Guesses about Breaking Bad’s Last Season

SPOILER ALERT: This is all speculation, so feel free to read ahead with no spoilers!

Tonight’s the night. This Sunday, once the domain of Murder, She Wrote and Touched by an Angel, and now the showcase for Breaking Bad, this Sunday we get to see what comes of a certain DEA’s toilet time revelation. I’m talking about Hank, of course, intrepid brother-in-law to Walter White, whose descent into darkness as response to his sudden sense of mortality has been the main story. We have watched, over the last few years, an emotionally shut down and foreclosed man become the antagonist of the series. Walter has gotten better taste in cars, but other than that, he’s also become a meth mass marketer, a master manipulator, and an unchecked murderer.

The last eight episodes start airing tonight. Thankfully this is AMC, and not an instant boxed set of a season vis a vis Netflix. I will likely scream at the television upon seeing each week’s cliffhanger, but I’ll love Vince Gilligan for it. So just for fun some thoughts on what may flicker across the screen during season 6:

Character Development—Skyler has had some development throughout the series, too, even pushing against her own idea of ethics. She’s laundered money and manipulated the IRS for not just one, but two businesses now (poor Ted). She’s clever and sick of all the bs around her from her kleptomaniac sister to her dear husband Heisenberg, the meth maker. If the series loves its audience, it’ll let us see Walt finally get caught from his own arrogance, and Skyler finding a way to keep the money rolling in to what remains of her family.

As for Walter Junior, I think he’ll learn about Walter’s secret drug crimes and retreat by going to college in the South Pacific. He’ll probably find a way to keep the hot rod daddy bought for him out of guilt.

Hank finally has his day, all because he needed some bathroom reading one lazy afternoon. It doesn’t get better for the DEA, does it? Jesse will do some time in prison but it won’t be too bad. And then he’ll hit the road on the high school circuit, telling kids not to do drugs. He’s been looking to settle down with a girlfriend and a kid for a while, so maybe that will happen for him. But probably not. Saul Goodman will enjoy all of the fees he can get lawyering on Walt’s behalf, but he will not so secretly be glad that the jig is up for Walt. He didn’t like him to begin with.

And Walter? My vote is that he’s ready to take his own ricin, stashed in the kitchen outlet. Cornered, Walter loses all of his power and is left only with his incredible anger. But before he can become his own martyr, the cancer inside him will give him a stroke or something, and he will be once again castrated from his own autonomy. Certainly weirder things have happened on this series. Karma has to pay back Walt somehow, after killing so many people so wantonly. It would be best if he were ultimately stopped by himself. Or maybe Jesse could kill him, possibly in self-defense, which would be a retribution unknown to Jesse for Walt letting Jesse’s girlfriend die of asphyxiation.

Major Plot Points—Skyler finds a way to keep the cash earnings from Hank during the enormous DEA investigation; Marie goes on an extended freakout over the news her brother-in-law is the focus of her husband’s hunt; Jesse finds a way out by turning state’s evidence; Todd runs off with Walt but makes mistakes that cost Walt; Walter starts lying to himself about what he’s done, living in a series of motels, winding up at the home of his billionaire ex-friends as Hank pursues him; Ted learns that Walt is under investigation and Walt sends Todd to kill him before he can talk.

Loose Ends—The ricin in the kitchen doesn’t stay there; Walter blurts out to Jesse that he watched Jane die and didn’t help her, and that he poisoned Jesse’s girlfriend’s son, which is when Jesse finally turns against him; nobody finds out that Skyler has been laundering Walt’s money; nobody finds Mike’s body; Hank figures out that Walt was behind Gus’s death; nobody finds the pile of cash Skyler has in the storage container (unless Walt leads authorities there by mistake); Lydia and the tank of methylamine are never discovered; the junkyard owner comes forward with information about Walt and the RV meth lab; both of Jesse’s street dealer friends confess what they know, but none of it is helpful.

Add your guesses about the end of Breaking Bad here!