With the conclusion of Breaking Bad was cast in stark relief. Walt's appearance in the series finale of Better Call Saul highlighted just how much he'd changed. His first cameo, in season 6, episode 11 was at the beginning of his relationship with Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill. Walt and Jesse Pinkman kidnapped Saul, and through the course of this, Walt was fumbling and awkward. He was not yet Heisenberg. However, in the series finale, Walt had changed dramatically. These two depictions of the same man, whose arc had been seen in Breaking Bad, demonstrated what Walt had become.
There's no shortage of villains in Better Call Saul: all of the Salamancas, Gus Fring, Tuco Ramirez, Don Eladio, Mike Ehrmantraut, and even Howard Hamlin and Chuck McGill to a lesser extent. Inserting Walter White into two episodes of the last season of Better Call Saul created a contrast between their actions and his actions, and Walt emerged as the worst of the bunch. Given Walt acted worse than Better Call Saul's villain roster - who were established as having done a series of sordid things themselves - the show emphasizes his own immorality in a way Breaking Bad never could.
Walt Truly Was The Real Villain In Breaking Bad, Not An Antihero
Breaking Bad's Walter White has been widely called an antihero, but this was really not the case. An antihero is a protagonist who lacks the typical ennobling qualities of a hero, such as idealism and courage. Walt was neither antihero nor protagonist. In fact, he was the antagonist of his own story, acting against the decency of Skyler, Walt Jr., Hank, Marie, and even Breaking Bad's Jesse Pinkman, who could properly have been called an antihero in that despite his bad actions, as there were still elements of good in him. That was not true of Walt, whose hubris and arrogance were present from the very beginning, and his abject selfishness led him willing down the path to evil.
Why Walter White Is Worse Than (Almost) Everyone In BCS
Better Call Saul, with its Walter White cameos, showed that Walt was far worse than all the villains on the show. In Breaking Bad, His crimes, legal and moral, were more treacherous and insidious than anything figures like the Salamancas and Gus Fring did. His fake confession tape, which directly lay the blame for his drug ring and murders on his brother-in-law Hank, was brilliant, but ruinously manipulative. He threw his own family under the bus to prevent Hank from reporting him to the DEA.
When Jesse's girlfriend Jane was overdosing and began to choke on vomit, Walt had a choice, and chose to watch her die because it suited his agenda. The poisoning of six-year-old Brock was done purely to coerce Jesse by turning him against Gus. His abuse of his wife Skyler, with gaslighting, assault, harassment, and emotional blackmail, demonstrated that not even his loved ones were safe from him. He involved himself with Neo-Nazis to further his plans, and he bombed a nursing home just to kill Gus Fring. Every one of his bad acts were in service to his ego, and the bigger that became, the greater his depravity.
Better Call Saul shows Walter White was not an antihero - something that can be harder to see in Breaking Bad, as viewers begin with his sympathetic origins. He was a villain, and worse than every other villain in Better Call Saul because it wasn't about business, as it at least was with Gus Fring. It was personal. He committed atrocities because it suited him, no matter who the victim was. In Breaking Bad it was easy to lose sight of how dark Walt goes, even up to the end, but in Better Call Saul, with just a few scenes, it became apparent that he was the worst one of them all.