Howard Hamlin wasn’t a cartel boss or a dangerous criminal. He was an imperfect lawyer whose life Jimmy and Kim deliberately dismantled. So why did Kim push the scheme so far—and how much blame does she deserve for what happened next?
Spoiler Warning: This article contains major spoilers for Better Call Saul, particularly Season 6, Episodes 7–9, and the series finale.
Howard Hamlin Didn’t Deserve What Happened to Him
Howard Hamlin walks into Jimmy McGill and Kim Wexler’s apartment with a bottle of whiskey.
He is angry.
He has discovered that the two lawyers have orchestrated a campaign to destroy his professional reputation.
They have manipulated his colleagues, manufactured evidence of drug use, and made him appear unstable in front of people whose trust he depends on.
His career has suffered.
His reputation has been damaged.
And his attempt to expose their scheme has only made him look more desperate.
Howard confronts them.
He tells them what he thinks of their cruelty.
Then Lalo Salamanca enters the apartment.
A few moments later, Howard is dead.
The murder is one of the most shocking scenes in Better Call Saul.
But the real tragedy began long before Lalo pulled the trigger.
Jimmy and Kim spent weeks deliberately dismantling Howard’s life.
They turned a respected attorney into the target of an elaborate psychological and professional attack.
And Kim was not simply following Jimmy’s lead.
In several crucial moments, she was the person most determined to continue.
That raises a question viewers are still debating years after the finale.
Why did Kim Wexler want to destroy Howard Hamlin so badly?
The answer cannot be reduced to revenge, money, or love.
Kim’s resentment was real.
Her financial justification was convenient.
Her enjoyment of the scheme was undeniable.
And her belief that she was doing something good made it easier to ignore the harm she was causing.
Kim didn’t destroy Howard because she believed herself to be evil. She destroyed him because she had learned how to make cruelty feel like justice.
Was Howard Hamlin Actually a Bad Person?
Howard is introduced as a polished, wealthy attorney who appears to represent everything Jimmy dislikes about the legal profession.
He wears expensive suits.
He works in a prestigious law firm.
He has inherited advantages that Jimmy and Kim never enjoyed.
And he often speaks with the confidence of someone accustomed to authority.
Early in the series, Howard appears to be the primary obstacle preventing Jimmy from joining Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill.
But the truth is more complicated.
Chuck McGill, Jimmy’s older brother, is the person secretly resisting Jimmy’s employment at the firm.
Howard helps conceal Chuck’s opposition and accepts the role of the apparent villain.
This does not make Howard innocent of every wrong.
He participates in decisions that hurt Jimmy.
He treats Kim harshly, including assigning her to document review after professional setbacks associated with Jimmy.
His management style can be punitive and condescending.
He also benefits from the privileges of his position.
But none of these failings makes him a criminal mastermind.
Howard is not Walter White.
He is not Gus Fring.
He is not Lalo Salamanca.
He is an imperfect professional who sometimes abuses his authority.
As the series progresses, he also demonstrates an ability to recognize his mistakes.
He attends therapy.
He attempts to repair relationships.
He offers Jimmy a job.
And he makes efforts to address the damage surrounding Chuck’s death.
These actions do not erase his earlier conduct.
But they complicate the idea that Howard is a monster who deserves destruction.
Howard’s greatest mistake may have been believing that his conflict with Jimmy and Kim was still a professional disagreement.
For them, it had become something far more personal.
Why Kim Resented Howard More Than Jimmy Did
Kim’s anger toward Howard has several roots.
She worked hard to build a career without the advantages that Howard enjoyed.
She endured long hours and humiliating assignments.
She fought for professional recognition.
And she watched Howard exercise authority over her future.
When Howard sent her to document review, she experienced the punishment as an attack on her independence and dignity.
The resentment did not disappear simply because she eventually left HHM.
Howard also represented a legal establishment that Kim increasingly viewed as hypocritical.
He projected professionalism and respectability.
Yet he had participated in decisions that hurt Jimmy and Kim.
To Kim, this made him a convenient symbol of a system that claimed to value fairness while protecting its own powerful members.
But resentment alone does not explain the scale of her retaliation.
Plenty of people have difficult bosses.
Most do not devote months to destroying their reputations.
Kim’s hatred becomes dangerous when she transforms personal grievances into moral permission.
Howard is no longer merely a man who treated her unfairly.
He becomes someone who deserves to be punished.
Once she accepts that judgment, almost any humiliation can be rationalized.
Kim doesn’t simply want Howard to admit he was wrong. She wants to decide what punishment he deserves.
And that is where her sense of justice begins to turn into something else.
The Sandpiper Settlement: A Good Cause or a Convenient Excuse?
Jimmy and Kim’s scheme has a financial objective.
They want to force an early settlement in the Sandpiper Crossing class-action lawsuit.
Jimmy stands to receive a substantial share of the settlement proceeds.
Kim argues that the money could help fund the kind of legal work she truly cares about.
She wants to represent people who cannot afford expensive lawyers.
She wants to challenge a system that favors wealth and influence.
On the surface, the plan can be framed as a sacrifice of one privileged attorney’s reputation for the benefit of many vulnerable clients.
That is the argument Kim uses to make the scheme feel acceptable.
But the reasoning contains a serious problem.
Howard is not merely being asked to contribute money.
He is being falsely portrayed as unstable and addicted to drugs.
His professional judgment is deliberately undermined.
His colleagues are manipulated.
His personal dignity becomes expendable.
Kim treats this destruction as a manageable cost.
The supposedly good outcome makes the cruelty easier to justify.
Yet the Sandpiper money is not the whole story.
If helping vulnerable clients were truly her overriding priority, Kim had other opportunities to pursue meaningful legal work.
She did not need to destroy Howard’s reputation to prove her commitment to public service.
The settlement provides a practical objective.
But it also gives Kim a moral story she can tell herself.
The Sandpiper money explains what Kim hoped to gain. It does not fully explain why she enjoyed the method.
That distinction is essential.
The Moment Kim Chose the Scam Over Her Career
One of the most revealing scenes occurs when Kim is traveling to an important meeting connected to a potential opportunity for her pro bono work.
The meeting could help her pursue the career she claims to want.
Then she learns that the plan against Howard has encountered a problem.
The actor hired to impersonate a judge has been photographed with an arm that does not match the real mediator’s appearance on the day of the scheme.
The photographs must be replaced.
Jimmy is prepared to abandon or postpone the plan.
Kim makes a different choice.
She turns her car around.
She sacrifices the professional opportunity and returns to help complete the deception.
This decision exposes the weakness in her stated justification.
Kim claims that destroying Howard is necessary to fund her idealistic legal ambitions.
But when she must choose between advancing those ambitions directly and continuing the scam, she chooses the scam.
The pleasure of executing the plan has become more important than the goal supposedly justifying it.
This is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that her motives extend beyond money or professional resentment.
Kim doesn’t merely tolerate the scheme as a necessary evil. She begins to value the scheme itself.
And once that happens, Howard’s suffering becomes part of the entertainment.
Kim’s Childhood Explains the Attraction—But Does Not Excuse It
The series provides glimpses of Kim’s childhood and her relationship with her mother.
One flashback shows young Kim caught stealing jewelry.
Her mother initially appears to condemn the behavior.
But the encounter reveals a more complicated dynamic involving deception and approval.
Kim’s mother ultimately treats the theft as something they can share rather than simply a moral failure.
The scene suggests that Kim learned early in life that rule-breaking could become a source of intimacy.
A successful deception could produce the attention and approval that ordinary good behavior did not always provide.
This does not mean the flashback proves that Kim was destined to become a con artist.
Childhood experiences do not eliminate adult agency.
Nor does the series provide a clinical explanation of her personality.
But the connection is thematically powerful.
Kim has spent much of her adult life trying to become disciplined, respected, and independent.
She works harder than almost everyone around her.
She builds a professional identity based on competence.
Yet Jimmy offers access to a different kind of excitement.
With him, she can break rules and feel admired rather than ashamed.
The scams become a private language between them.
Jimmy does not create Kim’s attraction to deception. He gives her a relationship in which that attraction can flourish.
That is why describing Kim as simply corrupted by Jimmy is inadequate.
She makes her own choices.
And sometimes she is more committed to those choices than Jimmy himself.
Did Kim and Jimmy Need the Scams to Stay in Love?
Their relationship is one of the most compelling parts of Better Call Saul.
They understand each other’s intelligence.
They share humor and ambition.
They support each other during professional setbacks.
But their intimacy also becomes increasingly connected to deception.
Some of their happiest moments occur after they have successfully manipulated someone.
The scams give them a shared purpose.
They become collaborators in a private world where ordinary rules do not seem to apply.
This creates a dangerous emotional dependency.
When their relationship becomes strained, another scheme can restore their sense of closeness.
When the outside world feels hostile, they can unite against a chosen target.
And when they feel powerless, manipulation allows them to feel powerful together.
Howard becomes the ultimate target because he represents so many of their shared resentments.
He is wealthy.
He is privileged.
He is associated with Chuck.
He has exercised authority over both of them.
Destroying him becomes a way of affirming their bond.
The scheme is not simply something they do together.
It becomes part of how they experience being together.
They mistake the excitement of having a common victim for the strength of having a healthy relationship.
That is one of the most disturbing truths revealed by the Howard storyline.
Why Kim Hid the Truth About Lalo Salamanca
This may be Kim’s most consequential decision.
After the apparent attempt on Lalo Salamanca’s life, Kim learns from Mike Ehrmantraut that Lalo may still be alive.
She knows that Lalo is dangerous.
She knows he has already threatened her and Jimmy.
And she understands that his continued existence creates a serious risk.
But she does not tell Jimmy.
Why?
Later, Kim explains that she feared Jimmy would abandon the Howard scheme if he knew the truth.
The plan would stop.
Their shared excitement would end.
And she feared what that might mean for their relationship.
This admission is devastating.
Kim had information that could have changed Jimmy’s decisions.
She withheld it to preserve the scheme.
She prioritized the continuation of their private game over an honest assessment of the danger surrounding them.
That does not mean she knew Howard would be murdered.
There is no evidence that she intended his death.
But she knowingly allowed Jimmy to operate with incomplete information about a serious threat.
Kim did not choose Howard’s murder. She chose to protect the scheme from a truth that might have stopped it.
That distinction matters when assessing her responsibility.
She is not Lalo.
But she is not merely an innocent bystander either.
Who Was Actually Responsible for Howard’s Death?
The most important distinction is between murder and the chain of decisions that placed Howard in danger.
Lalo Salamanca shot Howard.
Lalo made the immediate decision to kill him.
Lalo is directly responsible for the murder.
Jimmy and Kim did not plan Howard’s death.
They did not invite him to their apartment intending for him to be killed.
They did not know Lalo would arrive at that moment.
The fatal encounter involved circumstances they could not fully predict.
It would therefore be inaccurate to say that Kim deliberately caused Howard’s death in the same sense that Lalo did.
But that does not eliminate her responsibility for what happened before the shooting.
Jimmy and Kim deliberately ruined Howard’s professional standing.
Their deception brought him to the apartment to confront them.
Kim had concealed information about Lalo’s survival.
And both had allowed their lives to become entangled with dangerous criminal activity.
These decisions created circumstances in which an innocent man became exposed to a threat he did not understand.
Lalo is responsible for killing Howard. Jimmy and Kim are responsible for the deliberate campaign that brought Howard to their door.
Whether that makes them morally responsible for his death is a harder question.
The answer depends on how we weigh foreseeability, intention, and the consequences of reckless choices.
They could not reasonably predict the exact timing of Lalo’s arrival.
But they could recognize that their deception was harmful and that their criminal connections created danger.
The series asks us to hold both truths at once.
They are not murderers in the same way Lalo is.
But they are not absolved simply because they did not pull the trigger.
Howard’s Final Speech Was More Accurate Than They Wanted to Admit
Before Lalo arrives, Howard confronts Jimmy and Kim.
He understands that they have deliberately manipulated him.
He recognizes that their actions were not merely professional rivalry.
He sees the pleasure they take in hurting him.
Howard is furious.
And his anger is justified.
He has been publicly humiliated.
His reputation has been damaged.
His colleagues have been deceived.
The people responsible appear unwilling to acknowledge the seriousness of what they have done.
Howard also identifies something important about their relationship.
They reinforce each other’s worst tendencies.
Their partnership has become dangerous because each provides the other with permission to cross another boundary.
Howard cannot know what is about to happen.
But he has already understood the moral reality of the situation.
Jimmy and Kim have created a world in which another person’s suffering is entertainment.
Then Lalo enters.
The sudden murder transforms Howard’s accusations into the last words of a man who never receives justice.
Howard dies knowing who destroyed his reputation—but without ever receiving an acknowledgment that he was right.
That is one reason his death is so difficult to watch.
The Funeral Lie: Kim’s Lowest Moment
Howard’s death does not immediately end the deception.
Mike and his men arrange a cover story that makes Howard appear to have died by suicide after struggling with drug addiction.
His body is concealed.
The truth is hidden.
His professional reputation remains damaged.
At Howard’s memorial, his widow Cheryl confronts Jimmy and Kim about the strange circumstances surrounding his death.
Kim could remain silent.
Instead, she reinforces the false narrative.
She suggests that Howard may have been using drugs.
She manipulates Cheryl’s uncertainty.
She helps preserve the story that makes Howard appear responsible for his own destruction.
This is one of Kim’s most disturbing acts.
The original scheme was intended to humiliate Howard and force the Sandpiper settlement.
But after his death, continuing the lie serves a different purpose.
It protects Jimmy and Kim from exposure.
Howard can no longer defend himself.
His widow is grieving.
And Kim uses her intelligence to make the grieving woman doubt what she knew about her husband.
Howard loses his life to Lalo. He loses the truth about his life to Jimmy and Kim.
That second loss is something they actively help maintain.
It is also something Kim eventually tries to correct.
Why Kim Finally Leaves Jimmy
After Howard’s death, Jimmy attempts to persuade Kim that they can continue living.
He suggests that the memory will eventually fade.
They will wake up one day and realize they have not thought about Howard.
From Jimmy’s perspective, this may sound like reassurance.
But for Kim, it reveals something terrifying.
Jimmy is describing a future in which they successfully bury their guilt.
They will adapt.
They will move on.
And eventually, perhaps, they will find another target.
The danger is not only that Howard has died.
The danger is that they may become capable of treating even his death as something to forget.
Kim recognizes that their relationship has become destructive.
She tells Jimmy that she loves him.
But she also acknowledges that together they are harmful.
This is not a declaration that Jimmy alone corrupted her.
It is an admission that their partnership has enabled choices neither can justify.
She leaves him.
She also leaves the legal profession.
Her decision is drastic.
She abandons the career she once valued.
But she believes she can no longer trust herself to use her abilities responsibly.
Kim leaves not because she stops loving Jimmy, but because she finally understands what their love has allowed them to become.
Why Kim’s Life in Florida Is So Empty
Years later, Kim is living in Florida.
Her life is quiet.
Her work is ordinary.
Her conversations are cautious.
She avoids taking strong positions even on trivial matters.
The contrast with her earlier personality is striking.
The Kim who once confidently challenged powerful lawyers now seems reluctant to make decisions.
She has withdrawn from the ambition and excitement that once defined her.
This is often interpreted as self-punishment.
She has not simply changed careers.
She has reduced the parts of herself that she associates with danger.
Her intelligence, ambition, and confidence once helped her manipulate others.
Now she seems afraid of exercising them.
But this creates another problem.
Avoiding harm is not the same as making amends.
Kim’s withdrawal prevents her from repeating some destructive behaviors.
It does not repair Howard’s reputation.
It does not tell Cheryl the truth.
It does not undo the false story surrounding his death.
For years, Kim lives with guilt while the people she harmed remain without answers.
She stops being dangerous by refusing to act. But refusing to act also allows the old injustice to continue.
That is why her eventual confession matters.
Does Kim’s Confession Redeem Her?
After speaking with Jimmy, Kim finally prepares a written account of what happened to Howard.
She submits it to the authorities.
She gives a copy to Cheryl.
She acknowledges the deception and the circumstances surrounding Howard’s death.
The confession exposes her to possible civil consequences.
It cannot restore Howard’s life.
It cannot erase the years during which his widow believed a false account.
And it cannot guarantee forgiveness.
But it changes something essential.
Kim stops protecting herself through silence.
She accepts that Cheryl deserves to know the truth, even if the truth causes further pain.
Her confession is not a magical act of redemption.
It is the beginning of accountability.
That distinction matters.
A confession does not cancel the harm that preceded it.
Nor does remorse automatically entitle someone to forgiveness.
Kim has done something terrible.
She has lived with the consequences.
And she finally chooses to acknowledge what she did.
Kim cannot give Howard his life back. But she can stop participating in the lie that stole his reputation.
That is a meaningful act.
It is also the least she owes him.
Why Kim Is More Complicated Than a Victim or a Villain
There is a temptation to simplify Kim’s story.
One interpretation treats her as a good woman corrupted by Jimmy.
Another treats her as a secret villain who was always more ruthless than he was.
Neither explanation captures the full character.
Kim genuinely cares about justice.
She works hard for vulnerable clients.
She resists powerful institutions when she believes they are acting unfairly.
She loves Jimmy.
But she also enjoys deception.
She resents privilege.
She rationalizes cruelty.
And she sometimes chooses the excitement of a scam over the principles she claims to defend.
These traits coexist.
Her compassion does not erase her wrongdoing.
Her wrongdoing does not make every compassionate act false.
The tragedy is that she uses genuine moral commitments to excuse behavior that violates those same commitments.
She believes she is fighting unfairness.
Yet she manufactures false accusations against a man she dislikes.
She wants to help people without power.
Yet she uses her intelligence to destroy someone who cannot defend himself against her scheme.
She wants to practice law ethically.
Yet she repeatedly manipulates the legal system.
Kim’s greatest moral failure is not that she lacks principles. It is that she believes her principles make her exceptions acceptable.
That is a much more disturbing flaw than simple villainy.
What Rhea Seehorn’s Interpretation Reveals
Rhea Seehorn, who plays Kim Wexler, has discussed the character’s attraction to bending the rules.
In an interview with TV Guide, she described Kim’s tendency to justify interference when she believes the outcome is morally desirable.
Seehorn also emphasized that Kim makes her own decisions.
The character is not simply a woman passively corrupted by the man she loves.
That interpretation is crucial.
If Jimmy were entirely responsible for Kim’s behavior, her later confession would lose much of its meaning.
She would be acknowledging actions that were never truly hers.
Instead, the series insists on her agency.
Kim chooses the scams.
Kim chooses to continue the Howard plan.
Kim chooses not to tell Jimmy about Lalo.
Kim chooses to reinforce the false narrative after Howard’s death.
And eventually, Kim chooses to confess.
In an AMC interview after the finale, Seehorn explained that Kim’s decision to provide an affidavit and speak to Cheryl represented an effort to atone and help restore Howard’s reputation.
The same capacity for independent action that made Kim dangerous also makes her later accountability meaningful.
Kim’s tragedy is not that Jimmy took away her ability to choose. It is that she made choices she could no longer bear to defend.
The Reddit Debate: Was Howard’s Death Kim’s Fault?
The disagreement remains intense.
A December 2025 Reddit discussion argued that although Lalo was the killer, Jimmy and Kim shared responsibility for the circumstances that brought Howard to their apartment.
Other viewers rejected the idea that an unforeseeable murder could be blamed on the people who happened to be present.
A July 2024 discussion about Kim’s motives received hundreds of votes and explored resentment, class privilege, childhood experiences, money, and the thrill of deception.
In June 2026, a widely supported rewatch discussion focused on Kim’s horror after Howard’s death, particularly the memorial scene and Jimmy’s suggestion that they would eventually forget him.
And in October 2026, viewers were still asking why Jimmy and Kim took their campaign so far against a man whose earlier behavior did not justify such extreme retaliation.
These arguments reveal why the Howard storyline remains compelling.
It refuses to provide a simple division between innocent victims and obvious villains.
Howard is imperfect but does not deserve destruction.
Kim is compassionate but capable of cruelty.
Jimmy loves Kim but enables their worst behavior.
Lalo is directly responsible for the murder, yet his arrival exposes the consequences of choices made long before he enters the room.
The story is not about one bad person doing one terrible thing.
It is about how ordinary resentments, moral rationalizations, and the pleasure of manipulation can accumulate until the damage becomes irreversible.
The Most Disturbing Question: Would Kim Have Stopped Without Howard’s Death?
Imagine that Lalo never entered the apartment.
Howard survives.
The Sandpiper case settles.
Jimmy receives his money.
Kim gains resources for her legal ambitions.
Their scheme appears successful.
What happens next?
Would Kim feel satisfied?
Would she recognize the cruelty of what they had done?
Would she apologize to Howard?
Or would the success encourage another scheme?
The series does not provide a definitive answer.
But it gives us reasons to be concerned.
Kim had already chosen the scam over a professional opportunity.
She had already concealed Lalo’s survival.
She had already enjoyed humiliating Howard.
And Jimmy had repeatedly shown how easily one successful manipulation could lead to another.
Without the shock of Howard’s death, they might have continued.
That possibility is perhaps the most troubling aspect of Kim’s story.
Her moral awakening may have required a catastrophe because smaller warnings were no longer enough.
Howard’s death did not create Kim’s wrongdoing. It made that wrongdoing impossible for her to keep ignoring.
This is the difference between causing a tragedy and being forced by tragedy to recognize what one has become.
Final Verdict: Was Kim Wexler Responsible for Howard Hamlin’s Death?
Kim Wexler did not murder Howard Hamlin.
Lalo Salamanca did.
Kim did not intend for Howard to die.
And the precise circumstances of his death were not something she could have confidently predicted.
But Kim was responsible for participating in and driving a deliberate campaign to destroy Howard’s reputation.
She pursued the scheme despite opportunities to stop.
She concealed information about Lalo because she feared the plan would collapse.
And after Howard was killed, she helped maintain a false narrative that further harmed his reputation and his widow.
Those actions create serious moral responsibility, even though they are not equivalent to pulling the trigger.
Why did she do it?
Because Howard represented years of resentment.
Because the Sandpiper settlement provided a convenient justification.
Because she enjoyed the excitement of deception.
And because manipulating Howard strengthened the dangerous bond she shared with Jimmy.
Kim’s deepest mistake was believing that because her goals were good, her cruelty could be acceptable.
Howard’s death destroyed that illusion.
Her confession years later was an attempt to stop hiding behind it.
The tragedy of Howard Hamlin is that he was not destroyed by one enemy alone.
Lalo took his life.
Jimmy and Kim attacked his reputation.
And afterward, they allowed the world to remember him through a lie.
Kim could never undo those acts.
But she could finally admit what she had done.
That is why her confession matters.
Not because it makes her innocent.
But because, for the first time, she stops pretending that her intentions make her innocent.
Howard deserved better than what Kim did to him. And Kim’s first genuinely just act toward Howard came when she finally stopped defending herself.
Related Reading on True Taste Korea
Why Did Jimmy Choose 86 Years Instead of 7 in Better Call Saul?
Our first Better Call Saul deep dive explores why Jimmy rejected a seven-year plea deal, how Kim’s confession influenced him, and whether accepting an 86-year sentence was an act of redemption.
Did Therapy Make Tony Soprano a Better Criminal? The Dark Truth About Dr. Melfi
A related exploration of self-justification: what happens when a person understands their motives but continues using that understanding to excuse harmful choices?
Sources and Further Reading
Primary episode references
- Better Call Saul, Season 6, Episode 7, “Plan and Execution” (AMC, 2022).
- Better Call Saul, Season 6, Episode 8, “Point and Shoot” (AMC, 2022).
- Better Call Saul, Season 6, Episode 9, “Fun and Games” (AMC, 2022).
- Better Call Saul, Season 6, Episode 12, “Waterworks” (AMC, 2022).
- Better Call Saul, Season 6, Episode 13, “Saul Gone” (AMC, 2022).
Cast and creator interviews
- AMC — Rhea Seehorn on Kim and Jimmy’s Final Moments
- TV Guide — Rhea Seehorn on Kim Wexler’s Moral Choices
Reddit viewer discussions