The journey of anti-hero Walter White came to a dark end last night when fans of Breaking Bad finally learned the fate of the chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin, as AMC's cult drug drama concluded after a five-season run.
#Breaking Bad become the hot topic on Twitter yesterday, with the hashtag #GoodbyeBreakingBad trending throughout the day. As Walt’s journey came in an end, the majority of fan reactions were positive, with many calling the ending “perfect.”
“We needed to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts ... we needed a resolution,” Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad, said in AMC’s post-finale show .
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Bryan Cranston who plays Walter White tweeted : “Thank you for sharing this ride with me, without you we never would have lasted”. Aaron Paul who plays Jesse Pinkman tweeted his much used phrase “Let’s do this bitch!!! Get ready everyone for some madness”.
Emmy-winning Breaking Bad has captured audiences with its gritty plot about Walter White, a cancer-stricken chemistry teacher who turns to cooking methamphetamine with ex-student Jesse Pinkman, in order to make money for his family.
Walt’s chemistry skills allow him to create the purest meth available, which becomes known as “blue sky.” Its popularity in the market leads Walt to eventually becoming a drug kingpin known as Heisenberg.
AMC split the final season of Breaking Bad in two, the first half airing in 2012 and the second in 2013. The second half of the final season, which began in August, saw an average of 5.2 million viewers tuning in to see the conclusion of Walt's saga, more than double last year's audience for the show, according to AMC.
Online streaming site Netflix is credited with helping boost viewership for Breaking Bad, giving audiences a chance to binge-watch earlier seasons to quickly catch up. The last episode is now available on Netflix in Ireland.
Viewing Party
On Sunday, Paul hosted a viewing party of the final episode at the Hollywood Forever cemetery in Los Angeles. Paul joined cast members including RJ Mitte, who plays Walt Jr, driving onto the stage in the rusty RV that Walt and Jesse first cooked meth in, and emerged wearing yellow Hazmat suits, welcomed by hundreds of excited fans.
“It’s the final night of Breaking Bad. It’s devastating, I know. I can’t thank you enough for coming out,” Paul said, before enthusiastically kicking off the screening of the finale with Jesse’s trademark phrase “Yeah, bitch!”
Fans flock to Albuquerque
In the setting for the show in Albuquerque, New Mexico fan fervour has become routine as an an entire Breaking Bad economy sprang up over the past six years.
During one week this month, 117 fans from places as disparate as northern France, the Cayman Islands and Baton Rouge signed the hefty Breaking Bad guest book perched on the counter of the Twisters burrito joint in Albuquerque. Twisters had doubled as Los Pollos Hermanos, the chicken joint owned by a ruthless leader of a methamphetamine cartel in the series.
During the show’s run, the production directly employed an average of 200 people. But with the series finale broadcast (filming concluded in April ) the future is uncertain for the many businesses that have come to rely on the show for sales.
Finale Spoiler Alert
Spoiler Alert: The finale saw Walt return to his deserted family home, retrieve a vial of ricin he hid in the wall, and embark on his final mission to tie up the loose ends left by his crumbled drug empire.
Walt visits the gang of white supremacists he had once contracted to kill Jesse, but who instead stole his drug money earnings and kidnapped Jesse to cook the ‘blue sky’ meth.
Walt sets up an automatic rifle in his car that discharges when he goes into the white supremacist compound, killing the gang and freeing Jesse from captivity. Walt takes a bullet but stays alive long enough to call meth dealer Lydia, the last remaining link to his drug empire, to tell her he poisoned her with ricin.
Walt watches Jesse drive away a free man, and draws his last breaths in the meth lab at the compound as the police finally catch up with him. Walt’s death was one of the probable endings that audiences predicted ahead of the finale, especially as his cancer had returned in the fifth season and his path into darkness saw him lose the support of the people closest to him.
In one poignant scene where Walt sees his wife Skyler for the last time, he finally reveals his reasons for taking the dark path into the meth empire. “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really, I was alive,” Walt tells Skyler, after he gives her coordinates to the site where his police officer brother-in-law Hank was buried in the desert after being shot in the head by Walt’s contracted neo-Nazi gang in an earlier episode.”
Reuters/New York Times
