This summer the critically acclaimed AMC drama Breaking Bad returns for its final stretch of eight episodes. Series creator Vince Gilligan, a master of his craft, is currently wrapping up the third-to-last episode and work on the penultimate hour is nearly underway. Denise Martin of Vulture sat down with Gilligan and just yesterday posted an informative interview that delves into the mind of the showrunner as he cautiously sprints toward the highly anticipated series finale.
When asked about the evolution of Walt’s fate: “I had this strange confidence in the beginning that I had an idea [for the ending] that was sound. But I look back at the life of the series and realize I cycled through so many possible endings, it would be disingenuous to say I had always had it figured out. It has evolved in the last five years and probably has some evolving left to do.” He added, “We try to have a surprise around every corner but inevitability as well. The opposite of surprise. It’s something that I feel should and will be an important component to the end of the series. To me, that is an interesting thing and a thing to be embraced, that feeling of ‘I think I know where this is going.'”
Will Walt be brought to justice? Gilligan won’t say for sure, but here’s what’s going on in his head right now: “I’m very cornball in my own view of the world. It just makes sense to me that bad people should get punished and good people should be rewarded. I know it doesn’t work like that in real life, but there’s always that yearning. Oddly enough, I don’t feel any real pressure to pay off the characters, morally speaking.”
He’s still working on how to wrap up everyone’s storylines. “Sometimes it’s hard to give them all their due and make them all wrap up beautifully. That’s another big fear I have.” One character who will likely come out of the finale still breathing is Saul Goodman. “I like to think of Saul as a cockroach in the best possible way,” Gilligan said. “This is a guy who’s going to survive while the rest of us have been nuked into annihilation. He’ll be the worst-dressed cockroach in the world.” [So perhaps the Saul-spinoff idea is still alive!]
There have been rumors that Breaking Bad would find life post-series finale either in another episodic run or a feature film. At last, Gilligan has laid it all to rest. “Rightly or wrongly, there will be a conclusive ending. Our story from the beginning has been designed to be close-ended. It’s very much designed to have a beginning, middle, and end and then to exist no more.”
In the end, Gilligan hopes that the final episode is accepted by the majority of the show’s fans. “It’s going to be polarizing no matter how you slice it, but you don’t want 10 percent to say it was great and 90 percent to say it sucked ass. You want those numbers to be reversed.”
Click here to read Vulture’s interview with Vince Gilligan in full. Also discussed is Gilligan’s high regard for the ending of Casablanca, he speaks of the nature of circularity the finale will hold, composer Henry Mancini and the feeling of inevitability, and influences from The Godfather and Columbo.