Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, El Camino: what order to watch in

Published on 10 September 2026

Short answer: release order — Breaking Bad (5 seasons), then the film El Camino, then Better Call Saul (6 seasons). Yes, it is counter-intuitive: Better Call Saul is a prequel, but it was written to be watched afterwards. This is the textbook case of a saga where chronological order is a trap.

Here is why, with the complete timeline of the universe.

The three works

The universe is now closed and complete: 125 episodes and one film, and Vince Gilligan has confirmed he will not return to it (he has moved on to Pluribus). In other words: this is the perfect time to watch it all — the story has a beginning, a middle and a real end.

The story in chronological order

To place what you are watching:

That is the trap: Better Call Saul is not just a prequel. Its famous black-and-white sequences take place after Breaking Bad, and its final season leaps right across the events of the mother show. It is a work that starts before and ends after — impossible to slot cleanly into a chronology.

Why watch the prequel last?

Three reasons, and they are decisive:

• **Better Call Saul assumes you know Breaking Bad.** Gus Fring's first appearance, the lab, Hector Salamanca and his bell: the show draws its tension from you already knowing where all of this leads. Watched the other way round, those moments become ordinary scenes.
• The "Gene" sequences make no sense otherwise. The whole black-and-white thread — the true conclusion of the series — is a direct response to Saul's fate in Breaking Bad.
• Pacing. Better Call Saul is a slow, meticulous show, made for viewers already attached to this universe. Breaking Bad is the entrance; Better Call Saul is the reward.

Chronological order (starting with Better Call Saul) exists as a rewatch: on a second journey, watching Jimmy become Saul before meeting Walter again is fascinating. But for a first discovery, it throws away half the effects.

Where does El Camino fit?

*Immediately after the Breaking Bad finale.* The film starts the very night of the final episode and follows Jesse's escape — it is a direct epilogue, not a standalone work. Watching it before finishing the series makes no sense; watching it months later lets the emotion fall flat. The right slot: straight after the last episode, like a two-hour bonus episode.

The most common mistakes

• Starting with Better Call Saul because "it happens first". The classic mistake — it ignores that the show was written as a companion piece, not a prologue.
• Watching El Camino mid-run. It fully spoils the Breaking Bad finale.
• Skipping Better Call Saul as a minor spin-off. It is the equal of the mother show — many rate it higher — and it retroactively transforms entire characters of Breaking Bad.
• Fast-forwarding the black-and-white sequences as decorative interludes: that is where the whole story concludes.

Know the show? Prove it

Knowing the order of the seasons is one thing. Being able to put the events of the story in order is quite another — and in a show built on consequences, that is the real test.

Junban has a Breaking Bad theme entirely dedicated to that: you get a moment from the series and simply say whether it happens before or after the previous one. Does Walt poison Brock before or after killing Gus? No dates to memorise, no names to type: you just have to reason.

Solo or with up to 4 players, online or around one table — and the same principle then works across more than 50 themes, from movies to music, Stranger Things to One Piece. That is what earns it first place in our comparison of timeline quiz games.

More sagas to sort out: Star Wars, what order to watch the movies and series and Pirates of the Caribbean, what order to watch the movies in.