‘Breaking Bad’ Series Finale: Vince Gilligan Reveals More Alternate Endings, Including “Rambo Walter”
'Breaking Bad' has finally cooked up its last batch of episodes (discounting the spinoff), and while many continue to argue about the purity of Walter White's last stand, most agree the Emmy-winning AMC drama stuck the landing better than most. We'd previously heard creator Vince Gilligan discuss several alternate endings as well, but it seems the writers also had in mind multiple trajectories for Walt's big gun, including a prison break for Jesse, and other endings that saw either Skyler or Walter Jr. bite the bullet!
As revealed in an AMC insider podcast (Via IGN), Gilligan espoused at least five potential alternate endings for 'Breaking Bad,' most of which had been concocted with the flash-forward of Walt's M-60. At the time of "Live Free or Die," Gilligan and his writers had yet to actually write Todd's Neo-Nazi family into the story, and thereby the weapon's intended use.
According to Gilligan, the group quickly did away with the idea of Walter using the gun himself in a "Rambo" sort of last stand, but gave serious thought to who might end up on the other end of the weapon. One ending saw Walter White using the M-60 on police officers attempting to apprehend him, while yet another saw Walter liberating Jesse from either a prison, or a prison transport. Gilligan initially felt that Walter obtaining the weapon to use on "bad guys" would have been "too obvious," though ultimately the audience wouldn't want to see him harming innocents either.
Along another path, writers considered having a weary and "zombified" Skyler along with Walt for his vacuum disappearing act, though the idea quickly fell apart when it became too difficult to imagine Walter Jr. accepting the idea of what had happened to the family. Further down that road, Walt and Skyler might have holed up in a motel to allow Walt to formulate a plan, only to discover that Skyler had committed suicide by slitting her wrists in a bathtub.
Ready for more? Yet another radical departure to 'Breaking Bad' canon would have seen Vince Gilligan proceeding with his initial vision for the first season by having Jesse killed by a drug dealer's hand, for which Walter ends up imprisoning and torturing the killer, similar to how we saw him deal with Krazy-8. Walter would have set up a shotgun and trip wire for the dealer to kill himself, 'Saw' style, only for Walter Jr. to find the imprisoned dealer, who then triggers the device to kill them both.
Pretty crazy, no? We confessed our surprise at seeing 'Breaking Bad' series finale "Felina" go so easily on its supporting cast, but what say you? Would the series have been better served by a darker, more violent ending? How did you think Walter White would end his legacy with an M-60? Go inside the finale below, and give us your take in the comments!