The final moments of Breaking Bad‘s series finale brought the story of teacher-turned-drug kingpin Walter White to a close, showing him dying on the floor of a meth lab as the police arrived to detain him. Everything you needed to know about that ending was revealed on the actual show. Jesse Pinkman’s tale, however, was much more open-ended. Walter’s young partner was last seen driving away from the lab where he had been imprisoned in an El Camino he stole from Todd. No one ever knew what happened to Jesse, which led to the creation of El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, which arrived on Netflix this week.
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Creator Vince Gilligan wanted to finally provide closure to Jesse’s story with El Camino, giving fans an epilogue to the series six years after its finale. That said, the ending that Jesse is given in El Camino was actually revealed by Gilligan in an interview following the last episode of Breaking Bad.
SPOILER WARNING: This article contains major spoilers for El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie! Continue reading at your own risk…
El Camino ends with Jesse finally getting the trip to Alaska that he asked for in Breaking Bad Season 5, just before deciding to stay in New Mexico and get revenge on Walt. At the end of the film, Jesse is taken to Alaska with a new name and a new life. When the show ended six years ago, Gilligan revealed that this was the ending he imagined for Jesse.
“My personal feeling is that he got away,” Gilligan admitted to GQ back in 2013. “But the most likely thing, as negative as this sounds, is that they’re going to find this kid’s fingerprints all over this lab and they’re going to find him within a day or a week or a month. And he’s still going to be on the hook for the murder of two federal agents. But yeah, even though that’s the most likely outcome, the way I see it is that he got away and got to Alaska, changed his name, and had a new life. You want that for the kid. He deserves it.”
There are many ways that Jesse’s story could have ended with El Camino, but Gilligan stayed true to his initial idea and gave him the happiest one. After all, the kid has been through quite a lot. It’s about time he finally earns a win.
What did you think of Jesse’s ending in El Camino? Let us know in the comments!
