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I really hope you weren't rooting for Walter White to meet his end in a way that denies him any kind of anti-hero cred, because that's basically all we get in this finale. Walt wins, almost entirely. He even manages to defeat cancer.
So, for starters, Walt steals a car in New Hampshire and drives it all the way to Gretchen and Elliott's palatial home, whereupon he presents them with all that is left of his money. He's figured out a way to get the money to his wife and kids, by forcing Gretchen and Elliott to give it to Flynn in a trust when he comes of age. No one will suspect a charitable donation from such a reputable couple -- they'll probably just call it liberal guilt from two people ashamed of their connection to Walter White. They agree to this, mostly just to get Walt to leave, but before he does, he makes a signal, and suddenly there are twin laser scopes on the Schwartzes. Walt says he hired assassins to make sure they go through with the plan, even after he's gone. (It turns out that the "assassins" are Badger and Skinny Pete, armed with laser pens, wah wah wah.). So that's the money, taken care of.
After reminding us of what we've seen -- Walt gets a gun; Walt gets the ricin -- he goes to meet with Lydia and Todd at their coffee shop. Pretending he's broke (though I guess he really is now), he presents them with an offer for a new method of cook, that he can show them if Todd will let him come over to the compound. After Walt leaves, Todd's like, "Cool, huh?" and Lydia's like, "Come on, are you serious?" But the joke's on her, because it turns out Walt is now able to open packets of Stevia and seal them back up with his laser-beam eyes so that no one's the wiser when he fills them with ricin. So, R.I.P. in a little while, Lydia.
After putting together some kind of contraption with the gun out in the desert, Walt pays Skyler a visit. After some heavy emotional back-and-forth -- at which point Walt finally admits that rather than having done this all for his family, "I did it for me. I liked it. I felt alive." -- he hands her the lottery ticket, which is no longer the location of his money but rather the location of Hank and Gomez's bodies. He tells her to trade that information for a deal from the prosecutors. So Walt has now provided a trust fund for his son and now gotten his wife out of jail. He's like a superhero, you guys! Just doing good things all over town!
Finally, the big ol' showdown. Walt arrives at Uncle Jack's compound, but Jack is in no way receptive to any new deals. In fact, they're just going to kill Walt right here and be done with it. Walt panics and hollers at Jack that they had a deal, and Jack still owes him Jesse's death. He knows Jesse is still alive because the blue meth is out there. He's furious at Jack for "partnering" up with the guy he was supposed to assassinate. Jack takes exception at the accusation of "partnering," so he has Todd bring Jesse out, in chains.
After a moment of looking at what's become of poor, pathetic Jesse, Walt charges him, tackles him, makes sure they're both on the ground, and then he hits the trunk-opener on his car keys. Outside, the trunk opens, and the makeshift machine-gun that Walt created just starts firing everywhere. All of Jack's men get killed, though Todd hits the deck in time. (Also, if you're keeping score, benevolent Walt just saved Jesse's life.) After the bullets have been exhausted, Jesse leaps upon Todd and chokes him to death with his own chains. Walt puts a bullet in Jack's head to finish him off, not even letting him try to bargain with the location of the rest of Walt's money. Walt then kicks his gun over to Jesse, tells him to do it. Kill him. Jesse spots a bullet wound on Walt's abdomen and refuses to take an active part in any more of Walt's grand plans. If Walt wants to die, he can do it himself. So Jesse takes off, driving away from the compound a free man. Also a completely broken man who probably has no real future to speak of, but hey. Walt got him out.
In the final moments, a mortally wounded Walt surveys the meth lab, caresses the equipment -- the science of it -- and manages to drop dead just as the police are arriving. So. Walt defeats Jack, defeats Lydia, gets his money to his son (by asserting his dominance over Gretchen and Elliott no less), hands Skyler the ticket to her freedom and then manages to die before either the cops or the cancer can take him down. It is a good day to be Team Walt as this series wraps up with this tidy, ever-so-slightly safe finale.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously: I won't even dignify that with a response.
With only 75 minutes of show left, I'm glad we kick things off with one last POV shot for the road. This time, we're inside a car that's been snowed in. We can see a shadow outside the driver-side window, and of course that figure is Walter White. Now that he's made the decision to storm the castle back in New Mexico, he needs to escape the coming onslaught of authorities he called moments before his big change of heart. He jimmies his way past the lock and starts using his brilliant chemistry brain to try and hot-wire the car. Like they do on TV! POV from under the dash shows Walt hard at work, to the point where he cuts his hand open (again) on the screwdriver. Suddenly, the swirling lights of a cop car approach. Walt holds his breath (as best he can, what with the cancer) and tries not to move. Lucky for him, the snow is still caked on the windows of the car. Once the cops have passed, Walt exhales and, perhaps having had a moment to clear his thoughts, pulls back the overhead mirror flap and down fall a set of keys. Just one more example of how calm planning beats haphazard thrashing every time.
With a functioning car, a box full of money, and a ticking clock full of tumors in his chest, Walt pounds the driver-side window and the snow drops off of it. Like a boss! That's probably the first indication of the flavor of Walt we're going to get this week. Walt the wheezing Houdini. A cassette of Marty Robbins singing "El Paso" (from which we get our episode title) starts playing in the tape deck and Walt prepares to take this bitch to the end.
Credits. Elements.
I'm oddly heartened by the fact that Dean Norris is in the credits, still. I guess he does show up in one brief flashback. So by the time we see Walt, he's driven this New Hampshire Volvo clear across the continent to New Mexico. He pops open the trunk (carefully), and we see he hasn't get acquired the gun that we saw him with at the beginning of season 5. So we're closing in on convergence, but we're not there yet. Here's where I maybe should mention that -- now that it's all been said and done -- I'm not entirely sure what purpose the flash-forwards at the beginning of "Live Free or Die" and "Blood Money" served, in the end. Besides stoking fan speculation, of course, and driving the engine for a flurry of excitement going into the finale. Which is all well and good, I suppose. But it did contribute a whole bunch of loops that needed to be closed before the finale was over, and there is a certain degree of obligation in this episode. Or else maybe they knew ahead of time that they didn't want to spend a lot of time showing Walt acquiring the gun and the ricin, who knows?
So at the gas station, Walt makes a pay phone call wherein he poses as a reporter doing a story for The New York Times. He's talking to a woman who is either a publicist or some other kind of agent for Gretchen and Elliott Schwartz, so it does seem like he's going after them. He pulls the old "Is their address still X? No? It's Y? Why don't you tell me Y so I can write it down." People fall for this in TV and movies literally all the time. So he gets their address and promises the publicist/agent that it "should make one hell of a story." Yeah, no shit. Before he leaves the station, he removes his watch and places it atop the phone booth, which as far as I know is only to match continuity with the flash-forward, which is whatever.
That night, Gretchen and Elliott return home from whatever business they had in New York, and there is a palpable dread in the air. I really care what happens to these two. Part of it is that I'm so fond of Jessica Hecht and Adam Godley as performers. Part of it is that Walt's jealousy over their Gray Matter success is one of the uglier sides of him, and so I take their side even more strongly. And part of it is pushback against what turned out to be my least favorite part of the finale -- this scene right here, where Walt gets one over on these rich assholes that had the nerve to succeed without him -- where we suddenly need Walt to win and win big. So Gretchen and Elliott walk past Walt in their courtyard without even noticing him. He's able to shadow them, get into their home before they have time to set the alarm, and move about through their palatial abode without them noticing. Seriously, they're gabbing about Thai food and turning on the fireplace and uncorking wine for like ten minutes before they notice him.
Gretchen screams, Elliott darts out of the kitchen and suddenly, they're all face to face again. The Schwartzes are petrified, while Walt does that overly casual thing that bad guys do when they really want to unnerve someone. He notices the view outside the glass walls of their living room. He tells them how good they looked on Charlie Rose. "If you're here to hurt us --" Gretchen begins, but Walt cuts her off. He's actually here to give them something. He tells them it's out in his car, and the three of them should walk down the road to retrieve it. With the classical music the Schwartzes prefer (like the awful rich folk they are) swelling in the background, Elliott slowly raises the paring knife he's got in his hand. Gretchen grabs him by the shoulders, as if to tell him not to take it there, and Walt explicitly tells him, deadpan, "If we're gonna go that way, you're gonna need a bigger knife." We cut to commercials, so Walt fans can better high-five each other without missing any dialogue.
When we return, Gretchen and Elliott are stacking the last of Walt's cash on their coffee table, while Walt has a minor coughing fit. The full amount? $9,720,000. Gretchen demands to know what it's doing here. Walt, of course, still intends to give this money to his children, and he's going to use the Schwartzes as his go-between. Walt says on Flynn's 18th birthday (in 10 months and 2 days), they will give him this money in the form of an irrevocable trust. Not from Walt but from them, as a gesture. What kind of gesture, he doesn't say. They can't say it came from Walt, though. Maybe it's just liberal-guilt money. He kind of doesn't care. Just that it goes to Flynn, and none of it -- including lawyer's costs or fees -- come from Gretchen and Elliott. Only Walt may provide for his son.
Now, this is probably as clever a plan as Walt can manage to get around the issue of the authorities seizing his money. Maybe the Schwartzes can keep the trust hush-hush enough that nobody notices or gets suspicious. But in ten months' time, when Flynn gets a lump sum in an amount dangerously close to what he and his mom know Walt got away with, from the two people Walt used to be in business with? Flynn won't know where that money truly came from? He won't even suspect? We know Flynn's feelings about taking his father's money. Maybe Walt is betting that need will trump pride after all, especially when given the opportunity to fool yourself into thinking the money isn't coming from where you think it is. But there are lots of reasons why this won't end up working, and that's before we even get to the question of whether Elliott and Gretchen will actually comply.
So yeah… about that. Elliott assures Walt that they will do what he says. It'll get him out of their house, right? Gretchen is far more opposed to handling Walt's dirty drug money, but Elliott convinces her to agree. Even to shake on it. So that's it? A gentlemen's agreement between former friends? Well, not quite. Just as Walt is about to leave, he signals out the window and two red laser dots appear on Gretchen and Elliott's chests. The soundtrack lurches (to seriously 1980s thriller levels), and Gretchen and Elliott begin to freak, though Walt cautions them not to move. Here's the threat: Walt says he's used some of his money to hire an elite team of assassins, and if Gretchen and Elliott fail to comply, even in the event of, say, Walt's death, they will be hunted down. No matter where they are, no matter if they see it coming. Walt lays out the scenario in excruciating detail. They won't know when, maybe a day, a week, a year after non-compliance. They'll be in New York or Prague or at home, and they'll hear footsteps behind them. Walt yelps to startle them and they scream. Walt is enjoying this. I get the sense we're intended to enjoy this, too. Walt's snooty foes brought low. Brought down to his level. "Cheer up, beautiful people," Walt says in closing. "This is where you get to make it right." So the Schwartzes get to live their lives -- or at least the 10 months; but probably their lives -- living in fear of the ghost of Heisenberg. Just as Walt would have wanted it. That's two acts, two big wins for Walter White.
Outside, Walt reconvenes with his "elite team of assassins," who of course turn out to be Badger and Skinny Pete, the most credulous (and convenient) pair of henchmen in New Mexico. They were using laser pointers, not guns. So score another point for Walt being clever. I am glad I get to see these two goofs one more time, I won't lie. The boys express their doubts about taking part in such a scam. "The whole thing felt kinda shady," Pete says. "You know, morality-wise?" Walt hands them each a stack of cash and their concerns are placated. Walt then interrogates them about the blue meth. He's heard it's still around -- who's selling it? Badger kind of stutters and says, "It's you, right? You're still cooking?" Walt's stone-faced reaction tells them he's not. "Jesse," he grumbles, which causes some yelps of appreciation from Badger and Skinny Pete, happy their buddy is cranking out product that's superior to even the Heisenberg original. You can imagine the mood this puts Walt in as he drives away.
After the break, we join Jesse in what is all too obviously a dream/fantasy sequence. Even we're not hopeful enough to imagine such a fate for Jesse is possible. He's in a sun-dappled garage somewhere, woodworking. He's making a box, slowly and with great care. He's sanding the wood, hammering in the dowels, varnishing the outside of it until it shines. The symbolism here, the yearning, the callbacks to old dreams that old Jesse once had, they're all very powerful and sad. And of course, eventually, Jesse gets yanked back into reality. The reality where he's been slaving away in a meth lab for weeks, after having seen Andrea murdered in front of him, after knowing it was his escape attempt that caused it. His face is scarred, covered in a scraggly beard. The hair on his head is matted. He's low. He's been brought low.
And now, for some housekeeping! We scurry past the scene in "Live Free or Die" at the Denny's, where Walt makes a "52" out of bacon and then buys an automatic weapon in the bathroom from Jim Beaver. Then we hustle our way through the scene in "Blood Money" where Walt recovers the ricin. As Walt exits his former home, he flashes back to an old party -- the pilot episode, I believe -- where Hank har-hars him about coming on a ride-along to a meth bust some day. "Get some excitement in your life." That was lifetimes ago, of course. He's lost everyone in that scene and the house it took place in.
Elsewhere, we return to the fancy diner where Lydia and Todd have their meetings. She's taken to meeting him face-to-face, which I'm sure Todd sees as great progress in their relationship. She orders her chamomile tea with soy milk and checks to make sure there's enough Stevia in the caddy. There's one packet. As she waits for Todd to arrive, we see Walter White himself lurking at a table nearby, his back to Lydia's table. Todd arrives and barely has time to compliment his lady's "cornflower blue" blouse before Walt makes his presence known by pulling up a chair. He tells them all to, first, take it easy and second, to listen to his proposal. Lydia immediately looks accusingly at Todd, like he was in on this, which has to be the cruelest cut of all. Walt has a plan, though, and he convinces the otherwise super-paranoid Lydia to sit down in this populated restaurant to the most wanted fugitive in America… but sure. She stays. Walt tells them he knows they're running low on methylamine, and he's devised a way to cook without it. And he can teach it to Todd. "I need the money," he says, with faux shame on his face. "I've spent all of mine already, trying to stay one step ahead of the police."
Todd begins to delicately turn Walt down, but Lydia never met an advantageous business deal she didn't like. She asks how much. "Nothing short of a million," Walt says. Todd isn't sure if Jack would go for this, and I wonder how much Todd's begging off is because he doesn't want Walt to see what he's done with Jesse. Walt is aggressive, though; he offers to come to the compound tonight. Just to talk to Jack, to try to convince him this is a win-win situation. The waiter arrives with Lydia's tea, which is her cue to shove Walt along. Todd expresses his doubts to Lydia privately and she's like, "Hey dummy, of course we're not doing business with him. Don't make me have to walk you through it." In other words, they're not going to do business with him; they're going to get rid of him. "Did you look at him?" she asks. "You'd be doing him a favor." At this, Lydia tears open her Stevia packet and considering the way the camera fetishistically lingers on the granules as they tumble into her mug, obviously this is how Walt has decided to deploy his ricin.
So about this ricin in the Stevia. Two questions: how and why? The "how" has fewer options, but none of them very plausible. Walt was able to steal a packet, open it imperceptibly and seal it back up again also imperceptibly. Walt was able to print out a fake Stevia paper and seal ricin within it to make it look like a real Stevia packet. Walt used some of his money to but a Stevia plant and had this packet professionally made. The bottom line is I think Lydia is too paranoid not to have noticed a tampered packet. As for the "why," the most correct answer is "because the fans wanted to see it." They wanted the ricin used, they wanted Walt to tie up loose ends and they probably wanted the haughty bitch with the twitchy attitude to die. From a character perspective, I suppose it makes sense that Walt would have wanted to bump off the woman profiting off of his blue meth in his absence. Certainly more sense than the theory I've seen advanced where Walt wants to cut off meth production in New Mexico. That kind of altruism is not on Walt's radar. Mostly, though, I don't think Walt has a very good reason to kill Lydia. Honestly, if you told me he didn't want to ricin -- ricin that he so ingeniously created and then hid for a rainy day -- to go to waste, I'd say that's as good a motivation as any.
After the break, we're out in the desert, for a Walt Builds Something montage. He's got jumper cables and a car battery and a drill gun and an electric saw, and of course his automatic rifle. Clearly, he's creating some kind of apparatus with the gun. Something that helps him gain an advantage over a room full of Nazi thugs with only one weapon. He hits a button on his car keys, and that triggers a mechanized arm to spin round and round. I'm not going to pretend like I don't know how this ends up, but it's also not all that difficult to put the puzzle pieces together here. While he works, his little hemp necklace with his wedding ring attached tumbles out of his shirt. Somehow Skyler is still on his mind.
Speaking of whom, we cut over to the new place that is passing for Skyler's home these days. It's small, but you know, it's not a dump or anything. There's a certain ambiance to the place, what with Skyler chain-smoking at the kitchen table and everything. One nice feature of this new place is that it comes with an old-timey answering machine that plays your messages out loud. It's very convenient when it comes to filming a television show. So Marie calls and hollers for Skyler to pick up. At least they're on speaking terms. Catatonic Skyler finally picks up, and Marie tells her she has news. "Walt's in town." Apparently, the cops have been tracking him all the way from New Hampshire, they got a report of his car at the Denny's, and when he addressed Carol after securing the ricin (Marie says "Becky," but Skyler reminds her that Becky lives on the other side of their old house), she called the police too. Apparently the rumor mill is going crazy, with sightings of Walt all over town, talk of manifestos and plans to bomb City Hall. Marie says the cops are standing guard outside her place right now, and she's sure they're covering Skyler and Flynn, too, since those are the three places Walt's most likely to go. Marie says that's what Hank would do, cover those three places. She assures Skyler that Walt won't get to her. "That arrogant asshole thinks he's some criminal mastermind, but he's not." Skyler is barely responsive to this whole thing, which might be just the way she is now and might also be how anyone acts while Marie is talking, by necessity.
Of course, the real reason for Skyler being so stone-faced -- as we see when the camera pivots a smidge -- is because Walt is standing there in her kitchen. Skyler gives him five minutes to say what he needs to say. She asks him if he hurt anybody on his way to get in, which you'd think would wound him (or he'd pretend to be wounded), but Walt's response -- "I didn't need to" -- pretty much tells her that her question was justified. "You look terrible." "Yeah. But I feel good." Ah ha, that old magic is… yeah, no, it's gone. She asks why he's here, and he tells her that's it's all over and he needed a proper goodbye. Skyler asks if this means he's going to the police, and since her association with Walt means she no longer has the luxury of being altruistic, she follows that right up by asking what that would mean for her and the kids, vis-à-vis Masked Todd and his threats against the family. Walt assures her those people won't be a problem "after tonight." She naturally asks what that means. He naturally does not tell her. Instead, he pulls that old lotto ticket out of his wallet and hands it to her. She thinks that it's money at first and tells him, again, that they don't want it. He tells her he knows and that he doesn't have it to give. He tells her about the GPS coordinates for what once was the site of his money. Now, it's where the police will be able to find the bodies of Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez. Skyler breaks down at the mention -- the final confirmation -- of Hank's demise. He tells her the whole story -- the truth, for whatever that is worth to her -- about the men who killed Hank and Gomie and took Walt's money. He tells Skyler to trade this information to the Feds for a deal to get out of her prosecution. (Will that work? LET'S SAY IT WILL!)
Then, Walt begins to tell Skyler what he did it all for and she's like, "If I have to hear one more time about the BS about doing it all for the family." At this, for once Walt tells the truth. It's the three lines of dialogue you've heard repeated all across the Internet this week. "I did it for me. I liked it. And I was really -- I was alive." So, yes, honesty, although (as per usual) honesty designed to get him what he wants. Skyler didn't want to hear it about how he's the selfless family man. He gave her the honesty she wanted so that she would be more amenable to doing things his way. She tells him to get out, since Flynn will be home soon. He gets her to let him see a sleeping Holly once more before he leaves. And then he does get out, without very much fanfare at all. He manages to evade detection by the idiot Feds assigned to watch Skyler's place. Bot Walt and the cops have equal and opposite views of Flynn as he steps off of the bus and sadly trudges home. Walt takes in one last look at his boy, and then the door closes on Walter White: Family Man forever.
After the break, it's time for the breakneck conclusion. And my heart is still beating fast from this thing, so pardon me if I don't stop to smell the roses. It's night, and Walt rolls up to the Uncle Nazi compound, where he's greeted by Herc, who has decided he's going to be extra obnoxious now that we're wrapping things up. Like, he hangs on the passenger-side window and pretends to make irritating small talk about cars when he's really just checking the car for weapons/funny stuff. Walt's apparently riding clean and he's ushered inside. Walt ignores Herc's instructions and just parks wherever he feels like, but Herc doesn't seem to think much of it. Idiot.
Herc then has Walt frisked, and while he doesn't have any weapons, they do take his car keys, including the unlocking fob that has gotten more air time than Marie this week. He even goes the extra mile to embarrass Walt by making him lift up his shirt to prove he's not wearing a wire. Inside, Uncle Jack wastes a lot of time talking about Walt's surprisingly lush head of hair. Walt wants to talk business, but Jack is just straight-up not interested. It's funny what a consistent runner Uncle Jack's lack of ambition has been. Starkly contrasted with Walt's (as well as Todd's) insane drive to succeed and advance, for sure. Walt brings up the methylamine shortfall, and Jack's like, "Eh. I'm sure Lydia will think of something."
Walt appeals to Todd to explain the situation to Jack, but all Todd will say is "You really shouldn't have come back, Mr. White. I'm sorry." Walt knows the jig is up and he eyes the keyfob on the pool table, just as Herc clicks the gun behind his head. Once more, Walt has to think quickly on his feet. Jack tells Herc to do it out back and Walt starts hollering that Jack still owes him. Jesse. He's talking about Jesse. He fumes that he paid Jack to execute Jesse, and now he comes back to town and they're partnered up. At this, Jack suddenly gets prideful and takes offense. Jesse may be alive, but he is not his partner. He would never partner with a rat. And apparently, he can't handle Walt spending the last thirty seconds of his life thinking that about him, so he sends Todd out to retrieve Jesse, just so Walt can see how much of a non-partner he is. Convenient behavior by Uncle Jack? Sure. But given what's coming , I think we're well into the realm of wish-fulfillment here, so just go with it.
So Todd frog-marches a barely conscious Jesse back to the clubhouse. Inside, Jack's men are relaxing (Herc in particular is availing himself of the massage chair), while Walt takes great pains to retrieve the keyfob without anyone noticing. Good thing no one just put it in their pocket or anything, huh? In comes Jesse, and Walt is indeed rather scandalized by the awful sight of him. He stares. He thinks. He calculates. And then he charges at Jesse with a combination of fury and desperation. He tackles Jesse to the floor, and Jack and his men kind of laugh at the two of them -- a dead man and a slave -- fighting amongst themselves. While Todd tries to break them up, Walt hits the button on the keyfob.
Outside, the car trunk pops open and there's that mechanical arm Walt was working on. Only this time it's attached to the automatic rifle. And it starts firing, spraying bullets into the clubhouse from the outside. First to bite it are the outside guards, but the flurry of gunfire is massive and anybody standing up (that is, anybody but Walt, Jesse and Todd) gets riddled with bullets. Herc takes one through the head. Jack takes a few in the chest. One bullet ricochets off of some metal surface and appears to hit Walt, even. Truly, a massive, cathartic shootout like this is fan-service at its finest. It's also well within Walt's character and certainly a viable method of wrapping things up. But it is undeniably red meat to a voracious fanbase.
Inside, once the gun has exhausted its bullet supply, Walt crawls off of Jesse, while Todd scrambles to check on Uncle Jack. He also peeks out the window to see just what army unleashed hell on them all. With Todd's back to him, Jesse takes his opportunity. He leaps at Todd and uses his own chains to relentlessly choke that stupid goddamn son of a bitching smug little shitbag to death. TO EFFING DEATH. Bye Todd. Bye! BYE! Sorry Jesse has to turn into an actual feral monster in order to bring about your well-deserved death, but oh well. Guess my fan-service needs got fulfilled tonight too. Walt just stands there and lets it happen, giving no indication whether he feels bad that his less reverent protégée is murdering his most fawning one. Walt is too busy finding a gun and making sure Jack is fully dead. He's not, and he even tries to bargain with Walt. He knows where all the other money barrels are, for instance. For once, greed is not a motivating factor for Walt. He has too little time left. (The irony is, he always had too little time left to worry about spending all that money. Better late than never on this realization?) He shoots Jack through the head before he can even make Walt an offer.
By this time, Jesse has finished Todd off and unlocked his chains. He stands up, and suddenly he and Walt are face-to-face again. There are a lot of words unspoken as they stare at each other. Walt ultimately takes his gun and slides it across the ground to Jesse. "Do it," he instructs. Jesse wants to. For Brock. For Andrea. For Jane. For Hank and Gomie. For himself. He points the gun right at Walt, but the instructions to pull the trigger, Walt telling him "You want this," are what ultimately hold him back. He makes Walt admit that this is what Walt wants, foremost. Walt does. At this, and at the sight of Walt's bullet wound to the abdomen, Jesse drops the gun. "Do it yourself," he spits.
After Jesse stomps out, Walt hears Todd's phone ringing. The ringtone? "Lydia the Tattooed Lady." Oh, Todd. You dead goddamn goober. Walt answers the phone, and once we see Lydia on the other end of the line, of course she looks like hell and is very sick. She doesn't catch on that it's Walt at first, which might be her illness interfering with -- again -- the fact that she's a total paranoid freak who takes no chances. So of course she is like, "Is he dead? Like I instructed? Because I instructed that you kill Walter White? I, Lydia Rodarte-Quayle did this, of sound mind and body. Which would give Walt a great excuse to murder me. Too bad he didn't know about it until well after our last meeting. Oh well. So, about you having killed Walt on my orders …" Walt finally lets her know it's him. Then he manages to make damn sure she knows that she is, in fact, suffering from ricin poisoning, and it's by his hand. He does this while semi-following Jesse to the parking lot. "Well," Walt closes, "goodbye, Lydia." He hands up and tosses the phone. One more look back from Jesse. A silent nod from Walt. Meant to indicate… what? His blessing? A tacit, "You're welcome for freeing you?" And Jesse returns it? I'm not sure what I wanted out of the resolution to Jesse and Walt's relationship. But twin nods of respect? Jesus Christ, man. I think this finale is overall very proficient and polished and satisfying on an elemental level, but what the fuck was that thing? Anyway. Jesse burns rubber, plows through the compound gate, and drives out of our lives and into Need For Speed. God bless, you broken, ruined, tiny man.
And then there's Walt -- alone at last. Having killed or pushed away everybody in his life. And now he's shot and likely dying, which is fine, because that'll get him before the cancer does. He wanders into the meth lab and surveys the operation. One last bout of professional curiosity, I guess. Cue the Badfinger song. Cue Walt's last appreciative glances at the true love of his life: methamphetamine production. By the time he collapses, he's left a bloody hand-print on the one metal vat and the police are almost there. The camera pulls back from a look at Walt's dead face. He did it. He beat everyone. He beat cancer. He beat the government. He beat 'em all. That corpse on the floor of a filthy warehouse in New Mexico is the picture of a winner. Goodbye, Walter White. Hopefully there isn't an afterlife that you will have to try and dominate like you did this one.
Joe R thanks everybody who read a recap or sent a piece of email. It's been almost too much fun. Please watch American Horror Story now. He can be reached for lavish praise and nothing but at joseph.reid21@gmail.com.
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