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| “ | You know what a cop fears most? More than getting shot, more than anything? Prison. Getting locked up with everybody you put away. You threaten a cop with that, you make him dangerous, and that's what I told him. I talked sense. No one was getting hurt. But if you go to the I.A., if you even look like you're going… He had a wife, a kid, responsibilities. "Take the money. Do something good with it." Well, I tried… I tried. But he wouldn't listen. My boy was stubborn. My boy was strong. And he was gonna get himself killed. So I told him… I told him I did it, too. That I was like Hoffman, getting by, and that's what you heard that night: me talking him down, him kicking and screaming until the fight went out of him. He put me up on a pedestal… and I had to show him, I… that I was down in the gutter with the rest of 'em. Broke my boy… I broke my boy. They went to Hoffman, he took the money, but he hesitated. Even looking like you're doing the right thing; to those two? Meant that he wasn't solid. That he couldn't be trusted. I got Matty to take the money… and they killed him two days later. He was the strongest person that I ever knew. He would've never done it, not even to save himself. I was the only one… I was the only one who could get him to debase himself like that. And it was for nothing. I made him lesser. I made him like me. And the bastards killed him anyway. | „ |
| ~ Mike Ehrmantraut's monologue on how he disappointed Matt, his son. |
Matthew "Matt" or "Matty" Ehrmantraut is a minor character in the crime drama series Better Call Saul, a prequel to Breaking Bad.
He is the son of Mike Ehrmantraut (one of the show's main characters), the husband of Stacey and the father of Kaylee. Matt worked as a police officer in Philadelphia for two years before he was killed.
Although his death takes place before the events of the story, it has a major impact on Mike's philosophy and actions throughout the franchise.
He was portrayed by Nicholas Liam King as a child.
History[]
Background[]
Matt initially served as a novice police officer in Philadelphia and was married to Stacey, with whom he had a daughter named Kaylee. He shared a very close bond with his father, Mike, whom he greatly admired and aspired to emulate as a law enforcement officer.
While working alongside his longtime partner, Officer Hoffman, Matt was approached with an offer to take illicit money, which he initially refused on moral grounds. After this, Sergeant Fensky pressured Matt about accepting the payment, so Matt sought advice from his father about potentially reporting it to Internal Affairs.
Mike cautioned his son that exposing corrupt colleagues would make him a target within the predominantly corrupt precinct. In a revelation that was devastating for Matt, Mike told him that he had participated in police corruption himself, arguing that justice was ultimately served regardless of such compromises. This disclosure effectively broke Matt's idealized image of his father as a noble man.
Though Matt eventually relented and accepted the money following his father's guidance, Hoffman and Fensky had already grown fearful of him becoming a potential whistleblower because of his reluctance at first. They orchestrated an ambush in which they killed Matt, a crime that remained unsolved within the police department.
Better Call Saul[]
In "Five-O," a flashback reveals that Mike was able to prove that Hoffman and Fensky murdered his son. Mike carefully planned and executed a revenge killing of both officers. Philadelphia detectives later question Mike in Albuquerque about these suspicious deaths, noting the similarities between his son's murder and Mike's timely departure. The con artist attorney Jimmy McGill helps Mike avoid incrimination through a scheme. Later, in a conversation with his daughter-in-law Stacey, Mike expresses severe guilt about Matt's death and begins tearing up, arguing that he "broke his boy" by getting him killed and distorting his morals. He also implies to her that he killed Hoffman & Fensky. In "Talk," another flashback shows young Matt with a younger Mike as they pour cement for a driveway. Mike lovingly lets his son write his name in the wet cement with a stick.
In "50% Off," while Mike is building a treehouse with his granddaughter Kaylee, she mentions that Matt was a fan of the Philadelphia Eagles and assumes Mike taught Matt how to be a good police officer. It quickly dovetails into a conversation uncomfortable for Mike about what Kaylee's father was like as a kid. This triggers Mike emotionally, causing him to snap at Kaylee and yell at her for (falsely) building the treehouse wrong, who runs inside upset. Later, Mike avoids explaining the incident to Stacey when she returns home.
In "Saul Gone," during a conversation with Jimmy in the desert about traveling back in time to fix one's mistakes, Mike reveals that he would return to December 8, 2001 - strongly implied to be a date connected to Matt's death. He quickly changes his answer to March 17, 1984, the day he took his first bribe as an officer.
Trivia[]
- Matt's death is implied to have led Mike's attempts to protect similarly young and redeemable individuals in the franchise from the dangers of the drug trade, namely the lose-lose figures Jesse Pinkman and Nacho Varga, for whom Mike takes on a quiet mentorship role to steer them away from trouble.
External Links[]
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