Brian Earl Spilner said:
Broad strokes, I do understand, but I guess the logistics are what confuse me.
At that point in time, nobody has communicated to Nacho what exactly they want him to do, right? As far as he knows, he's still on the run and trying to evade capture.
So I don't fully understand why Gus, through Mike, doesn't communicate with him that he needs to get captured and sell the story, with the threat of killing his father. That would have probably been all they needed to do rather than actually kidnapping him first.
Full disclosure, I'm aware I'm probably way overthinking it and it might make perfect sense to me on rewatch.
I'm trying to follow your line of reasoning to see where the confusion is.
Broadly, nacho has known for a long time (since at least season 5)that his dad is being used as leverage, first by Hector, then by Gus. Nacho is completely in a box. He wants to escape somehow but doesn't have a plan how to do it.
Gus knows that Nacho caused Hector's stroke. Gus could turn Nacho in and get him killed by the Salamancas. Instead, Gus uses nacho's dad as perpetual leverage because even if Nacho somehow escapes to Canada or decides to off himself, his dad would suffer.
Nacho gets in deep when he has to go to Chihuahua with Lalo unexpectedly, meet Eladio, etc. He's still got the dream of "getting out of the game" but the options are closing the deeper he gets in. He facilitates the ambush at Gus's direction, still hoping to escape.
When he's hiding out at the hotel he figures out that it's Gus and Mike keeping him there and ultimately planning to kill him because he's got dangerous info. At that point he knows he's completely cooked, both groups wanting him dead, no route of escape. The only thing he can achieve at that point is assurance that his dad won't be harmed, and to have as decent a death as possible.
You know the rest.....
