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The dust is still settling on Breaking Bad as viewers come to terms with its series finale.
But what could have been?
There were hundreds of ways the show could have ended, according to show creator Vince Gilligan. During the final edition of the Breaking Bad Insiders Podcast, Gilligan revealed some of the many ideas he and the writers tossed around for the finale.
A big question was what Walt would do with that M60 that was first teased in last year’s season-five opener. The gun was written into the plot before Gilligan and his writers had conceived of Uncle Jack and the Aryan gang. Gilligan said the gun probably helped his team come up with the Nazis, because they knew Walt would use the M60 to take out a lot of people.
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“We had versions we talked about, where the police were coming to get him and he uses it on the police. But we didn’t like that; it didn’t seem right,” Gilligan said. “We had a version where he goes and breaks Jesse out of jail just as the Nazis were going to knock Jesse off in jail. And he comes in and uses the M60 to lay waste to an entire prison or prison bus.”
They imagined it could look like the classic scene from The Terminator, only it’d be Walter White walking in and shooting up a police station, not Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s T-800. Gilligan said they didn’t necessarily get far with those ideas, but that he and the writers would “talk them through for hours on end.”
“As bad as Walt is, we don’t want to see him killing good guys. If he’s going to use this M60, even if it’s slightly less surprising, let’s see him use it on guys even worse than he is,” Gilligan explained.
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Last year’s season-five premiere also showed Walt having New Hampshire license plates and drivers license, but the writers didn’t exactly know what that would mean later.
“We talked about him having a new wife. We had a new job. We talked about him teaching at some sort of learning annex type of place, teaching chemistry,” Gilligan said. “We had a scene where he made peanut brittle …. and you can tell by the exactness which with he goes about cooking that he misses the cooking of the meth.”
They also talked about having Skyler kill herself and, in an alternate idea, having Skyler go along with Walt and the Disappearer. However, they couldn’t figure out a way for Walt Jr. to go along with that plan.
For the unfamiliar, the Breaking Bad Insiders’ Podcast was a weekly post-mortem, hosted by the show’s editor, Kelley Dixon, and featuring Gilligan and a rotating roster of guests, including the shows’ stars and writers.
Breaking Bad went out on an all-time ratings high with Sunday’s series finale, drawing 10.3 million viewers.
E-mail: Aaron.Couch@THR.com
Twitter: @AaronCouch
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