Bryan Cranston on Breaking Bad Universe Ending: "It's Okay" to "Let It Go"

The Breaking Bad actor says the BBU had "a beginning, middle, and end."

By Cameron Bonomolo

Bryan Cranston is putting the brakes on more Breaking Bad. In an interview for his new movie Argylle, the Walter White actor responded to Better Call Saul ending after six seasons — the final chapter of the Breaking Bad Universe that began with the first season of the Vince Gilligan-created crime drama in 2008. The Emmy-winning Breaking Bad ran for five seasons and aired 62 episodes, spawning the prequel spinoff series Better Call Saul and the sequel movie El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie.

"Everything should come to an end. Everything is cyclical — our lives, seasons, trees, everything," Cranston told ET. "And so it's okay to have a beginning, middle, and end, and then let it go. I'm proud of what we did." 

Cranston played a cancer-stricken high school chemistry teacher who turns to manufacturing and selling meth with a former student, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), to leave a nest egg for his family. He reprised his role for a flashback sequence in El Camino and episodes of Better Call Saul's final season, and most recently returned to his role as drug kingpin Heisenberg for a 2023 Super Bowl commercial. 

In October, Gilligan said another series set in the BBU is unlikely — unless his next show, an untitled Apple TV+ sci-fi series also set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, flops.

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"To be brutally honest, if I get my ass handed to me with this next show and the one after that, and nobody wants to see it and everybody wants Breaking Bad, who knows! Maybe we'll see our way clearer to doing something in the future. But what I'd like to do is leave it be," Gilligan told Variety. "It's the work of my lifetime — Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul — it'll be the first thing engraved on my tombstone, and I couldn't be more proud of it. And I kind of wonder if there are further stories to tell, but I don't want to beat a dead horse."

Gilligan continued, "I look around and see other storytelling worlds — I'm not going to name names — that feel like, 'Boy, they are really sucking that last dime out of that franchise.' I'd hate to see that happen with this. I'd rather err on the side of leaving the party too soon than too late. But never say never. That's just how I feel right now, but who knows down the line."

Argylle is in theaters February 2.

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