Better Call Saul season 6 episode 8 spoilers follow.
Tony Dalton's magnetic killer Lalo Salamanca is no more, following a pitch-black shootout in Gus Fring's subterranean meth lab.
Now streaming on Netflix, the eighth episode of Better Call Saul season 6 – titled 'Point and Shoot' – saw Lalo massacre the Los Pollos Hermanos kingpin's men before taking him hostage, only to be outsmarted and fatally gunned down. His dying moments were spent smiling at the 'Chicken Man'.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly about this twist, Dalton revealed how long he'd known about his character's doom.
Related: Will Better Call Saul's Kim Wexler survive season 6?
"I got a call during the height of the pandemic, before they started filming," he said.
"And it was Vince [Gilligan] and Pete [Gould] and it was kind of the death call, where they say, 'Okay, at [episode] 608, that's far as you go'. And I go, 'How do I die?' and they didn't want to tell me.
"I was like, 'Come on'. They're like, 'I'm not going to tell you'. I was like, 'Tell me something'. They're like, 'All right, you kill a bunch of guys before you die'. I was like, 'That's awesome!'"
As for the challenges he faced while shooting this episode, Dalton singled out lying down in the fake blood "for hours and hours and hours and hours".
"Vince [was] saying, 'More blood! More blood!'," he recalled. "I was like, 'Oh my God'. It wasn't even a puddle – it was just mud at that moment. I mean, it's very uncomfortable, but it's kind of bittersweet because you want to keep filming. But then again, you're very uncomfortable.
"But then again, when they stop filming, you gotta go find a job, you know? You're done!"
Related: Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston teases Walt and Jesse's roles in Better Call Saul's final season
The actor also revealed that writer Gordon Smith envisioned a different reaction for Lalo, in his last moments after being shot.
"What he wrote in the script was, 'Lalo breathes his last ugly breath'," Dalton explained. "And I was like, 'What the hell are you talking about, 'ugly'? Why would you even think about putting that word there?' He goes, 'No, no, no. The breath is ugly'.
"When we filmed it, I was like, 'I'm going to show you ugly, man'. So we did it. And then I smiled and Vince goes, 'That's good, that's good. But don't smile laughing, smile like, 'You lucky bastard, man. This could have gone the other way. I'll see you in hell, Gus Fring'.
"We shot it and it was great, and I got up, the first person I went to was Gordon and I go, 'Was that ugly?' And he goes, 'No, man, that was a beautiful death. I wrote it wrong'."
Better Call Saul airs weekly on AMC in the US and on Netflix in the UK.
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Dan is a freelance entertainment journalist. Beginning his writing career in 2014, Dan's work first graced the pages of cult publications Starburst magazine and Little White Lies before moving onto Total Film, Digital Spy, NME and Yahoo Entertainment.
In the film and TV universe, he kneels at the altar of Jim Carrey, Daniel Plainview, Mike Ehrmantraut and Paulie Walnuts.
