Vince Gilligan Reveals the Only Way He Would Return to the Breaking Bad Universe

The Breaking Bad creator has closed the door on the BBU — but "never say never."

By Cameron Bonomolo

How many times can Vince Gilligan break bad? Gilligan, who created Breaking Bad and co-created the spin-off/prequel Better Call Saul, concluded the former in 2013 and the latter in 2022. Add in the loose threads wrapped up in 2019's El Camino: A Breaking Bad movie, and Gilligan has closed the door on the Breaking Bad Universe. Or has he? As Gilligan plots his next series — a sci-fi-tinged original compared to The Twilight Zone with "no crime, and no methamphetamine" — the four-time Emmy winner reveals his mysterious new show would have to flop before he would consider breaking bad again.

"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."

Across 62 episodes and five seasons, Breaking Bad told the rise and fall of Walter "Heisenberg" White (Bryan Cranston), a cancer-stricken high school chemistry teacher who partnered with his former student — drug dealer Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) — to manufacture and distribute meth. Whatever loose ends that weren't wrapped up in El Camino, set in the wake of the Breaking Bad finale, were tied together when the final episodes of Better Call Saul brought closure to the widowed Marie Schrader (Betsy Brandt) in the post-"Felina" Breaking Bad timeline.

Gilligan and Saul co-creator and showrunner Peter Gould have hinted at a potential spin-off following Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), the ex-partner and partner-in-crime of the incarcerated Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk).

"As for if there's more to the story, there might be," Gould previously told AMC.com. "I don't want to speak for Vince, but I think we both would like to take a little break from this universe to explore something else. But if we come back, it will be because we've got something that we're excited about and that there's more to say."

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Gould added: "I'm not going to say that couldn't happen. It certainly could. I feel like I need to give it a little rest. Certainly never say never. And I think if you watch [the Saul series finale], Kim Wexler seems like she's got more to do, that's for sure."

Gilligan and Seehorn will next reunite for his untitled Apple TV+ sci-fi series, which is again set in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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