EbayApparently we aren't the only ones having a hard time letting go of Breaking Bad! (This story is brought to you from the fetal position...36 hours and counting.)
Stephen Colbert laid into "man of the hour," creator Vince Gilligan on Monday's The Colbert Report, going so far as to chain him up with a laptop at hand and scream "It's not over until I say it's over...Keep working, bitch!"
But spoiler alert (duh): Walter White's (Bryan Cranston) story is most definitely over. Forever.
Gilligan told fans what was perhaps the biggest question leading into Sunday night's finale—which broke the show's ratings record with more than 10 million viewers—why did Walt have to die?
"Why not keep him going, at least in The Walking Dead?" Colbert jokingly asked Gilligan. "He could get even smarter eating all those brains!"
"It seemed like the implicit promise in the first episode [that Walt would die]," Gilligan explained of his reasoning for having Walt die. "He was told he had two years to live, and it seemed like we should adhere to that promise we made to the audience."
More from Gilligan:
On Why Walt Came Back Into Town in the Finale: "I think he's coming back for his 'precious.' His precious is the blue meth and the lab, the lab he constructed. I think he comes back to set things right for his family financially, and after that, he just wants to wipe out Uncle Jack and his family. And in this hour, he finds out that Jesse is still alive, and he wants to wipe out Jesse [Aaron Paul], too." But of course, Walt ultimately has a change of heart, saving Jesse's life and then asking Jesse to shoot him...A plot twist Gilligan reminds us (as he did on Talking Bad) that he "stole" from the John Wayne western The Searchers. "We steal from the best."
On Whether Walt Ever "Lost" Him: "He always made sense to me...He never lost us. But at times, it became extremely difficult to root for him, because he was kind of a bastard sometimes."
On the "Nastiest" Thing Walt Ever Did: "The moment Walt said to Jesse, 'I watched Jane die. I could have saved her.' I think that was about the most sadistic, nasty thing that he did. Worse than watching her die, because in that moment, there was a lot of conflicting emotions in his face. He doesn't want to do it, but he thinks it's the best thing for Jesse because she's hooked him on heroin. So that time was the most sadistic, telling Jesse he watched her die."
On the "Nicest" Thing Walt Ever Did: Telling Skyler [Anna Gunn] in that final scene, "I did it for me." "One of the worst things he's done on this show is to lie to his family so much and destroy the family through lies as well as action. And to do his wife the courtesy of being honest, to show her that respect once before it's over...."
Just us, or the more you think about this finale, the more satisfying it gets? Damn you and your evil genius, Gilligan. If we had you in the building, we'd chain you up with a laptop, too.