There are plenty of criminal masterminds inBreaking BadandBetter Call Saul, but one diabolical genius in particular is the smartest of them all (and it’s not Walter White). Whereas the characters ofThe SopranosandSons of Anarchycould use their brawn to solve problems in the criminal underworld,the characters ofBreaking Badoften had to rely on their brains. There were plenty of musclebound henchmen gunning for Walt, but he always managed to outsmart them and stay one step ahead. He marched right into Tuco’s headquarters and blew it up with science.
ThroughoutBreaking Bad’s five seasons, Walt tangled with plenty of gangland adversaries that were just as smart as him, from fried chicken tycoon Gus Fring to his own wife, Skyler. The show’s spinoff,Better Call Saul, introduced even more evil geniuses. Before he became Walt’s lawyer Saul Goodman, Jimmy McGill built a tumultuous working relationship with goon-for-hire Mike Ehrmantraut and became an amigo of notorious cartel leader Lalo Salamanca. TheBreaking Baduniverse is so jam-packed with clever criminals that Walt isn’t even the smartest.
8Nacho Varga
Although he started out as a low-level gangster counting money for the cartel, Nacho Varga ended up becoming one ofBetter Call Saul’s smartest crooks. Nacho played Gus and the Salamancas against each other as a double agent. He masterminded the scheme that landed Hector Salamanca in his wheelchair, and no one figured out it was him until he gleefully confessed in his final moments.
Even when he had everyone on both sides coming after him — Gus and the Salamancas ruthlessly hunting him down — Nacho managed to survive for long enough to figure out a way to go out on his own terms. He eluded the assassin who’d been watching his hideout. He even successfully hid from the Cousins in plain sight.
7Skyler White
For the first couple of seasons ofBreaking Bad, Skyler was oblivious to her husband’s criminal activities. But when she found out he was producing meth to pay for his cancer treatments, instead of going straight to the police, she got involved in the business. Walt was great at making massive amounts of unusable cash in the drug industry, but Skyler was the one who figured out how to launder the money so they could actually spend it.
Saul’s proposed money-laundering scheme of buying a laser tag business would’ve been totally suspicious, and might’ve gotten Walt caught. Skyler’s plan to buy the car wash where he used to work was a much better idea (and she turned it into a legitimately successful business). Whenever a new problem came up, like Ted’s IRS troubles, Skyler figured out a way to fix it.
6Mike Ehrmantraut
Mike Ehrmantraut is based on the genre archetype of the goon-for-hire, but he’s a heck of a lot smarter than the average goon. When Daniel Wormald hired Mike to supervise a drug deal, Mike did so much homework and proved to be so capable that he promptly had the other two hired goons dismissed. Mike is sharp enough to do the work of three men on his own.
Mike isn’t just one of the smartestBreaking Badcharacters; he’s one of the wisest, too. When Jimmy is suffering from unbearable PTSD, Mike offers him some wisdom that makes him feel slightly better. Whenever Mike gives advice to Jimmy, Walt, Jesse, Gus, or Nacho, whether they take it or not, it’s usually right on the money.
5Lalo Salamanca
Lalo Salamanca is one of the greatest villains in television history, and he never would’ve existed if it wasn’t fora throwaway line inBreaking Bad. In his first appearance inBreaking Bad, a terrified Saul mistook Walt and Jesse for Lalo’s goons.Better Call Saulrevealed that Lalo was one of the leaders of the Salamanca cartel. In the final season ofBetter Call Saul, his rivalry with Gus intensified.
What made this rivalry so compelling was that Gus and Lalo were just as calculating as each other. They both meticulously plot their schemes to stay several steps ahead of their enemies, which made them perfect enemies for each other.Gus ultimately triumphed over Lalo(thanks to his plot armor), so Lalo proved to be slightly less ingenious than his chicken-peddling arch-nemesis.
4Kim Wexler
It feels unfair to brand Kim Wexler a criminal, given how much good work she did on the right side of the law and how quickly she repented after slipping over to the wrong side. But bythe end ofBetter Call Saul, Kim had become an accomplice in Jimmy’s illegal activities. They erred on the side of criminality to pull a couple of scams for fun, but they went too far when they constructed an elaborate prank to destroy Howard Hamlin’s life.
Still, in spite of the devastating consequences of their actions, Kim is nothing if not smart. She was the genius behind the blueprint switch, the Mesa Verde logo dispute, and the country club cocaine drop. If Kim didn’t have a conscience, she could’ve given Heisenberg a run for his money.
3Gus Fring
Gus Fring is a true criminal genius. He used a fast food franchise as a front to build a drug empire so profitable that it could be listed on the NASDAQ, and managed to earn the trust of all local law enforcement agencies while producing industrial amounts of crystal meth under their noses. After spending a couple of seasons running circles around the dim-witted Albuquerque criminal community, Walt finally met his intellectual match in Gus.
Gus outsmarted Lalo, proving he was the smarter criminal of the two, but his plan to take down Lalo relied a lot on luck and coincidence. Throughout most of his working relationship with Walt, Gus managed to stay on top, mostly due to the manpower at his disposal. But Walt ultimately defeated Gus by identifying and exploiting his greatest weakness.
2Walter White
Walt is as smart as he is unscrupulous, and his elaborate plot to defeat Gus and bring down his criminal enterprise proves that. He poisoned a little boy to manipulate Jesse into thinking Gus did it, so he could convince Jesse to help him kill Gus. He exploited Gus’ vengeful rage against the Salamancas to get him to let his guard down. This assassination scheme alone proves that Walt is a genius.
But he’s not quite the smartest character in theBreaking Baduniverse. Walt often acts impulsively and emotionally, which causes him to make mistakes. He only realized he could’ve gotten the list of names he wanted from Lydia afterhe’d fatally shot Mike. The smartest criminal in theBreaking Bad-verse isn’t Walt; it’s his criminal lawyer.
1Saul Goodman
The smartest criminal in theBreaking Baduniverse — smarter than Walt and Lalo and Mike and Nacho — is the guy who kept them all out of jail. Under the guises of both Jimmy and Saul, this criminal lawyer took on plenty of clients with seemingly unwinnable open-and-shut cases, including Lalo, and managed to get them off scot-free. After Huell got caught red-handed assaulting a police officer, Jimmy saved him by staging a cross-country letter-writing campaign.
Even when Jimmy finally got caught, he managed to talk himself down from a life sentence plus 190 years to a measly seven-and-a-half-year sentence. No criminal inBreaking BadorBetter Call Saulwas as smart as the lawyer. Even the second-smartest relied on Saul to get him out of trouble.
