The age of crowd-sourcing TV mysteries has put some fans further ahead of the curve than most showrunners would like, something Better Call Saul bosses Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould apparently learned the hard way. A Season 2 finale easter egg has seemingly been confirmed, but will it lead to the full-on return of Gus Fring in Better Call Saul Season 3?

You’re warned of minor Better Call Saul spoilers from here on out, but it seems Redditors and other fans can officially take off their tin-foil hats for deducing that Season 2's episode titles (re-arranged) form the message “F-R-I-N-G-S-B-A-C-K,” something showrunners Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould reluctantly confirmed toward the end of an interview with Rich Eisen.

Monday’s Season 2 finale stopped short of actually reintroducing Giancarlo Esposito’s infamous character, though it’s at least speculated that a note left on Mike’s car was the work of the famous “Chicken Man.” An interview with HitFix saw Gilligan acknowledge the potential for Gus to appear in Season 3, though fans picking out the clue early changed their thinking a bit:

We report this a bit sheepishly: we truly did not realize how smart our fans are. That is to our detriment. We thought that we would have more control of this little puzzle we put into the titles where we thought that today, Peter could Tweet, “Hey guys, check out the titles of this season! You might find something interesting embedded in them.” That way, as people were asking the question — “Who could have left that message in the windshield of Mike’s car?” — the little clue could have pointed to an answer to that. But because these folks are so smart, and because they got ahead of us, they changed the story on us, suddenly it looks to the world like, “Oh, man, Gus should have been in that episode. That was a bit of a bait-and-switch!” The clue got out way before the intended time for it to get out.

It was never the intention for Gus to be in that episode. And to take it a step further, people should not assume in any way, shape, or form that they’ll see Gus in the first episode of next season. It’s possible they will. It’s also possible, if not more possible, they won’t. Gus is a character, as we know from Breaking Bad, who casts a very long shadow, and has a great many agents doing his bidding. He’s a guy who’s very hard for Walter White to pin down when Walt met him, and I think that will continue to be the case. That is his character, as I understand it. He is not a guy who reveals himself very quickly.

We’ll likely learn over the next few months, if indeed Giancarlo Esposito signs to reprise his famous role, but how much of Gus’ particular brand of menace can we expect from Better Call Saul? Stay tuned for the latest on Season 2 and beyond.

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