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| Walter White "wins" |
The story of Walter White ends with Badfinger’s “Baby Blue”
playing as our protagonist admires the Nazis' meth-cooking facilities, proud of
the work of his mind, if not his hands.
But while that was the end of Walter White’s story, it was not the end
of Breaking Bad. That story ends ten minutes after the credits
roll as the police pull over a fleeing Jesse Pinkman, find his confession DVD
in the Nazis’ media cabinet, discover his role in the death of Gale Boetticher
and likely Badger’s and Skinny Pete’s involvement in the drug operation, arrest
the lot of them, find out about Walt Jr.’s inheritance, confiscate the $10
million, and completely undo every one of Walter’s final plans.
Maybe it doesn’t play out exactly like that, but the odds
of Jesse making it to Alaska, or even making it out of New Mexico with no
contacts, no money, no identification, nothing but a stolen Camaro are
extremely low. And the odds of Gretchen
and Elliott not immediately calling the DEA once Walt leaves their house are
not much better. And Walt has to know
this. He has to know how futile his
efforts are likely to be and, therefore, even the few seemingly selfless acts
in which he engages in the series finale end up being all about him and making
his name.
That is Walter White’s lasting legacy. Not his money. That’s all gone. Not his family. They’re devastated and want nothing to do
him. Not his friends, what few he ever
had. It is, instead, his pride: the one
thing Walter White has most valued in the two years of his life depicted in Breaking Bad. Nothing has been more important to him. And so, as he sits impotent in the bar,
watching Elliott and Gretchen strip the last good thing he has left, he makes
the fateful decision to wage one, final all-out war on anybody who has ever
damaged his ego.
For Walter, selling meth was never about his family. He tells Skyler as much in the finale. Meth was always his way of exercising his
massive ego. Just recall the beginning
of the third season. Walt is out of the
business but is brought back in not by the allure of money, but because Jesse
is making his product. The idea that
Jesse, of all people, could make his meth, and make it well enough to sell
to Gus, infuriates Walt and drives him back into the game.
That is the Walt we see leaving New Hampshire: A man who has
been broken and stripped of everything, including his name and his life’s
work. His mission is not one of
redemption, but of restoration.
I can understand the arguments of those who think the finale
was “too neat”. But I think that to say that is to ignore the
episodes that came before “Felina”. This
is not Walt’s master plan. It is not his
Plan A, or B, or C. Plan A was living
happily ever after with his family. Plan
B was to go on the run with his family and money.* Plan C was to go on the run on his own. The first two plans failed miserably while
the third turned out to be the worse than Walt could ever have imagined. Dying alone, forced to pay a stranger $10,000
for an hour of his company and watching every bit of his legacy torn down even
to his name. Skyler is going by her
maiden name (and will likely pass that along to Holly as well) and Walter
White, Jr. has ditched his father’s moniker completely.
* Note: Walt wanting
his family with him is not an argument that he was doing this all for
them. Rather, it’s the opposite. Being the most powerful person in the room
isn’t any fun when there’s nobody else there to whom you can demonstrate your
power.
At the end of the penultimate episode “Granite State,” Walt
literally has nothing left but a barrel of money in a one room cabin. There is no chance he’ll recover his lost
money. There is no chance he’ll win back
his family. There is no chance that
he’ll be thought of as anything but a villain.
And so he decides to win back the one thing he can: his name.
What’s amazing about Walt’s plan is that it’s nearly foolproof. At this point in the progression of his cancer, his worst case scenario is that he fails and dies. If Elliott and Gretchen fail to give the money to Flynn, it won’t matter because he will die thinking they did anyway. If he fails to poison Lydia, it won’t matter because he will die thinking he did anyway. If he fails to kill the Nazis, it won’t matter because it’s no different than if he had died in that cabin, and he got his victories over everybody else anyway. Walt’s final plan is almost foolproof not because it can only succeed, but because he won’t live to see it fail.
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