Here rests Howard Hamlin—and his killer.

It’s been almost two months since the first half of Better Call Saul’s sixth and final season shockingly ended with Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton) strutting into the apartment of Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) and Kim (Rhea Seehorn) and nonchalantly murdering Howard (Patrick Fabian). But Monday’s “Point and Shoot” picks up in the immediate aftermath, with Lalo revealing his plan to the terrified couple: One of them will stay there with him, and the other will go murder Lalo’s chief rival, Gus (Giancarlo Esposito).

Jimmy convinces Lalo to send Kim, whose failure on her mission is irrelevant—because Lalo just needed a distraction to sneak into Gus’s under-construction superlab and videotape evidence of its existence. He soon gets a welcome surprise with the arrival of a suspicious Gus, who, at gunpoint and while being recorded, is brought down into the lab, where Lalo intends to kill him. But Gus manages to stall long enough to cut the lights and make a run for a nearby weapon, which ignites a shoot-out in the dark. Breaking Bad fans know that Gus’s story doesn’t end here, but it turns out that Lalo’s does. The cold-blooded, charismatic killer is bleeding out from a gunshot to the neck, and just before the lights go out on him forever, he manages one last classic Lalo smile.

To say goodbye to Lalo, we chatted with Dalton about learning of his departure, getting a kick out of Lalo’s burial partner, and ensuring that he had a “beautiful death.”

Vanity Fair: I last spoke with you about the show’s season five finale. You came through with a headline so good that a colleague and I still repeatedly reference it, which was “Better Call Saul star Tony Dalton on Lalo’s revenge mission: ‘It’s time to die, bro.’”

Tony Dalton: [Laughs] And now it’s my time!

So what’s your first reaction when you get this script and see that it is indeed your time to die, bro?

Oh, my god, are you kidding me? It was amazing. We were at a rest stop in Albuquerque, where we filmed that scene where I’m taking a shower. I already knew that it was the end for me, because [cocreators] Vince [Gilligan] and Peter [Gould] had already told me. But I didn’t know what was going to happen. So it was a night shoot, like one in the morning, and I grabbed a little chair and put it on the side of the rest stop next to the highway and just sat down. I was like, If this is going to be the end, I want to sit down and read this whole thing all the way through right now. And it was very cathartic.

Even before you got word from Vince and Peter, did you know that this day was coming? Or had you held out hope that maybe Lalo could somehow survive?

No. I mean, personally, I always thought that they would never let me down. But great stories have great villains, and you want to kill your villain, you know? What are you gonna do, not kill the villain? Of course you have to. It’s part of the whole deal. I just didn’t know how it was going to go down, and it ended up being pretty cool.

Was there something extra special in the fact that Vince Gilligan was the one directing your swan song?

In my mind—and don’t take my word for it, because it’s only in my mind—I figured that when they threw out all the episodes of the last season, Vince said, “I want to direct the one where Lalo dies.” [Laughs] I don’t know, maybe it’s just random. But I can picture Vince going, “No, no, no, I want to kill Tony!”

Taking a step back, what was your reaction to learning Lalo was going to kill Howard? I talked to Peter, who said that he had always expected that Howard would make it to the end. The writers themselves were shocked that they arrived at Lalo killing Howard. Was it the same for you?

Yeah. I remember just before we started filming, Vince and Peter called me and they were so excited about that. They were like, “Tony, you don’t know what you’re gonna do, it’s crazy!” And I was like, “Tell me,” and they’re like, “We can’t tell you, but you are going to shit in your pants!” And I was like, “What are you guys talking about?” And so I always kept reading the episodes going, Well, which one is it that they were talking about? And then when I kill Howard, I go, Oh, this is it! I can picture those guys in the writers room ending up with Lalo and Howard in the same place and saying, “Let’s just shoot him in the head!”

When I read it, I just started jumping up and down. For me to show up and just shoot Howard in the head was like, What the hell? These guys are crazy, man.

Do you think Lalo’s obsession with the Chicken Man blinded him and put him in a vulnerable position?

It reminded me of Heat—when Robert De Niro can leave, but he’s like, No, I gotta go get this guy. Lalo shoots all these bodyguards. He’s got his gun to Gus’s face and he’s like, I could just shoot this guy right this second. But he wants to show off, and his ego gets the better of him.

You mentioned that a villain has to die, but is there some honor in knowing you were killed by another legendary villain in Gus Fring?

I wouldn’t have it any other way. If it would’ve been a henchman, I would’ve been like, You motherfuckers, you killed me with a henchman?! But it was Gus Fring, man. Also, Giancarlo is one of the greatest guys, and I love him. So when we did that scene and I’m dying and covered in blood, Vince kept saying, “More blood, more blood,” and I remember turning around like, Vince Gilligan, you are a sick man. This is way too much blood. And Giancarlo went, “This is so cool and it’s such an honor to do this with you.” I was like, “Are you kidding me, man? It’s an honor to do this with you!”

I loved the way you played that last laugh and smile, which felt like pure Lalo. How was that written? And how did you ensure that Lalo was the same old Lalo until his final breath?

It’s funny you should say that, because the guy who wrote it is Gordon Smith, one of the greatest guys in the world. I read it at the little rest stop on the highway, and the last thing it said was, “And Lalo Salamanca breathes his last ugly breath.” And I was like, Ugly? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? And so I waited for one night when Vince and Gordon and I were finally together, weeks later, and I was like, “So Gordon, how do you want me to do the ‘ugly’? I don’t do ugly, my man.” And they started laughing, and Gordon’s like, “Oh, you know, like last ugly…” And I was like, “No, no, no, what are you talking about? What do you mean ‘ugly breath’?” I mean, obviously everything’s joking around, and I give him such a hard time with that to this day. And I was like, “I’m going to give you the most beautiful death that you’ve ever seen, and you’re going to regret the fact that you wrote the words ‘ugly death’ for Lalo.”

And finally when we did it, I kind of threw a little smile in there, and Vince goes, “That’s it! Let’s do that again, but laugh and smile at him as if you were looking at him and saying, ‘You got lucky—I’ll see you in hell.’” So we did that, and Vince goes, “That’s perfect,” and I turned around to Gordon and go, “Was that ugly?” And Gordon said, “No, man, that was a beautiful death.” [Laughs]

There’s also something poetic about Lalo and Howard being buried next to each other, spending eternity together under the superlab. What did you think of that little button? I guess Lalo will be around for Breaking Bad!

It’s genius. I can’t believe it. I would never even imagine that the whole time that you’re watching Breaking Bad, I was there. It’s too surreal for me to even understand.