Sorry, Breaking Bad fans: Vince Gilligan won’t be making Heisenberg Jr.
During an interview with Variety, the Breaking Bad showrunner said he doubts we’ll ever see Walt Jr. follow in his father’s footsteps. “That is doubtful as hell,” he confirmed. “The only attractive thing about that idea is working with RJ Mitte [Walter White Jr.] again because he’s a wonderful actor and sweet guy. But that would be depressing as hell. That would be the wrong lesson from the show, if there are any lessons at all to be gleaned from it.”
Spoilers for Breaking Bad follow.
Breaking Bad ended after five seasons with the death of its main character, Walter White, on the floor of a meth lab. Although his wife, Skyler (Anna Gun), and son, Walt Jr. (RJ Mitte) really went through the mill, it looks as though Gilligan doesn’t want to push them that far.
“Every now and then I find myself thinking about those characters, daydreaming about what would have happened to them,” he said. “Anna Gunn and RJ Mitte are such wonderful people playing such interesting roles that I can’t help but want a happy ending for them. When Breaking Bad ends, it’s not a very happy ending for those characters at all, but it is presented that their lives go on.”
By the end of the show, Walt Jr. had seen his father refuse chemotherapy, his parents separate, and ultimately found out about his father’s criminal enterprise. Thankfully, Gilligan suggested things get better for Walt Jr. and his mother after that.
“I’d like to believe things get better for them,” he said. “I’d hate the thought of Walt Jr. following in Walt’s footsteps in the crime business. That’s probably the kind of thing somebody will pitch 10 or 15 years from now — Walter Jr. as an Albuquerque crime lord succeeding where his father failed.”
“I could pretty much guarantee right now that I have no interest in seeing that happen,” he added. “That’d be a sad tribute to the show.”
Could we see Walt Jr. and Skyler again someday? That’s not entirely out of the question, Gilligan said. “It’s fun thinking about what would happen to the characters, but it doesn’t rise to the level of, ‘Gee, I’d like to tell more about the story,’ ” he said. “But who knows, in a few years maybe.”
IGN’s Breaking Bad season 5 review gave it 10/10 and said: “Breaking Bad was a testament to long-term planning in television with short-term payoffs. It was smart and eloquent, but also dry and subtextually complicated. It gave us some big F*** YEAH moments. It never overstated anything or spelled anything out more than it should have. It showed us rather than told us. It built up an intense amount of pressure FOR YEARS and cashed in everything in the last eight episodes.”
Want to read more about Breaking Bad? Check out why Aaron Paul doesn’t get residuals for Breaking Bad’s Netflix streaming as well as why Vince Gilligan likes Walter White less than ever.
Image Credit: AMC.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.
