The Breaking Bad finale was generally well-received, so it seems that creator Vince Gilligan made the rights calls when it came to how Walt (Bryan Cranston), Jesse (Aaron Paul) and Skyler's (Anna Gunn) journeys came to an end.
In case you didn't watch or already forgot, Walt takes out Uncle Jack and his gang, saves Jesse and perishes from a gunshot wound. During the final Breaking Bad Insider Podcast, Gilligan revealed to host Kelley Dixon (Breaking Bad's editor) the other endings and finale plotlines the writers tossed around before settling on the one fans saw on Sunday. And some of the alternative endings were pretty grim, even for Breaking Bad standards.
The machine gun that appeared in the midseason premiere was written before Gilligan and the writers knew what to do with it, so many options were considered.
"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."
Those endings were discarded because it seemed out of character for their Heisenberg.
"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 revealed.
Another thing in the midseason premiere that was written before they knew where it was going was the New Hampshire license plates and driver's license that Walt possessed. That plant could have led to Walt obtaining a new life for himself.
"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. We had a scene where he made peanut brittle," Gilligan said. "You can tell by the exactness which with he goes about cooking that he misses the cooking of the meth."
Gilligan also revealed that there were times where they considered having Skyler commit suicide or having her go with Walt to start a new life with the help of Saul's (Bob Odenkirk) disappearing man. To hear more from Gilligan about ending Breaking Bad, you can listen to the entire podcast.
How do these alternative endings sound to you guys? Better than the ending you saw? Or did they make the right call?