Breaking Bad Creator Names "Dumbest Thing" He Did in the Show

The Breaking Bad showrunner reflects on the series' final season for its 10th anniversary.

By Cameron Bonomolo

The fifth and final season of Breaking Bad began with Walter White (Bryan Cranston) at a Denny's on his 52nd birthday. But instead of a Grand Slam, the shabbily-dressed drug lord ordered from arms dealer Lawson (Jim Beaver), took the keys to a 1977 Cadillac Sedan DeVille, and opened the trunk to reveal its contents: an M60 machine gun. The season opener, titled "Live Free or Die" and written by series creator Vince Gilligan, then flashed back to a year earlier after Walt won his feud with Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito). Walt had a grudge and a gun — but against who, and what that gun was for, was a mystery even to Gilligan. 

"The biggest single fear we had was what to do with that damn machine gun," Gilligan told Variety in a new interview about the 10th anniversary of the final season. "At the beginning of the final run of episodes, we had Walt buy a machine gun in the trunk of a Cadillac. That was the thing I remember freaking us out the most because we did that, I committed to that. One of the dumbest things I've ever done in my career was committing to the idea of Walter White buying a machine gun when we did not know what he was going to do with it."

Gilligan explained, "We had no clue. There were literally months on end when I was completely freaked out. We'd be in the writers' room for a full day, and I'd be slowly banging my head against the wall — not enough to hurt myself but just enough to jar the ideas loose. And everybody was kind of worried about me."

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The showrunner then reverse-engineered what Walt was going to do: use the gun to get revenge on Jack (Michael Bowen) and his gang, who murdered Walt's DEA Agent brother-in-law Hank (Dean Norris) and stole millions of dollars in drug money. In the Breaking Bad series finale, "Felina," Walt avenges Hank, ultimately frees an enslaved Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), and manipulates Gretchen (Jessica Hecht) and Elliott Schwartz (Adam Godley) into funneling what's left of his meth empire to his estranged wife and son.

"Once we figured out this machine gun, that was when the dam broke and things started slowly to click together. It was after that point that we figured he's got to win," Gilligan said. "He's lost everything because of his hubris and his pride and his ego. He's lost his family, he's lost his soul. But he's got to win on some level. He's at least got to deliver that money to his family. How the hell does he do that once the world knows who he really is? When we figured out that Gretchen and Elliott could be the mechanism by which Walt wins and gets that money to his family, that was a good day."

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