On Sunday night, “Breaking Bad” concluded its fifth and final season. Over the last five years, the show has received critical acclaim and built an extensive fan base. Sunday night’s episode, “Felina,” was quite possibly the most anticipated television finale since “The Sorpanos.” While that drama ended in a way that left some viewers unsatisfied, “Breaking Bad’s” conclusion gave us the answer to almost any question we could ask: Does Walter White succeed in leaving a fortune to his estranged family? (Yes). Does he avenge his brother-in-law Hank’s death and free Jesse Pinkman? (Yes and yes). But one question remains up for debate: Does Walt truly redeem himself? (Yes, no, maybe… I don’t know. Could you repeat the question?)
The show culminated in a series of purgative acts by Walt. The first of such acts –– intruding on the home of his former colleagues Gretchen and Elliot –– is seemingly fueled by hubris. Rather than exact his revenge, though, he coerces them into providing Walt with a legal, unsuspicious method of routing his drug money to his family. Walt finally succeeds in fulfilling his proclaimed mission of providing for his family. However, the gift comes at the price of his memory being soiled in the eyes of his family and former friends. By these people, Walt will be remembered as an unscrupulous drug dealer and murderer.
In one of the most poignant scenes of the entire series, Walt returns to his wife Skyler to offer a final farewell and finally owns up to his intentions: “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it, and I was really… I was alive.” He concedes that his actions were always driven by pride, and in the process he takes responsibility for all the pain and suffering he has caused. Yet the admission comes much too late for Skyler, who had told Walt already countless times that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. No amount of guilt can repair the debilitated White family.
The most integral of Breaking Bad’s character relationships, that of Walt and Jesse, met its tempestuous end in the final scene of the series. Walt not only frees Jesse from his neo-Nazi captors, but also releases him from the chains of Walt’s own manipulations. Walt refuses to exploit Jesse for his own ends any further. Jesse now claims the independence that he has always wished for, but his relationship with Walt is irremediable. He may never again know true happiness – the happiness he experienced in his high school woodworking class – and Walt is entirely to blame.
The Walter White we see in “Felina” is not the same Walter White we came to know and love (or hate) over the past five years. He abdicates the Heisenberg throne, sacrificing everything to make amends. Yet asking the question of whether or not Walt successfully redeems himself presupposes that we know the answer to another question: was his redemption even still possible? Walt secures his children’s inheritance, but at what cost? The destruction wrought by Heisenberg remains indelible, and the fabric of Walt’s family remains irreparable. As F. Scott Fitzgerald said, there are no second acts in American lives, and Walt’s 11th-hour renunciation of pride, while uplifting, ultimately pales in comparison with the legacy of Heisenberg.
