How Will Breaking Bad End? Here Are 7 Mind-Blowing Theories

In a mere seven episodes, Breaking Bad is 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 mysteriousSopranos-esque head-scratcher. It may not please everyone, but it will be definitive.

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 meant to point viewers to his shows’ final outcome. “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 chronicled and cataloged the show’s—sometimes real, sometimes imagined—layers of meaning with the dedication of Talmudic scholars. Color meanings have been cataloged, 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 was meant to foreshadow some as-yet-untold momentous event.

Gilligan has also claimed that the intricately interconnected plot of Bad will be resolved by harkening back to events and characters from previous seasons, and bringing everything full-circle. With the series finale in sight, we’re about to find out which of the fan theories were legit, and what those hints Gilligan and crew have been dropping for the past five years actually meant. And even though the showrunner has admitted there was no grand plan from the beginning, he swears his team has spent gone back and looked for those things that could have foreshadowed the ending and made sure the things that need to be woven into the fabric of the series finale are there.

“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?'”

So what’s in store? We scoured some of the best fan theories from the last five seasons and combed through some of the clues the show has dropped in recent weeks to pull together some best(or is it worst?)-case-scenarios for how the show could end in glorious fashion. Check them about above, and remember: the gun is pointed at the red beanbag chair.

Photo: Ursula Coyote/AMC

 

The Color Theory

 

The Color Theory is both deeply elaborate and has been conceptually confirmed, by showrunners like Vince Gilligan, production designer Mark Freeborn, and costume designer Jennifer Bryan. The colors of props and costumes used for dynamic characters (so for instance, not so much in the cases of the mostly-static Walter Jr. or Mike) are deeply symbolic, effectively used as thermometer for a character’s current state of mind. As curator Barbara Miller explained to WIRED recently about the Museum of the Moving Image’s exhibition on Breaking Bad‘s costumes and props, color palettes, especially Walt and Jesse’s, darken as they sink deeper into damnation.

Of course it’s more complicated than simple hue. As graphic designer John LaRue of The Droid You’re Looking For illustrates with his ludicrously painstaking infographic (above), color also seems to indicate characters’ motivations and imminent change – for example, characters tend to wear yellow before they make intense, game-changing decisions, like Walt’s killing Krazy-8 in season one. While yellow is the proverbial canary in a coal mine, green seems indicates a character (usually Walt, often Saul) acting out of greed; whites represent powerlessness (in the case of Walt’s cancer and hospital treatments) and beiges point to the straight-and-narrow life Walt left behind (see: Elliott Schwartz’s birthday party guests, while Walt and Skyler stand out in bright blue). Some Breaking Bad color theorists believe the way a character’s colored clothing is layered–and even put on or taken off–also represent compound or ulterior motives. For instance, when Jesse and Walt clean Jesse’s apartment after the botched bathtub disposal of Emilio’s body in the second episode, Walt wears a yellow shirt… under a green apron.

The theory also extends to props – the bright pink teddy bear that fell into the pool is the most prominent example, with pink often cropping up as the color of death. There’s also the Godfather-esque appearance of oranges throughout the series – and set-pieces – red bathroom fixtures as the Madrigal executive in Season 5 kills himself, Marie’s static purple home décor (Marie, as Gilligan often notes, is just really fond of purple, so when she’s not wearing it, chance are it means something.) Some colors seem to have multiple or uncertain meanings. Blue is Skyler’s color, of course, not to mention that of water, and the car wash; but as it’s also the color of the meth Walt cooks, and may represent the drug game in general, too. Red, similarly, is one of Jesse’s colors, but also seems prominent when something’s about to go down, like the startlingly red bathroom fixtures. Even the characters’ names are suspect when considering their natures (and potentially their fates): Walter White, Skyler White, Jesse Pinkman (red tinged with white), Elliott and Gretchen Schwartz (schwartz means black in German).

The question that remains arguable, however, is whether color is truly intended to be predictive of plot events, or if it’s more of a secondary, retrospective thing. Does Holly wearing pink–not to mention a pink teddy bear outfit–indicate she’ll become a casualty, or is it just that her birth coincided with Walt’s cancer diagnosis? Walt and Skyler’s beige-and-white outfits at the car wash in “Bloody Money” last Sundaycertainly don’t indicate a true ho-hum existence, so if it’s a façade, how many other instances are meant to throw avid Color Theorists off the trail? (Costume designer Bryan mentioned in a recent interview with Vulture that Skyler’s going to suffer some drastic color-changes this season, but that it would constitute a spoiler to elaborate.)

As Gilligan himself has noted ambiguously, “Your appreciation of the show doesn’t in any way rely on noticing these things. But they are there to be noticed, nonetheless, which is up to the viewer to pick up on it or not.” —Devon Maloney

Image: John LaRue/Tdylf.com

The Hamlet Theory

The recent midseason premiere of Breaking Bad featured an extended scene where Jesse’s erstwhile drug-distributing pals Badger and Skinny Pete discussed a speculative and hilarious script for Star Trek: The Original Series, a rare moment of levity from the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of a drama that seems likely to end in tragedy. But what if that comparison were even more apt, as several fans have suggested, and Vince Gilligan is gearing up to pull a full-on Hamlet?

After all, the sullen, withdrawn Jesse–who has, of late, lost all his mirth–bears more than a passing resemblance to the prince of Denmark. Just look at the way he moped around his living room while the comedic duo jested, consumed with guilt over the death of Mike– the father figure whom he has slowly realized was almost certainly killed by Walt.

Yes, Walt has arguably acted paternal to Jesse at times, but he’s also manipulated and caused measurable harm to both Jesse but the people Jesse loves on numerous occasions. Indeed, it’s Mike, as actor Aaron Paul recently observed during his Reddit AMA, who acted like a true father to Jesse and legitimately looked out for his best interests. Much like Claudius, who killed Hamlet’s father, Walt denies doing the deed, but Jesse sees through the lie, and finds himself haunted both by the non-literal ghost of Mike and the knowledge that the man who committed the crime is still “the King.”

Jesse has has his own Ophelia as well: Jane, the love interest he drove to her own death. But rather than drowning in a river, as Ophelia did, the former addict Jane choked to death on her own vomit after Jesse’s substance abuse lead her back to heroin. And the news of her death certainly inspired a similar devastation in Jesse, who leapt not into a grave but into a squalid drug den. Plus, we’ve already seen Jesse start his descent into the sort of madness that consumed Hamlet and his conflicted feelings about how to respond to the crime, not to mention his quiet acknowledgment to Walt that he knows exactly what he did.

So what does the theory mean for Walt and Jesse? If it holds true, pretty much everyone is going to die.

Although he’s been hesitant–or even incapable–about confronting Walt in the past, Jesse nearly shot his former chemistry teacher when he believed Walt had poisoned of his girlfriend’s son, Brock (which he may well have been). If he discovers the truth about Jane or Brock, it could very well be enough to propel him into a full-on Shakepearean quest from revenge.

Let’s take a look at how it goes down in the play: After attempting to reason with Hamlet trying to get him to accept the new status quo-=-a familiar game that Walt is playing less successfully than usual already with Jesse–Claudius finally decides that he has to take out the troublesome prince whom he fears may expose his crimes. If Jesse keeps up his reckless, half-mad behavior, like throwing fat stacks of money randomly out his car window to assuage his guilt, Walt may ultimately reach a similar determination. But how would he take him out?

Initially, Claudius tried to use Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (aka Skinny Pete and Badger) to deliver Hamlet to his death by sending them to England with a death warrant for the prince. Although the duo may not have known about the intent of the letter, Hamlet swaps their names for his–meaning that Jesse might take out Skinny Pete and Badger if he believes they have betrayed him to Walt.

And Jane’s father, who we know attempted suicide, may have died as befits Ophelia’s father, Polonius, but perhaps he might also return as a sort of Laertes to exact revenge on Jesse for propelling his daughter to her death—perhaps even at Walt’s urging, in the same way Claudius goaded Laertes to take out his problematic nephew. After all, Walt and Jane’s father did have that bonding moment at the bar before her death. If Walt decides that it’s time for Jesse to go, why not send someone with ample motivation to do the deed before getting his own hands dirty?

It’s also notable how much poison is involved in the finale of Hamlet, especially since poison has been Walt’s weapon of choice on several occasions since the first season. In particular, the play’s final act involves a dose of poison that Claudius drops in a glass of wine meant for Hamlet, which ends up being taken by Gertrude at the tragic conclusion. Could this be the ricin that Walt retrieved from his house in the midseason premiere—and could a future attempt to poison Jesse with it end up killing Skyler? —Laura Hudson

The Chekhov’s Guns Theory

The idea of a “Chekhov’s gun” is more of a recurring motif than a proper theory. The dramatic principle stipulates that nothing should be shown unless it has a purpose. If, for example, the audience is shown—yes—a gun early on in a dramatic work, then that gun needs to have some resonance in the narrative later on. Otherwise it’s useless.

This trick has been used more than a few times on Breaking Bad, and often with objects other than guns (though often, it’s an instrument of destruction of one form or another). And even though it’s a common plot device—on Bad and elsewhere—it serves a great purpose in that it has taught viewers to pay attention to little details. Even if people don’t know the term “Chekhov’s gun” they know that nothing on the show is put before their eyeballs without it having some purpose.

Often the Chekhov’s guns in Breaking Bad have resolved themselves over an episode or two. The box cutter that showed up in Season 4 and was quickly used by Gus Fring to ice Victor, the special bullet that the Cousins acquire from an arms dealer that subsequently saves Hank’s life – these things played out rapid-fire style. So did the Lily of the Valley, a plant shown early in the Season 4 finale before it was revealed to be the poison used on Brock.

However, as the show has been heading into its final episodes the arcs of the Chekhov’s guns have run over many, many episodes. The ricin vial—which Walt initially gave to Jesse to use to poison Gus in Season 4—is still around even in last Sunday’s flash-forward. And then there’s White’s gun, the M60 that Walt bought in the flash-forward at the beginning of Season 5 and has been ominously riding around in the trunk of his car ever since.

After five seasons of training in keeping an eye on these kinds of things, fans now know the ricin and M60 have to lead to a big finish. But how? One of the going theories is that Walt will actually use the ricin to poison himself. His cancer may be back (he says so, but we’ve learned not to trust everything Walt says) and he seems fairly ready to go out in a blaze of glory, but at this point his ego is too big to die by anyone’s hand but his own. Ricin poisoning can take hours, if not days, to kill a person (remember Brock was alive for a while during the time the doctors thought his Lily of the Valley poisoning was actually ricin) so Walt could ingest it at any point he felt the walls closing in. It’s also possible he could still use it on someone else. One of the most famous ricin poisoning death cases involved Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov being attacked with an umbrella rigged to inject a ricin pellet under his skin. It’s doubtful Walt would pull the same umbrella trick, but rigging some other clandestine poisoning maneuver? That’s right up his alley (remember it’s still a bit unclear how he gave Brock the Lily of the Valley).

As for the M60, the most obvious use of that weapon is to aid in the aforementioned blaze of glory. Who this showdown will be with is another story. Hank and the rest of the DEA? Some rival drug gang? Lydia and the rest of Madrigal Electromotive? Whoever it was that outed him as Heisenberg? It’s hard to tell (and theoretically any of these folks could face a ricin death too). Walt’s always been on a one-way street to Scarface, and even though he’s using Rambo’s weapon of choice (Scarface rocked a Colt AR-15) he might be out to have everyone “say hello to my little friend.” —Angela Watercutter

 

The Hunter-Gatherer Theory

 

Originally posited by theorists on sites like Reddit and The Straight Dope, the Hunter-Gatherer Theory (as we at WIRED have dubbed it) picks up on subtle changes to Walt’s behavior after murders someone: notably, that he takes on certain habits and idiosyncrasies of the people he puts into the ground.

When Walt and Jesse are holding Krazy-8 hostage, for example, the dealer makes Walt cut the crusts off his sandwich; after Walt strangles him to death, he begins doing the same to his own bread. Mike and Walt order drinks early on in their relationship, Walt asking for his straight, Mike ordering his on the rocks. Once Walt kills Mike, he picks up the on-the-rocks habit (as well as Mike’s preference for estate cars, as seen in the flash-forward). As of last Sunday’s mid-season premiere, Walt also picked up the also-murdered Gus’s neat-and-tidy habit of putting down a towel before kneeling in front of the toilet to ralph. It develops a minuscule but ultimately water-tight pattern that’s hard to ignore when thinking about the show’s conclusion.

By these rules, the theory suggests that, since the Season 5 opener starts with a flash-forward wherein Walt is (a) wearing a big-pocketed, army-style jacket that looks just like the one Jesse wears, and (b) not only breaks and rearranges the bacon on his plate the way his wife used to, but is currently using her maiden name as an alias, Walt will have killed both Skyler and Jesse by season’s end. -Devon Maloney

 

The Ozymandias Theory

Look on the works of Heisenberg, ye viewers, and despair. AMC recently released a trailer for the final episode of Breaking Bad where actor Bryan Cranston read “Ozymandias,” a 19th century poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley that warns those who hunger for power and permanence that the former will never offer the latter.

Ostensibly, Walt’s transformation from mild-mannered chemistry teacher to drug lord was compelled by his cancer diagnosis and desire to provide for his family after his death—or at least, that’s what he told himself in the beginning. But every time Walt skirted too close to danger and discovery, retreated back to the comfort and cover of his suburban identity, only to find it stultifying and inadequate. Over and over, ended up getting pulled back in meth game, not just because needed the money, but because he needed what his alter ego Heisenberg gave him: power and recognition.

Walt doesn’t truly want to hide in the shadows. He wants to tell vicious thugs to “say my name” and have them know the answer. He wants be recognized for his success and dominance in the meth industry as he never was in his legitimate endeavors, where he found himself on the outside of the fantastically lucrative Grey Matter Technologies company that he co-founded. He wants to be preceded by his reputation–and in the face of his own mortality, to be outlasted by it.

It’s no coincidence that Walt is sometimes referred to in promotional materials as “the King.” He’s prone to the same weaknesses and ambitions and weaknesses as most “great men”: the desire to rule, to control, and in the face of the one thing earthly power cannot–death—to find a way to conquer that too. Some people—like his frenemies Elliott and Gretchen—create legacies by building companies, businesses, or huge buildings with their names on them. In ancient times, they constructed monuments to their greatness, like Shelley’s Ozymandias (or the real-life Ramesses II statue the poem is likely based on), imagining that future generations would marvel at their power to the end of recorded time.

But the lesson of “Ozymandias” no matter how much power you wield, no matter how much ambition, ego or money you possess, or many people you control—death will ultimately take it all. And eventually, no matter how big a monument or an empire you build, all your accomplishments will ultimately be flattened to ash.

So what does “Ozymandias” mean for Walt? The mid-season premiere last Sunday already offered us a flashforward into Walt’s future, as he returned to the colossal wreck of the family home that so often served as his refuge. If Walt is to be Ozymandias, he may not need to wait for death to lose everything. Indeed, the moment when he sees the name “Heisenberg” spray-painted on his living room wall seems very much like looking on his works and despairing.

And if “nothing beside remains,” it likely means that Walt has lost not only his empire, but also his family; if Walt truly did it all for Skyler, Walt. Jr and Holly, as he so often likes to claim, the greatest irony of all would be for him to outlast them, and cause their deaths through his involvement with the drug trade–either directly or indirectly—and end up with nothing. —Laura Hudson

 

The Ominous Foreshadowing Theory

Much like Ed’s speech at the very beginning of Shaun of the Dead foreshadows how the entire film will play out, the characters on Breaking Bad have an eerie way of revealing their character arcs long before they’ve come to pass. Sometimes it seems as though these prescient moments are accidents—the things fans find to be revelatory only in hindsight—while others are like narrative Easter eggs too intricately placed to not be at least somewhat intentional.

The most spine-tingling of these (above) has to be the foreshadowing of the way Gus Fring died. Fring, you’ll remember, was blown up by Hector Salamanca in a nursing home thanks to a bomb made by Walt. The bomb, of course, was triggered by Hector hitting his bell in rapid succession. It was a bell Gus had heard before, in an elevator after meeting with Hank and the DEA earlier in the season (see above). Back then it looked like the feds might seal his fate, little did he know it would be the old man.

That, however, was just an echo compared to what happened to Jesse’s dearly departed girlfriend Jane, who died after asphyxiating on her own puke during a heroin overdose (that Walt didn’t stop). While she was still alive, however, she made more than a few mentions of the ways she might go out, telling Jesse at one point, “I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.” And in another instance she walked in on Jesse making her breakfast and Pinkman said, “You weren’t supposed to wake up.” Her response? “Ever?” Someeagle-eyed fans have even noted that earlier in the episode in which Jane dies Walt is putting his baby daughter Holly to bed and puts a towel next to her in case she spits up.

There are other less poignant foreshadowing moments too, like the time Ted tripped over the same rug that would later put him in a coma, or when Gale tested his tea kettle with a laser thermometer in the same place the bullet that killed him would land. There’s even the shot of young(er) Hector Salamanca sitting watching the Cousins play in a chair made out of wooden wheels long before he was ever put in an actual wheelchair. And there are likely many, many more that have yet to be spotted.

There are also, likely, things that have been foreshadowed that have not come to pass yet. One theory—alluded to by Vince Gilligan himself on last week’s Talking Bad—is that Walt’s fate, like that of the crew inShaun of the Dead was laid out in Walt’s speech to his class in the pilot. “Chemistry is, well technically chemistry is the study of matter, but I prefer to see it as the study of change,” he said. “Just think about this. Electrons, they change their energy levels. Molecules change their bonds. Elements, they combine and change into compounds. Well, that’s all of life, right? It’s the constant. It’s the cycle. It’s solution, dissolution – just over, and over, and over. It is growth, then decay, then transformation! It is fascinating, really.” Who will decay and who will transform should this quote prove to be prophetic, still remains to be seen.

However, there is one final moment that may be trying to tell us something – even if it is a bit on the nose. Gilligan has always said the premise of the show was to take Mr. Chips and turn him into Scarface. Well, in the last season we actually see Walt watching Scarface with his son, Junior. His thoughts? “Everyone dies in this movie, don’t they?” —Angela Watercutter

 

The Reservoir Dogs Theory

Ok, bear with us here. This one is bananas, and (probably) totally not anywhere near relevant, but it’s fun.

So, it’s already been established that color is very, very important on Breaking Bad. The colors people wear, the colors of various cars, the infamous blue hue to Walt’s signature crystal. It’s a veritable rainbow of meanings and metaphors. Beyond that the two main meth men—Walt and Jesse—both have color-based names: White and Pinkman. You know who else had color names? The gangsters in Quentin Tarantino’s seminal flick Reservoir Dogs. Yes, really. This is a theory that exists.

It looks like this. If Walt is Mr. White in Dogs then he’s Harvey Keitel, an old-school gangster who spends much of the movie trying to save a wounded Mr. Orange (Tim Roth). And if Jesse is Mr. Pink, then he’s Steve Buscemi, the one guy who actually got out of that job with a bag of jewels.

According to this theory, Hank would most likely be Mr. Orange, who in Dogs is an undercover cop, unbeknownst to his fellow crooks. (Hank does wear a lot of orange.) And, should the TV series end the way the film does, Walt and Hank will end up in a Mexican standoff (see above) with some high-level players. And Jesse/Mr. Pink will be begging for everyone to act like “professionals” ensuing shoot-out, and possibly make it out with the bounty or get arrested trying to (Reservoir Dogs leaves the fate of Mr. Pink something of a mystery, though he likely gets nabbed by the cops).

In this scenario there would also need to be some kind of standoff where someone Walt’s been working with–like Declan or Lydia–would find out that all along Walt’s brother-in-law has been a DEA agent and threaten to kill Hank. Walt, in turn, would threaten to kill them if they take aim at Hank, and everyone would get shot. Walt, injured but not dead, would then be faced with killing Hank as the authorities close in. InDogs, Mr. White kills Mr. Orange when he confesses that he actually was a cop, but in Bad Walt has always known Hank was in the DEA. So admittedly, the analogy doesn’t entirely match up. However, it’s possible Hank could reveal something else to Walt—that he’d officially turned him in or the like—and that could lead Walt to shoot him.

Sure, this theory is kind of ridiculous. Not only are there inconsistencies with how the plots of the two stories play out (or could play out), the idea that Gilligan & Co. would end five seasons of white-knuckle television with an homage to a 20-year-old Tarantino film seems like a bit of a stretch. However, that doesn’t make it any less fun—especially when it comes to playing around with who the other “Dogs” would be onBad. Who’s Mike? Perhaps the ruthless, ear-cutting Mr. Blonde? Would Nice Guy Eddie be Declan or Lydia? (OK, probably not Lydia, she’s not that nice.) Skylar? She could probably be Alabama—aka a woman Mr. White used to do jobs with. Well, at least the possibility of a Mexican standoff on the other side of the border seems plausible. —Angela Watercutter