Crime didn't pay and Walter lost just about everything, including his life. But it was also, by the show's bleak, almost Calvinist standards, a relatively happy ending. It wasn't, as he so often feared, all for nothing – he found a way to get his money to his children.
Seeing Walt ultimately die alone and away from his family sounds like a sadder and grounded ending, albeit less satisfying for fans of the series.
Alas, Breaking Bad's series finale is far from happy-go-lucky. Not only does Bryan Cranston's character die at the final hurdle, but he dies lonely. All attempts at reconciliation with Skyler and Walt Jr. fall on deaf ears, leaving Heisenberg isolated from the very people he loved most.
The Breaking Bad series finale concludes with Walter White bleeding out on the floor of a neo-Nazi drug den, and references in Better Call Saul and El Camino confirm that he died in the incident.
The finale did give Jesse a happy ending of sorts when Walt, finally showing something like remorse for what he'd done to his former student, set him free.
Despite plans to kill off the character at the end of the first season, Paul's performance convinced the showrunner and head writer Vince Gilligan to keep Jesse in the show. The character and Paul's performance have received acclaim from critics and fans.
He cares about him, to some extent. It turns out Walt is a master manipulator and a monster, but even these kinds of people are capable of love - they have other people they love and care about, and Walt cares about his family, Jessie included.
Simple, complicated, it doesn't matter. Steps never change, and I know every step.
When her life fell apart and Walt disappeared, Skyler lost her assets and moved in with her kids in a small apartment with a job as a taxi dispatcher. It was revealed that her sister, Marie, reached out for a truce, so it's likely that the two reconnected shortly after the series finale.
He is sentenced to 86 years in prison, where he is revered by fellow inmates who recognize him as Saul. Kim visits him and they share a cigarette. As she departs, he goes to the prison yard to see her off and "shoots" her finger guns. Kim acknowledges the gesture and leaves.
Of course, it was countered that, based on his method of storytelling, if Gilligan intended the finale to be a dream, he would've shown that on the screen instead of leaving it open to interpretation. Now, in a sitdown with THR, Gilligan officially debunks the theory: it all happened.
Vince Gilligan (AMC's Breaking Bad), whose show returns with its final eight episodes in August, admitted he cried when he wrote the final words on the script to the last episode. “I haven't told my crew this. I actually cried writing the end – 'The end' on the last episode,” Gilligan said.
Laughing Nazi sociopaths loot Walt's money. Walt betrays Jesse, hands him over to be tortured and killed, and reveals that he knowingly let the love of Jesse's life die for good measure. Marie and Skyler tell Flynn the truth about his father.
After insisting for five full seasons that everything he did, he did for his family, Walt finally confesses that all of his actions were entirely self-motivated.
Walter White may be fictional. But the $80 million profit he turned by selling meth in less than a year is a very realistic sum for a true-life drug kingpin.
Per Walt, it is a "contamination," it "has no place in the lab." Flies congregate around carrion, and Walt knows there is something in him dying, and he hates to be reminded of it.
After Breaking Bad
In an interview, show creator Vince Gilligan confirmed that Walter Jr. eventually received his father's drug money through Gretchen and Elliott Schwartz, which he had arranged beforehand.
He ended up leaving them 9+ Million, I think he was happy with that. Maybe towards the end he was doing it for himself, but at the beginning it was mostly for the money and possibly a little for the thrill.
That realization hit home during the phone call at the end of the previous episode, "Granite State." Walter Jr. will not try to understand his father; Walter Jr. will not knowingly accept his money; Walter Jr. will never forgive him. His father was his greatest hero, but became his ultimate villain.
His symptoms got increasingly worse as the series progressed showing that now, he would need treatment for this clinical diagnosis if he hopes to return to any form of a normal life. It is no coincidence that Walt encompasses all nine characteristics of having a narcissistic personality disorder, as outlined in DSM-5.
At heart, Breaking Bad is a tragedy in the most classical sense, and "Live Free or Die" sees Walter White in the throes of his fatal flaw: hubris.
Jesse, who has arguably suffered more abuse from Walt than even Skyler. Every time he's tried to form a significant connection outside of Walt – Jane, Andrea, Brock, Mike – Walt has taken every single one of them away, either through direct or indirect means.
“I've made a mistake. It's all my fault. I had it coming,” Walt confesses. Walt isn't just crying because he's ruined the only real relationship he had (both business and personal), but he's crying because he's realized the mess he's made of his life, and those around him.
Walter did love Jesse because he's the closest thing to a father that Jesse had, and their relationship is a lot closer than Walt had with his own son. If you remember from earlier seasons, Walt Jr.