Nacho Varga

Ignacio "Nacho" Varga is a smart, ambitious member of the Salamanca drug operation who wants out of the cartel life. Unlike his volatile colleagues, Nacho is thoughtful and strategic, trapped between the Salamanca family's brutality and his desire to protect his father Manuel, an honest upholsterer who knows nothing of his son's criminal activities.

Nacho's arc is defined by increasingly desperate attempts to extricate himself from the cartel. When Hector Salamanca threatens his father's business, Nacho secretly switches Hector's medication, causing the stroke that leaves Hector wheelchair-bound. This act of defiance puts Nacho under Gus Fring's control, as Gus discovers the truth and uses it as leverage to make Nacho his mole inside the Salamanca organization.

Trapped between Gus, Lalo, and the Salamancas, Nacho becomes the show's most sympathetic figure — a man whose only crime was wanting to protect his father. His death in Season 6, when he takes his own life rather than be used as a pawn, is an act of ultimate defiance. His final speech to the assembled cartel leaders, declaring that he switched Hector's pills and did it all on his own, protects his father and denies his enemies the satisfaction of killing him on their terms.