Breaking Bad

I see no reason why Walt would intentionally rescue Jesse. Walt’s more likely to kill him.

I think Walt would take the ricin to avoid rotting in jail and to spare his family more pain after he gives himself up. Maybe in his eyes it would even be a noble sacrifice. Unless someone else kills him first.

I think Walt will wake up next to Suzanne Pleshette and want to tell her about the crazy dream he just had.

Losing Walt Jr. may drive him to try and save his surrogate son, and Walt is possibly still deluded enough to think Jessie will forgive and thank him.

Indeed!

I loved that gag, since I’d watched that show as a kid.

Or he’ll wind up as a lumberjack in some tiny Alaskan town.

Final scene could have Todd and Lydia crawling out of a empty propane truck somewhere in Manitoba…you never know…

I don’t know why Walt would want to kill himself with ricin. It doesn’t sound like a particularly pleasant way to go.

Killing himself definitely seems like a possibility, but again, I think people are trying a bit too hard to figure out the use for the ricin if they think Walt is going to use it. Is the idea that he now hates himself such that he wants to die by a relatively slow process that includes ongoing nausea and diarrhea?

Is it less pleasant than dying of lung cancer?

Not really relevant when there are more than those two ways (cancer or ricin) to get himself dead if going out on his terms is the goal.

If he turns himself in to the feds to clear his family, he won’t have many exit options other than those. (That’s a big if, obviously.)

I think the ricin has to be for Lydia. At this point, he’s lost everything and the only thing that I think he would want to do is wipe out his tarnished legacy: Wipe it all out, including Lydia and the AB. He didn’t buy a small machine gun, he bought a weapon to annihilate without discretion. And he can’t operate that gun so he’s gonna need a “crew” to help him out.

So I think Walt destroys the meanie-head Nazis, Jesse kills Todd with extreme prejudice, Lydia dies slowly from the ricin (but stll looking fabulous). Walt dies from cancer, his family forges on.

Am I the only one hungering for some justice regarding Gray Matter? After last week’s episode…

The ricin is for Badger and Skinny Pete because fuck Star Trek.

A little gif I made:

My predictions:

Walt’s Fate and the purpose of the machine gun

[spoiler]All signs point to death for Walt. The poem “Ozymandias” has to do with a boastful inscription upon a once mighty statue, now broken and forgotten in a desert. Scarface – who wielded a machine gun much like the one Walt has in his trunk – did not make it. Walt’s cancer has come back. He has provoked Jesse’s wrath, and his overall karma tab looks like it’s coming due.

And yet. Walt’s believed he was dying before. In fact, we first meet the guy as he’s taping a frenetic last testament, certain he was about to be killed. But he’s made it this far. His cancer went into remission, he outfoxed Fring, yadda yadda. So much of Walt’s sins have been predicated upon his imminent demise; Gilligan has the potential for some great dramatic irony here. What if the wall that Walt’s back was against… wasn’t there? What if he did all this and has to live with it – no easy escape?

Is the show interested in passing judgement on Walt? As Jesse roars, “He can’t keep getting away with it!” Can he? It all depends on the writers’ sense of justice. We can only divine that through the show’s tone and track record. Based on that, I think he lives… kinda. The show’s a dark comedy, remember, and permitting Walt a Scarface-esque blaze of glory seems wrong in two ways: one, it wraps things up too tidily for the audience, reassuring them that all monsters are put down; two, it affords Walt a little too much pride. The show is consistent in making Walt – who is lethal and genuinely terrifying at times – look like a goof. We see Walt in his white briefs. We see him throwing pizzas, throwing potted plants, pitching infantile fits of rage. Is he really going to get to go out like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? Too glorious by half.

My instinct is that Walt’s fate will be utterly ignominious. That means prison; that means all of his work comes to nothing. I could easily see Walt in the final scene exchange his yellow lab jumpsuit for a nice shade of DoC orange. He’s lead into his cage, and informed that the results of his prison physical have come back: his cancer’s in remission. His money won’t go to his family, it’s been seized by Hank Schrader’s replacement.

But I think Walt might have an out. The ricin pill. That damn thing’s been floating around forever, and I think this will be Walt’s failsafe. He’s used chemistry to get himself out of tough situations before, and this may be his get out of jail “free” card.

This ending utterly humiliates Walt, while still making sense for the character: from his perspective, a ricin suicide lets him retain some measure of dignity and autonomy. We know Walt hates to be controlled, after all.

Who is the machine gun for?

What’s left for Walt? He did everything for his family, and they are now lost to him. Certainly he’d load for bear if they were endangered, but who would do that? Since Jack let him go with a handshake, the Nazis have no interest in any more friction.

It seems certain that the M60 is for offense; Walt’s behavior at his old house in the flash forward was brazen: he said hello to his neighbor. These are not the actions of a man hiding, or a man who plans to live for very long.

In that light, Walt must be trying to liberate Jesse. That seems sensible and elegant. But considering Jesse’s feelings towards Walt, unleashing him from the dog run would work out as badly for Walt as it did if he unleashed a real rabid dog. If Walt frees Jesse, Jesse will kill Walt.

What’s the problem? That stupid ricin. M60s and poison pills are not part of the same offensive; I can’t imagine Walt poisoning anyone but himself. So what’s a scenario in which Walt frees Jesse, but still takes the ricin?

Maybe, once freed, Jesse sees through Walt’s attempt at suicide-by-ex-partner. Realizing that a bullet to the head would be too clean for the monster Heisenberg, Jesse spits on the guy one last time and tells him he isn’t worth the time. This would satisfy Jesse, I think. Walt would watch him go and pop the pill.[/spoiler]

A lot of people seem to. I guess I don’t get it. They’re a business and Walt bailed on them long ago and went crazy as far as they’re concerned. Why would you damage your company for some meth cook who told you to fuck off? I mean Walt left Gretchen and Grey Matter on his own because of his insecurities. They never did anything wrong really. Hell, they tried to help him and this all could’ve been avoided if not for Walt’s pride.

I expect Walt wants some “justice” regarding them, seeing how much his rage and jealousy around their success (and his failure) drives him. While I feel some sympathy for Walt, I don’t see how his former partners have really done him an injustice, other than the relatively minor slight (and one he sort of backed them into a corner on) in the interview. It surely sucks to miss out on the success you helped create, but he chose to sell out his interest for cash, and it doesn’t sound like he was forced into that position. If at the time he was confident the company was going to be a success, he probably could have negotiated at least retaining a minority share with whatever restrictions were needed to eliminate conflict. Walt probably assumed the venture was doomed without him, because that’s Walt. Furthermore, while Walt’s work may have been critical to the success of Gray Matter, the company went from a 15k valuation (based on his buyout) to over two billion without him, and that is work done by his former partners. It’s possible he could have been forced into a buyout since it sounded like he only controlled a third*, but I don’t recall him saying that and I have no idea what the law around their company would have been.

*all numbers above assume Walt holding a third, based on some breaking bad wiki. I though he held half going by memory, but it doesn’t impact the above in any meaningful way.

I like Mr. Zero’s thoughts on Walt, except as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t think the ricin is for himself. So just to consolidate my predictions:

Walt’s fate: Things end terribly for Walt, but that doesn’t necessarily mean his death. And even if I’m wrong, and Walt intends to use the ricin on himself, I imagine it somehow failing—it’s discovered before he can take it, he’s treated before he dies, etc. The bottom line, and really the ultimate punishment for a man like Walt, is that nothing ends on his terms.

Jesse’s fate: Walt is absolutely not setting off to rescue Jesse. He may end up accomplishing that if, for example, he’s really trying to take on the nazi compound himself and sees an opportunity to use Jesse one last time. But as with most of their relationship, he will only save Jesse if it’s in his own interest. Jesse doesn’t get a happy ending either, but I don’t know if he dies. The noble sacrifice trope is about the best he could hope for, but I imagine he will just live on unhappily. Maybe in jail, maybe just with the same kind burn-out life he had before. If there was going to be real, lasting redemption for Jesse, that process would need to have been started earlier, anything else will feel like a cheat at this point.

Todd and the Nazis: This isn’t quite the bleak world of Anton Sigur and No Country for Old Men (I doubt they’d really kill Brock if Jesse committed suicide just to make some kind of point to Jesse’s ghost, they seem as practical as they are monstrous), but I don’t have any expectation of justice for everyone. Some or all of them could live to be horrible another day. I’m 50/50 on Todd, it would be pretty cathartic to see Jesse kill him—and maybe that’s the one “happy” ending for the audience so it’s not all depressing, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all to seem him escape unscathed. Possibly as a lumberjack.

Gray Matter: I seriously doubt Walt is after them directly. That was simply the catalyst to finally push him over the edge. He was resigned to the futility of his situation, had effectively turned himself in (without the ricin, if I may hammer home the point that turning himself in only to kill himself seems unlikely), and basically given up on any happy ending for himself or his family. But his pride couldn’t take that final hit of watching his legacy be marginalized. I think he’s done with schemes to get away with anything, given up on that money ever getting to his family, and just wants to go out as Heisenberg, on Heisenberg’s terms, guns blazing literally, figuratively, or both. Which is what makes my prediction above so terrible for him.

Walt Jr.: Manager of a Pollos Hermanos.

Also, catching up on season 4 of The League, we see that apparently Saul isn’t managing a Cinnabon directly, but there is one in the food court of the mall he’s running.