mike shot him in the head, falling into a depressive state after the event. In the Better Call Saul season 5 episode titled "Bagman," the Salamanca family acquired money for Lalo's bail from a cartel site in Mexico.

To safely deliver it, they hire Jimmy McGill aka Saul Goodman to transport bags of cash from a remote location. During the return trip, Jimmy was ambushed by a convoy of Colombian gang members. The leader, Jefe Gabriel Rodriguez , ordered his men to steal the money and to kill Jimmy. Before one of the gang members pulled the trigger, he was shot by a sniper.

You are a time bomb. Tick tick ticking. And I have no intention of being around for the boom. He found Walt to be selfish, arrogant, and egotistical, plus reckless with who he killed and why. Mike was forced to get along with Walt because he was also working for Gus. But after Walt murdered Gus, the dynamic changed completely. All along, Mike was paying his guys in prison to keep quiet, and they got a substantial cut of the drug profits.

Mike does overnight surveillance without Stacey's knowledge to investigate the gunshots. He learns the "gunshots" are actually the sounds of newspapers being tossed by a delivery person in the early morning. At work the following day, Mike receives a call from Stacey, who still believes she heard gunfire, and points out a hole in her siding that she tearfully insists is from a bullet.

Despite knowing that there was no gunfire and the hole in the siding is just wear and tear , Mike tells her what she wants to hear—that he will help her get out of the neighborhood. Mike meets with Dr. Caldera in order to find more jobs, but refuses to do any violent work. The vet points out to Mike that if he wants "next level pay", he must be willing to do "next level work.

Shortly after, Nacho hires Mike to assassinate his boss, the erratic drug kingpin Tuco Salamanca. Mike ultimately decides against doing the hit, as he realizes that Tuco's death would draw the attention of the Mexican drug cartel. Instead, Mike makes a call in advance to the police from a payphone across the street from a restaurant where Tuco does accounting with his dealers.

Then, Mike drives over and deliberately swipes Tuco's car, enraging him. Acting clueless, Mike goads Tuco to beat him senseless just as the police arrive. As a result, Tuco is arrested and is imprisoned for assault and robbery, putting him out of the picture for five years. Nacho asks Mike why he went through all that trouble to avoid killing Tuco for half the payoff, but Mike refuses to answer. Mike being assaulted by Tuco Salamanca. Mike and Nacho's orchestrated takedown of Tuco does not come without consequences.

Mike refuses the offer. In response, Hector begins harassing Mike into reconsidering, first by having men break into his house to scare him. After the meet, he splits the pay with Nacho, refunding him for the failure of his previous work on Tuco. Mike hires Jimmy again, this time to help him provide an amended statement as Hector had requested to the district attorney, though the DAs highly suspect Mike has been paid off by the Salamancas. Mike later helps Stacey with purchasing a new house.

He starts by surveying the ice cream parlor where he had the meeting with Hector, and observes Hector's crew receiving ice cream delivery trucks transporting goods up from Mexico. He comes to the conclusion that the trucks are carrying contraband, either as drugs or cash.

A few days later, Mike plans an attack on one of Hector's trucks while it is en route to the El Paso border crossing. The truck hits the strip, and goes off the road. While wearing a mask to conceal his identity, Mike disarms the driver and ties him up.

He loads the money and his equipment into his getaway car and flees the scene. The heist puts Mike in a jovial mood—he spends some of his new gains on drinks for all the patrons at a bar—but this is short-lived when Nacho calls him to a meeting and confronts him about the attack, having deduced that Mike was behind it.

Nacho asks Mike why he pulled it off and Mike asks why the hit isn't in the newspapers. Nacho is offended realizing that Mike was trying to draw police attention to Hector's operation. Nacho also reveals that Hector killed a Good Samaritan that happened to stumble upon the scene and freed the driver. This greatly unsettles Mike. Someone leaves Mike a message.

Mike eventually procures a sniper rifle from Lawson and follows Nacho into the Tohajiilee Indian Reservation, trying to get to Hector. He sets up on a hillside and watches as the Cousins kill the driver and bury him in an unmarked grave. However, his line of sight to Hector is blocked by Nacho. Mike is then drawn away from his position by the sound of his car horn going off.

He finds a tree branch wedged into the driver's seat, and a handwritten note on the windshield reading "DON'T". Realizing his cover has been blown, Mike drives off at breakneck speed to clear the area.

After stopping to review what happened, he figures that his car is bugged. Proceeding to a nearby junkyard, he disassembles the vehicle, searching the entire chassis for hours and coming up with nothing. With time running out, and the junkyard about to close, Mike sells the car to the owner, and calls himself a cab to return home, when his eyes come upon a stack of replacement gas caps. Quickly returning to his junked car, he removes the gas cap and inspects it.

Sure enough, he finds a tracking device hidden under the seal. Contacting Dr. Caldera, Mike purchases a device and tracker identical to the one he has discovered.

After having found a second tracker hidden in the gas cap of his personal vehicle, Mike switches out the two devices, draining the foreign device of power in the hopes that whoever planted it will come back to claim it. As expected, a mysterious car arrives and takes the bait, swapping the gas cap containing Mike's tracker with a fresh one. Mike discreetly follows the driver around Albuquerque, stopping when the driver abandons the vehicle at a Los Pollos Hermanos.

After determining this is a nightly pattern of drops and pickups, Mike enlists the help of Jimmy McGill. Mike has Jimmy pose as a customer to observe what the driver does inside the building. However, no drop-off is made that Jimmy can see. Continuing his counter-surveillance of the driver, Mike tracks his vehicle to the middle of the desert, only to find the gas cap containing his tracker removed and set in the middle of the road, with a cell phone on top.

Mike has been discovered. Answering a call from the cell phone, Mike is immediately approached by Gustavo Fring and two of his bodyguards. When Mike holds up the note from his former car, Gus calmly explains that he has reasons for keeping Hector alive. He agrees to continue with his sabotage, and a loose partnership is born.

Mike immediately sets to his purpose, purchasing a small bag of cocaine from a contact of Gus's, and waits to ambush another one of Hector's trucks on its way to the border. Rather than shoot the drivers, however, Mike plants the cocaine in a pair of discarded sneakers which he hangs from an overhead power line. Firing several dummy shots in the air to mask himself as a random hunter, Mike waits until the drivers, who have stopped in response to the gunfire, dismiss the shots as a hunter.

As the truck drives away, Mike puts one final shot into the sneakers, spilling cocaine unnoticed onto the back of the vehicle, ensuring that the drivers will be arrested at the border. Later, Jimmy hires Mike to pose as a handyman to repair Chuck's door while also secretly photographing the interior of Chuck's house in order to document the bizarre living conditions as evidence for a case Jimmy is working on.

One night when Mike is working his parking attendant job, Gus arrives to meet him personally. Gus probes Mike as to why he didn't accept his money and also lets Mike know that he's interested in hiring him. Additionally, Gus reveals that he stopped Mike from killing Hector because "a bullet to the head would have been far too humane.

Mike helps with construction on a new playground area and receives help from the other members of Stacey's support group, including a woman named Anita. Upon returning to work, he is approached by Daniel, who wants to hire him as a bodyguard again to keep an eye on Nacho, which Mike declines.

At a meeting, Mike begins to befriend Anita as she recounts how her husband mysteriously disappeared on a hiking trip and the fact that she doesn't know what happened to him constantly troubles her.

Apparently touched by Anita's story, Mike calls Daniel and agrees to be his bodyguard. At the meeting with Nacho, Mike learns the full story about Hector's desire to force Nacho's father into the drug trade and the plan to replace Hector's medication with fake pills. Mike agrees not to interfere, but advises Nacho to switch the pills back after Hector dies so they cannot be traced back to him. Mike, using information he gained from Nacho, tracks down the body of the Good Samaritan that Hector shot and anonymously reports the discovery to the police.

Gus agrees, warning Mike that the process will be difficult, and both men shake hands. Mike finishes his final shift at the parking booth and plays with Kaylee in his backyard.

He tells Stacey that his new job has more flexible hours, allowing him to pick up Kaylee on a regular basis. After obtaining the address for the company's Las Cruces facility, Mike breaks in after stealing Barry Hedberg 's identification. Identifying himself as a security consultant to the officer manager, he lists all the potential security breaches he found and tells the manager to contact Lydia. Jimmy intends for Mike to steal Mr. Neff 's Hummel figurine and replace it with an identical fake.

Then Jimmy will sell the figure and split the proceeds with Mike. Mike passes on the opportunity, and offers his condolences for Chuck's death.

At Loyola's, Mike is approached by Anita. During their conversation, he tells her that Henry DeVore from the support group is making up his dead wife, Judy. At the group meeting, Stacey talks about fearing that she is forgetting details about Matt, affect Mike. After Henry again talks about Judy, Mike explodes and reveals Henry's lies and then turns on the rest of the group, accusing them of feeding off each other's misery.

The next day, Mike ignores a call from Stacy, but is forced to talk to Victor who summons him to a meeting with Gus. Mike admits that he did, and while he agreed not to kill Hector, he points out that he never agreed to stop others from doing it. Realizing that Gus has a job for him, Mike demands to know what it is.

Hooding him, Mike and his associate, Nick , drive him in a windowless van to Albuquerque. Mike thanks him for his time and then drives him back to the Rockies with a return plane ticket. Werner's inspection is much more thorough and talks about the logistical challenges of the excavation without alerting anyone above.

Gus arrives and asks if the job is impossible. Werner replies that it is not, but will be difficult, dangerous, and expensive. Gus hires him for the job.

Mike and Gus inspect a warehouse with mobile homes that will be home to Werner's construction crew. Mike also advises Gus to set up a surveillance camera perimeter both inside and outside the warehouse. Travelling to Stacy's home, Mike apologizes for his outburst at the group meeting. Stacy accepts the apology but tells him that Anita is angry and that he should talk to her. Mike greets the construction crew and outlines everything to them. One of the crew, Kai , disrespects Mike, causing him to tell Nick and Arthur to keep an eye on him.

While Mike and Werner discuss blasting a section, Casper backs a front-loader into one of the support columns. The incident sparks a confrontation between Casper and Kai that Mike is forced to break up. Later at the warehouse, Werner asks Mike if it is possible to get some fresh air and change of scenery since they are eight months into the dig and are only half-way done. Kai insults Mike some more, and Mike wants to send him back to Germany by Werner is reluctant since Kai is his best demolition man.

Mike takes Werner and his workers to a strip club to relax. Kai particularly enjoys himself, but Mike notices that Werner is sitting alone. He takes him to a normal bar where they talk about their fathers and families. Eventually, Mike is called back to the strip club by Nick where he finds that Kai has been thrown out for making unwanted advances on one of the dancers.

Mike bribes the owner of the strip club to not call the police. Returning to the bar where he left Werner, Mike finds him drunkenly talking about the excavation project with another patron and then drives him away. Back at the warehouse, Werner apologizes for talking and promises that it will not happen again.

Mike gives a report on the excavation to Gus, telling him about the problems they are facing and about Werner's indiscretion. Mike oversees the blasting of a rock obstructing the excavation, noticing that when Werner fixes a faulty circuit he appears to have an anxiety attack. As the construction crew celebrate at the warehouse, Werner admits that he is homesick and wants to have a weekend back home with his wife. Mike cannot allow that and encourages Werner to push on, but agrees to let him call her on the telephone.

Mike monitors the call, and finds the next day that Werner has used a laser pointer to blind the security cameras and escaped from the warehouse. At the warehouse, Mike organizes a manhunt for Werner and finds out where his wife wired money to. Mike starts at the TravelWire office where Werner's wife wired the money to, and finds out that he has arranged for his wife to fly to Albuquerque.

Victor arrives and tells Mike that Gus wants to see him, and Mike realizes that Gus intends to kill both Werner and his wife. Mike takes responsibility for the entire situation and promises to handle it before the wife lands. Driving to Werner's location, Mike notices that he is being followed by Lalo Salamanca.

He manages to give him the slip at a parking lot. Mike finally arrives at Werner's location, but not before Werner lets slip information about the excavation to Lalo, who was posing as one of Gus's men during a phone call. Driving Werner to a remote location, Mike calls Gus to tell him that he was followed and to persuade Gus to spare Werner. Gus is adamant that Werner die; Mike allows him to contact his wife and tell her to return to Germany. Ensuring his wife is spared, Werner accepts his fate and Mike executes him.

The next day, Mike, Gus, and Gale Boetticher visit the excavation. Werner's death forces Gus to halt construction of the lab. Mike reacts with disgust at Gus's seeming lack of compassion for Werner and refuses Gus' offer to continue paying him during the delay. Mike continues to struggle with Werner's death and drinks to excess. He becomes alienated from his family when he loses his temper with Kaylee, which leads Stacey to ask Mike to keep his distance.

A gang with whom Mike had a previous altercation beats and stabs him. He awakens at a ranch in Mexico which has ties to Gus, where his wounds have been treated by Dr.

Barry Goodman. Gus asks for his aid against the Salamancas because Mike understands Gus' need for revenge. Mike secretly points police to Lalo's car and its ties to the murder of Fred the money wire clerk, which causes Lalo's arrest. Gus wants Lalo released, so Mike gives Jimmy details about the work he did to investigate to Lalo.

Jimmy uses the information to accuse police of witness tampering, enabling him to win Lalo's release on bail. Mike spends time with Kaylee and tells Stacey he is over the recent events that angered him.

After a gang robs Saul in the desert of Lalo's bail money, Mike rescues him from danger, killing all but one of the gangsters with his sniper rifle. However, Mike's truck takes damage in the firefight forcing him to use Saul's car. On the way home, Mike tries to comfort Saul, noticing how shaken up he is.

However, Saul's car took engine damage in the firefight and breaks down. Mike removes the money and the gas cap, containing one of Gus' tracking devices and he and a reluctant Saul push the car off the road over a cliff. Mike and Saul in the desert. With one guy having escaped, Mike leaves the road with Saul to walk across the desert back, becoming annoyed with Saul's antics along the way. The two notice the surviving guy nearby searching for them, meaning that he found Saul's car.

The two continue on, eventually stopping for the night. Mike becomes concerned when Saul reveals that he told Kim Wexler the truth, worrying about what she might do and warning that Kim is "in the game now" since she knows the truth. The next morning, the two continue their journey with Mike having Saul save his urine to drink since Mike doesn't have enough water for both of them. Saul eventually resorts to dragging the bags, ripping one and causing some of the money to spill out.

After injuring himself on a cactus, Saul collapses and refuses to go further despite Mike's insistence. Mike explains that he continues on because he has people he cares about and protects, people who know nothing about what Mike is doing and who will be safe with a better life if he dies.

With the remaining gangster approaching again, Saul dons one of Mike's space blankets and walks into the middle of the road to draw the man out so that Mike can kill him. Thanks to Saul's distraction, Mike succeeds in killing the remaining gang member, but the man crashes his truck in the process, keeping Saul and Mike from being able to use his vehicle to return to civilization.