George Marquardt, a real life Walter White, was the self-taught genius chemist responsible for flooding East Coast with a drug linked to hundreds of deaths in the 1990s. Before joining Screen Rant, Kara served as a contributor for Movie Pilot and had her work published on sites such as The Mary Sue, Reel Honey, and Pure Fandom. Hank Schrader, the incorruptible DEA agent, is always in the mix as his lovable brother-in-law. He was a genius; he was meant to be a millionaire, not this castrated cross between stepping stone and doormat. The remedy he chooses to combat all this is power. By the halfway point of the series, it is beginning to become apparent that we may not be rooting for the good guy. In the end, Breaking Bad is about freedom, control, and power albeit, in ways no one, not even the protagonist, could have planned for. There he conducted research on proton radiography, that helped a team win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1985. Especially Jesse, who shines through as the emotional center of morality, when, under normal circumstances, he is easy to brush off as a loser. Walter White - Walt died of a gunshot wound. Jack's men take all but one barrel of Walt's money and abduct Jesse; as Jesse is taken away, Walt spitefully tells him that he watched Jane die. The closer we get to the end, the more Walt scrabbles around and lashes out like a rat when it's surrounded, the less I'm buying Vince Gilligan's whole 'Mr. . Jesse's refusal to shoot Walt rips control away from him, and displays the tortured addict's own achievement of freedom. He shaves his head to hide his chemotherapy-induced hair loss. At the end of Breaking Bad season 5, Walt (Bryan Cranston) went on a farewell tour of sorts. Walt, realizing that he'd been hit by one of the bullets, decided to die in the meth lab surrounded by his beloved cooking machinery. He shows that the possibility of virtue is alongside Walt the entire way. The man is smart and has years of experience in a world to which Walt is a newbie. Throughout the five seasons of Breaking Bad, Walter White caused the death of almost 300 people, directly or indirectly. When Walt isn't in control, he gets scared. . The drug operations that run behind the scenes of Los Pollos Hermanos, the restaurant chain Fring owns, are a streamlined operation run by level-headed individuals. A headstone was placed with a photo of Cranston as Walt, located on an outside wall in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, New Mexico. Walt pretends to start a cook but instead produces toxic phosphine gas which kills Emilio and incapacitates Krazy-8. Walt buries his money in seven barrels on the Tohajiilee Indian Reservation and convinces Jesse to go into a relocation program. He hires unscrupulous criminal attorney Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) to cover his involvement in the drug trade and launder his drug money. Even if he survived, it's difficult to believe that Walt would have been able to escape considering the state he was in (although Walt Jr. actor R.J. Mitte certainly thinks it's possible). The end result shows that there is no one whose life can't be destroyed by Walter White. There is no one definitive answer to this question. As part of his drug kingpin grand finale, Walt attack the neo-Nazi compound with a machine gun equipped to his car. He had no control for so long in his life, with the threat of cancer taking away that final choice acting as an ultimate cruelty. If you take anything away from this article, let it be this: Walter White is selfish. Walter White is the great-grandson of William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the United States. Funny enough, White shares a name with a more popular methamphetamine cook Breaking Bad's main character, Walter White. To avoid being discovered hiding in the RV, Walt and Jesse, aided by Saul, place a phone call to distract Hank, making him believe his wife Marie has suffered a car accident. The bullet hit him in the abdomen area whichwould have put vital organs at risk. Walt frantically calls Jesse and tells him that he is about to be killed and Jesse will have to take out Gale himself. Cranston has said he was inspired partially by his father for how Walt carries himself physically, which he described as "a little hunched over, never erect, [as if] the weight of the world is on this man's shoulders". Tortuga. The 'real-life' Walter White. He notices on a dial that Jesse has cooked a perfect batch of his product, and smiles to himself. He's a former meth cook, and recently completed a rehab program. Names, Insightful, World. Walt has Mike clear any connection Jesse has to Jane's death, and convinces Jesse to enter rehab. He gives Jesse homemade ricin with which to poison Gus, but Jesse never goes through with it. Walt watches the accident in horror, unaware that he is indirectly responsible for it. If for any reason he did survive the gunshot to the gut, he probably wouldn't have lived very long due to his other health concerns. In 1988, Walter McMillian, a Black man, was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death for murdering an 18-year-old white woman in Monroeville, Alabama. Here is some evidence to aid both sides of the Walter White death debate. Walt does nothing to help her and watches her die. That White was arrested on the same charge in . Impressed by the boldness of "Heisenberg", Tuco reluctantly agrees to pay for his meth upon delivery in the future. 12 Copy quote. [59][60], Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, List of awards and nominations received by, Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series, TCA Award for Individual Achievement in Drama, Golden Nymph Award for Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series, "Walter White - #12 Top 100 Villains - IGN", "Sepinwall on TV: Bryan Cranston talks 'Breaking Bad' season two", "Vince Gilligan: Without Tony Soprano There Would Be No Walter White", "From Walter White To LBJ, Bryan Cranston Is A Master Of Transformation", "Breaking Bad: Bryan Cranston/Vince Gilligan Q&A", "Bryan Cranston on 'Breaking Bad' end: 'There's no redemption', "You Can Totally Still Catch Up on 'Breaking Bad' Before the Premiere", "Breaking Bad, 'Peekaboo': Jesse collects a debt", "Breaking Bad: This guy walks into an oncologist's office", "The 100 Greatest TV Characters of the 21st Century", "25 Best TV Characters in the Past 25 Years", "The 50 Best Movie and TV Show Twists of All Time", "Breaking Bad: 10 years on, TV is still in Walter White's shadow", "Breaking Bad Season 5, Episode 11 Recap: Cigs, Lies, and Videotape in 'Confessions', "The Big Secret of 'Breaking Bad': Walter White Was Always a Bad Guy", "Anthony Hopkins' Awesome Letter To 'Breaking Bad', "AMC Drops 'Worst Charity' From 'Breaking Bad' Fundraising Website", "Walter White returns: Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston stars in Super Bowl commercial", "Bryan Cranston Brings Back Walter White for 'SNL' Cold Opening", "Where 'Breaking Bad' is just getting started", "Walter White Laid to Rest in 'Breaking Bad' Charity Funeral", "Warren Ellis on Breaking Bad and the Horrible Glory of Heisenberg", "Was The "Breaking Bad" Finale All Just A Fantasy In Walter White's Head? Walter White's Chaotic Beauty. [7] When both actors declined, the executives were persuaded to cast Cranston after seeing the X-Files episode. By using our Services, you agree to our use of cookies. - Walter White, a Lockwood man who coincidentally has the same name as the lead character in the AMC television series "Breaking Bad . Walter Hartwell White Sr., also known by his alias Heisenberg, is a fictional character and the protagonist of the American crime drama television series Breaking Bad, portrayed by Bryan Cranston. So, get up. He did, it seems from this report from Vice News, take a lot of pride in his chemistry skills, though. And let's be real here, almost 100% of the deaths in this show are somehow Walt's fault. The best, most faithful, and most complicated adaptation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is not going to be a direct, official adaptation like Steven Moffat's brilliant Jekyll, or . A.J. Walt gives Jesse his life savings to buy an RV that they can use as a rolling meth lab. The skit had White on a CNN broadcast where he is the front runner for Donald Trumps cabinet nominee for the Drug Enforcement Administration. However, while it's true that Walt killed many people for self-defense reasons and only by chance . Walt revels in his success and adopts the Heisenberg alias in his business dealings going forward. Every time we feel as though Walt has crossed that final line, he shows that he can push it even further. In the case of a lot of criminals inBreaking Bad, you can understand the trap they have fallen into. [58] This theory was further disproven with Better Call Saul following Sauls story before and after Breaking Bad alongside El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie following Jesse's story after the finale, in which White is confirmed to have died. While waiting to be picked up, Jesse figures out that Walt poisoned Brock. Walter White is considered to be one of the greatest and most iconic characters in television history. He collaborated with costume designer Kathleen Detoro on a wardrobe of mostly neutral green and brown colors to make the character bland and unremarkable, and worked with makeup artist Frieda Valenzuela to create a mustache he described as "impotent" and like a "dead caterpillar". Moreover, due to Gus' stoic nature and Walter's being sequestered in an underground lab, working with Gus means being deprived of the praise over his product that he's enjoyed. While much of the work he did in his youth was great, he never got the recognition from it that he craved. Just focusing on Breaking Bad'sfinal scene, Walt was clearly not in good shape after he suffered the gunshot wound. Next:Better Call Saul Should End With Jimmy Meeting Walter White. [39][40], At the annual Golden Globe Awards, Cranston has been nominated for the Best Actor Television Series Drama accolade on four occasions for his role in Breaking Bad, in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, winning in 2014 for the second half of season five. [22] Walt and his wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) have a teenage son named Walter Jr. (RJ Mitte), who has cerebral palsy. Even before he received the gunshot wound, Walt's health was already in bad shape. AMC. Inspired by Tony Soprano, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan had wanted his lead character to be a protagonist that turned into an antagonist over the course of the show,[3] or as he described, turning Mr. Chips into Scarface. The real Walter White was a high school drop-out, not a high school teacher. At the start of the show, Cranston gained 10 pounds to presage the character's gradual physical deterioration. Afterward, Walt tells Jesse: "You're really lucky, you know that? I have no idea how he does it. You didn't have to wait your whole life to do something special.". The rift in their marriage worsens when Skyler sleeps with her boss, Ted Beneke (Christopher Cousins). The universe is random. It is also the first taste Walter White gets of his own addiction. [32], Similarly, Scott Meslow wrote in The Atlantic that Walt's capacity for villainy was present well before the series even began, and that cancer was only the catalyst, stating that "all the elements that have since turned him into a monster were already in place. The final shot of the show is Walt, eyes open, dead on the . The Real Housewives of Atlanta The Bachelor Sister Wives 90 Day Fiance Wife Swap The Amazing Race Australia Married at First Sight The Real Housewives of Dallas My 600-lb Life Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Walt's death is not only necessary for the happiness of all those around him but for himself as well. Walt breaks into Jesse's apartment where the meth is stored and finds him passed out with his girlfriend Jane Margolis (Krysten Ritter). We hear it so much that we share in Skyler's disgust in that fateful statement by the time the final season comes, rolling our eyes right alongside her. You're not alone. It's simple chaos. Walt becomes increasingly ruthless as the series progresses, and later adopts the alias "Heisenberg", which becomes recognizable as a kingpin figure in the Southwestern drug trade. During the twenty-five years preceding the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v.Board of Education decision, White was one of the most prominent African American figures and spokespeople in the country. Walter Francis White (July 1, 1893 - March 21, 1955) was an American civil rights activist who led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for a quarter of a century, 1929-1955, after joining the organization as an investigator in 1918. 'cause the guy just got a real-life obituary in the newspaper where the show took place. The creators of Breaking Bad had shown an incredible amount of ingenuity in getting our protagonist to this point surely, there had to be another route, in which Walter gets a somewhat happier ending? As the character descended into wickedness, Walt . [9][10] Cranston also repeatedly identified elements in scripts where he disagreed with how the character was handled, and would go so far as to call Gilligan directly when he could not work out disagreements with the episode's screenwriter(s). Hank is an important aspect of the show's dynamic. Walter White, and the show he stars in, were always headed down a path with just one ending and this is why. His decisions begin to severely affect the lives of those around him, displayed in a destructive manner by the airplane crash over Albuquerque.