AMC’s hit series ends with phenomenal finale
Vince Gilligan, you beautiful, beautiful man.
In what was one of the greatest series finales ever to air on television, the creator of “Breaking Bad” brought the show to a bitter end Sunday, one that was deeply satisfying on all fronts.
“Felina,” the final episode of “Breaking Bad,” is that rare finale that gives its audience a sense of closure, while simultaneously expanding upon and capping off the show’s thematic statements.
In it, Walter White returns home to Albuquerque, N.M., as a ghost of a man, going location to location, tying up loose ends and making his peace with the world. There’s a beautiful sense of dread that looms over the entire episode, as Walter’s death becomes more and more inevitable.
Walter seems to have finally come to terms with all the awful things he’s done and the lives he’s ruined and is now determined to use what little time he has left on Earth trying to make things right (or at least as much right as is currently possible).
What’s so impressive about this final episode isn’t just that it places a magnificent bow atop a 62-episode drama that has captivated audiences for 6 years, but that it manages to cap everything off in such a way that it all really did seem planned out from the beginning.
Of course, it wasn’t at all (Vince Gilligan has said as much), but the organic nature with which plot threads from as far back as seasons one and two come together to finish the story makes it feel complete, consistent and brilliant.
“Felina” depicts a man that is equal parts Walter and Heisenberg.
He finds a way to ensure that the money he so desperately wanted his family to have will get to them one day, and he does it while getting some small measure of revenge on his former colleagues, Gretchen and Elliot. He also gets to say a sad goodbye to Skyler and gives her a means of freeing herself from prosecution after he’s gone.
And, most heartbreaking of all, Skyler finally gets to hear Walt admit that every terrible thing he’s done wasn’t about the family after all, but about himself.
“I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really … I was alive,” he admits with simple words, coming to a final sense of self-awareness he has sorely lacked for so, so long.
Heisenberg, too, got to put an end the awful mess that he’d made, in a spectacular display of tea poisoning and M60 gunfire. By the episode’s end, he’s killed everyone left in the meth business that he started, save for Jesse, who finally gets his freedom.
Not only does Walter free Jesse from the Aryan Brotherhood, which had enslaved him, but he symbolically frees him from the toxic influence of Heisenberg.
Jesse, the poor, poor kid whose only proud achievement in life was a box he crafted in his high school shop class, now gets a chance to start over. As he drives off into the night, laughing hysterically and screaming cathartically, one can only hope that he can one day finds some semblance of happiness.
In the episode’s final moments, Walter tours the meth lab, as a proud artist examining his works one final time before his infinite sleep.
As he dies, Badfinger’s “Baby Blue” plays, and the camera rises high above Walter’s body in a beautiful demonstration of symmetry. The audience may recall a similar shot at the end of the episode “Crawl Space,” as the camera rose high above a Walter boxed in on all sides.
If that was the moment when Heisenberg was truly born in Walter, then this mirrored shot emphasizes his passing.
Even if, in the end, Walter’s legacy ended up as a colossal wreck, Vince Gilligan and everyone involved in the production of “Breaking Bad” have left behind a tremendous achievement of a show, one which will be watched, analyzed and revered for years to come.
As far as goodbyes go, “Breaking Bad’s” could not have been more perfect.