And it was not Walt who pulled the trigger, but he gave the order. Gale was not “innocent,” in that he got into his line of work willingly, but he clearly didn’t have this coming. Was he willing to deliberately kill an innocent man to save his own life? In this riveting season finale, Walter stood at another moral threshold. Would he kill at point-blank range? Check.
Would he accept being indirectly responsible for the deaths of innocents in a plain crash-and then for the near-assassination of his brother-in-law-and continue on? Check. Would he secure enough money to provide for his family, yet keep on cooking meth after his initial rationales were gone? Check. Would he kill a man who intended him harm? Check. Would he make deadly drugs for money? Yes, he would. It’s been a journey with him down a descending corridor leading further into his damnation, as he approaches one door after another and crosses-maybe with trepidation, maybe with doubt, maybe with wracking guilt afterward, but he crosses. The story of Breaking Bad has been the story of Walter White crossing thresholds. (And, perhaps unwittingly, a commentary on outsized media fascination with doomed, pretty young white women.) And perhaps it’ll one day be the thing that undoes him, ending his murderous-and now worldwide!-rampage once and for all.Follow for the season finale of Breaking Bad coming up: It’s a fascinatingly grim tradition the show is developing, having Joe kill women who become iconic in their death for faux righteous reasons. “More famous even than Guinevere Beck,” Joe says, reminiscing on his season one object of obsession-who, in death, becomes a bestselling author. Love, in true crime circles, has become posthumously famous. “Driving past the foundation of the now-demolished Quinn-Goldberg ‘butcher house’ in Madre Linda, I’m struck by how normal it all looks…” the pitch-perfect lede by journalist “Neil Ronald” begins. The show follows that reveal up by showing a mock feature story in The Cut of the chilling Madre Linda murder-suicide. “Once the nausea passed, people were ravenous for her,” Joe narrates, noting that her murderous ways and the “quasi-feminist” way he framed her made her something of a folk hero. (“We’re not idiots - we know that Victoria is amazing!” show-runner Sera Gamble told Variety, defending the choice and noting that Love was only ever destined for a two-season arc.)īut Pedretti’s real-life popularity aside, Love has become an object of morbid true crime fascination, a fitting end for the bloodthirsty character. He’ll trade his baseball cap for a beret and then back to a baseball cap when he realizes no one does that.īut while Joe morphs into the living embodiment of a winking “Paris is always a good idea” poster, it seems inevitable that the ghost of Love will haunt him over the course of the next season-in part because Victoria Pedretti was one of the highlights of the show. He’ll dodge American tourists in the Latin Quarter, and quietly linger by murderinos killing time at Père Lachaise. Let’s just imagine what his life will be like there for a moment, shall we? He’ll stroll past bakeries that will remind him of his once-beloved Love, a pang in his chest every time he sees a fresh tart. But it makes sense that Joe would head to the city of love after losing Love, indulging in all his sick romantic whims. Apparently his true crime infamy back in the States wasn’t big enough to reach the French papers. The finale doesn’t give away too much about Joe’s new life, except to reveal that he goes by Nick now and he’s comfy enough in the city to go to a buzzing cafe without a baseball cap on.