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Heisenberg
On Sunday night, Breaking Bad is finally coming to an end. And it'll be a tough goodbye. But show creator Vince Gilligan has promised that the ending will feel final – there won't be some mysterious Sopranos-esque head-scratcher. It may not please everyone, but it will be definitive.
Six weeks ago, we compiled a list of our favorite theories about how the show was going to end. Now that the finale is nigh, we’ve decided to update the story to reflect everything we’ve learned in the subsequent episodes about whether or not these elaborate theories panned out.
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This Is the Ultimate Breaking Bad Finale PartyBreaking Bad is particularly ripe for this kind of symbolic close reading because Gilligan, who cut his teeth on The X-Files, is known for telling layered stories where nearly anything can be a future plot clue, Easter egg, or narrative device. "Breaking Bad is a show that rewards close attention," he told WIRED recently. "It's more enjoyable to watch the show with a solid foundation of what has come before, with a strong memory of what has come before."
Close attention has been paid. Throughout teacher-turned-meth-cook Walter White's intense five-season journey on AMC, fans have deconstructed the show's potential layers of meaning with the dedication of Talmudic scholars. Color meanings have been catalogued, visual cues have been analyzed (what did it mean that Hector Salamanca sat in a chair made of wooden wheels before he was wheelchair-bound?), each moment pored over in an attempt to determine if it foreshadowed some momentous event. But even though the showrunner has admitted there was no grand plan from the beginning, he says his team has worked tirelessly to tie everything together for the series finale.
"We sat around in a writers' room for thousands of man-hours – all seven of us – and we tried to play a game of chess, in which we said, 'If we move the character from here to here to here, what happens, what's the counter-move?' Essentially we said to ourselves, 'What are all the possible endings we could come up with and then what is the ending that satisfies us the most?" Gilligan said recently during a Nerdist Writer's Panel. "And in the process … what can we mine from the past so that it echoes, so that it resonates in the present, in the now in the final episode, or the final two or eight—in this case—so that it feels like we planned it from the get-go?'"
With the series finale in sight, we're finally about to find out which of the fan theories were legit. So before it all goes down, take a last look at the theories above, make your predictions and remember: the gun is pointed at the red beanbag chair.
Major spoilers for Breaking Bad follow.
Photo: Ursula Coyote/AMC
Breaking Bad Recap: Walter White Is an AbuserBreaking Bad Recap: Pink Is the New BlackThis Is the Ultimate Breaking Bad Finale PartyBreaking Bad is particularly ripe for this kind of symbolic close reading because Gilligan, who cut his teeth on The X-Files, is known for telling layered stories where nearly anything can be a future plot clue, Easter egg, or narrative device. "Breaking Bad is a show that rewards close attention," he told WIRED recently. "It's more enjoyable to watch the show with a solid foundation of what has come before, with a strong memory of what has come before."
Close attention has been paid. Throughout teacher-turned-meth-cook Walter White's intense five-season journey on AMC, fans have deconstructed the show's potential layers of meaning with the dedication of Talmudic scholars. Color meanings have been catalogued, visual cues have been analyzed (what did it mean that Hector Salamanca sat in a chair made of wooden wheels before he was wheelchair-bound?), each moment pored over in an attempt to determine if it foreshadowed some momentous event. But even though the showrunner has admitted there was no grand plan from the beginning, he says his team has worked tirelessly to tie everything together for the series finale.
"We sat around in a writers' room for thousands of man-hours – all seven of us – and we tried to play a game of chess, in which we said, 'If we move the character from here to here to here, what happens, what's the counter-move?' Essentially we said to ourselves, 'What are all the possible endings we could come up with and then what is the ending that satisfies us the most?" Gilligan said recently during a Nerdist Writer's Panel. "And in the process … what can we mine from the past so that it echoes, so that it resonates in the present, in the now in the final episode, or the final two or eight—in this case—so that it feels like we planned it from the get-go?'"
With the series finale in sight, we're finally about to find out which of the fan theories were legit. So before it all goes down, take a last look at the theories above, make your predictions and remember: the gun is pointed at the red beanbag chair.
Major spoilers for Breaking Bad follow.
Photo: Ursula Coyote/AMC
