A recurring theme in this show is Jimmy using his real life trauma as fodder for his scheming and cons. He buries his shame, guilt, and self-hatred, and it seems like sometimes the closest he gets to ever reckoning with that is when he is weaponizing it to manipulate someone. We've seen it, most famously, when he gets his law license back at the Bar hearing after convincing the panel of his "sincerity", and most recently in "Nippy" when he used his completely true experience of loneliness and regret to distract the security guard. Really the whole idea behind the "Saul Goodman" persona plays on this theme -- a defense mechanism to superficially deal with the more agonizing parts that lurk below the surface of Jimmy's psyche.

Just from a storytelling perspective, it feels like we are being led to the point at the the end of the story where Jimmy has to truly grapple with his emotions in a genuine, cut & dry way, rather than the same ingenuine song and dance he's been doing for seasons now. Similar to how Walt's journey to self realization finally brought him to the "I did it for me" moment at the end.

With this in mind, it makes sense to me if Marion starts picking up on Gene's insincerity and has to act as his final "judge of character" in the end. For example, if she finds Jeff's stolen goods, she will start to piece together the fact that Gene is involved with Jeff's return to crime. From there she can poke around and find out Gene doesn't have a dog named Nippy. Then she will approach him (still completely unaware that he is Saul Goodman) and call him out for corrupting her son and misleading her. Gene tries to use his silver tongue to deescalate the situation but Marion cannot be fooled, she sees right through him now. Eventually, Gene has to do something we've never really seen him do before -- tell his story truthfully, and plead his case as to why he deserves a second chance, without hiding behind a goofy Saul Goodman mask, or trying to trick his mark, but by really being honest about everything. His father's cash register, Chuck, Kim, Howard, Brock, everything. And this soliloquy could very well wind up causing him to come to the realization "maybe I don't even deserve a second chance". And from there, Marion would either reject his story as the ramblings of a twisted man, or she would see that he actually is being genuine, and maybe there is some good in him deep down. The idea of a random elderly woman being the judge of Jimmy McGill's soul at the end of this long journey, being the only person to truly get a peak inside this guy's psyche after seasons of him hiding from his own truth, just seems like something that fits. Like after years of self inflicted emotional assault, gaslighting, secret identities, hiding from the law, it all comes down to a conversation with Marion at her kitchen table that finally gets Jimmy to lift the veil and find some cohesion between all the separate fragments of himself.