In my opinion it is a silly thread though. If Jesse will refuse to work for Gus if he kills Walt, of course he will also refuse if he kills Walts whole family.
threat*
Right, but Gus isn’t going to let Walt protect Hank because Hank is basically at a point now where he can realistically destroy Gus’ operation. Even if killing Walt and his entire family means Jesse won’t cook for him, Gus wouldn’t allow Walt to interfere with the murder of Hank without reacting–Gus will go to serious extremes when the future of his entire operation is at stake.
The other truth of the matter is, Gus has had serious issues on his plate for awhile now with the cartel and etc. I think he has yet to truly “take the gloves off” with Walt and Jesse. Gus wants things to move smooth and work out. Yeah, he was planning to kill Walt and Jesse at the end of last season, but he had Gale so to him it was just a quick removal of two big problems.
Now that Gale is gone and Walt is out, if Gus kills Walt and his whole family and Jesse then refuses to cook for him–do you see Gus continuing to keep the gloves on with Jesse? Gus is a vicious crime lord, if he tells Jesse: “You will cook for me or my men will remove pieces of your body until you come around.” Or he could tell Jesse, “You will cook for me or that woman and her son that you’ve been giving money to will have an unfortunate accident.” Jesse would not be able to seriously fight Gus on that.
Gus has already stated that he doesn’t think fear is a good motivator. That’s really not his style.
Well, when Gus is boxed into a corner with few options he can’t operate how he would prefer. Walt and him are on a trajectory where Gus essentially has to kill Walt, or everything he has worked for will be destroyed. If Gus has half a brain at all, the moment he realizes Hank has been assigned DEA protection he’s going to realize Walt helped him and that means Walt may be ready to go into witness protection. Meaning the only chance Gus has to save everything is to disappear Walt, right now, hopefully before he has given any information to the DEA.
Is Gus really going to let his desire not to anger Jesse get in the way of that? And once Gus has killed Walt, is he really going to let Jesse refuse to cook and let his whole operation shut down? No way.
Gus may have been assuming Walt would warn the DEA and be using that to get a DEA agent on the payroll near Hank. I believe someone already mentioned that possibility in this thread and it would actually be a good way to keep Hank from investigating without killing him. An agent could actively discourage Hank from investigating without authorization.
Did Gus actually say he was going to kill Hank? I don’t think so, which makes me think that wasn’t his original plan.
Don’t think so. Can’t what he said was something closer to “Hank has become a problem, and I am going have to address that problem.” That leaves a lot of wiggle room for exactly how Gus intends to address the problem; killing Hank isn’t the only option, nor would it seem to be the best–arranging the death of a DEA agent is going to bring more heat onto Gus’s organization, not less, unless it is done very, very carefully. (Say, maybe, with ricin.) My thoughts at the time were that Gus planned to use his pet DEA agent, whoever that might be, to bury Hank–put him into the DEA equivalent of wherever Lester Freamon was working at the beginning of The Wire, or somehow smear his reputation, or something else non-violent but effective.
Of course, now that Walt’s gone and kicked the hornet’s nest (chicken coop?), there’s no telling what El Pollo Hermano might do.
Even if they recognize Saul’s voice, he can always say he was just passing on the info from a client, a client he can’t name due to attorney client privilege. And he would be telling the truth!
He probably uses a voice scrambler.
Or made his secretary do it, like he did when Walt asked for help keeping Hank out’ve the RV.
If Gus didn’t intend to kill Hank, there would be no reason for him to warn Walt. I’m sure Walt wouldn’t mind any non-violent method of dealing with Hank.