If you haven't had a chance to watch El Camino on Netflix yet, make a U-turn and queue it
up.
If you have seen it, carry on as we dissect the ending and figure out what it all meant.
Major spoilers ahead!
It's no exaggeration to say that Jesse Pinkman went through a lot during the original series.
He was chained up, extorted, held hostage by a fly, and beaten within an inch of his
life, and to top it all off, he was present while two of his girlfriends died.
Through it all, this was a guy who was on the run.
Sometimes that was literal, sometimes more figurative, as he ran from his choices in
life.
Think about the first and last times we ever laid eyes on Jesse.
The first time we ever saw him in action, he was running from the cops.
The last time, he was speeding into the night, running away from the neo-Nazi compound.
He's framed by the chase from beginning to end.
"Quit running and get some help."
"No one is trying to hurt you, son."
And in El Camino, Jesse spends a good chunk of time on the run as well.
He's basically public enemy number one, as we see when a caravan of police cars screams
onto the scene at the first sniff of Jesse's whereabouts.
By the end of it all, he finally finds a place to stop running, and maybe, just maybe, finds
a little peace.
Just before the title card cuts in, we see a hint of a smile pass over his lips.
Whatever comes next for Jesse, he'll be forging his own path through a brand new frontier.
Breaking Bad's body count is ridiculously high, and many of those corpses were added
to the pile by Walter White himself.
For his part, Jesse Pinkman has surprisingly little blood on his hands.
Over the course of five seasons, he only directly caused the deaths of three people: cartel
enforcer Joaquin Salamanca, naive coffee lover Gale Boetticher, and closet psychopath Todd
Alquist.
Every one of those deaths ate him up inside.
Well, except maybe Todd's, but Jesse is no killer.
He'd rather get arrested than shoot a police officer, and there's a point where he can't
even bring himself to shoot Todd after everything the guy put him through.
But by the climactic showdown in the film, Jesse is ready to do whatever it takes for
his freedom.
It's a darker edge to the absolution he wants, but it shows that he's done being a prisoner
or a pawn.
"You ready?"
"Yeah."
It's possible that he doesn't realize it right away, but the flashback with Jane suggests
that he does come to an understanding about it.
They talk about going where the universe takes you, and Jesse is on board with the philosophy
until Jane brings him back down to Earth.
"I've gone where the universe takes me my entire life.
It's better to make those decisions for yourself."
It's no accident that the flashback occurs just before the final shot of Jesse driving
away.
He's finally taken control of his life and made those decisions for himself.
The cat's out of the bag; Walter White is back in El Camino.
But there's no miraculous return to life here; it's just a flashback to a conversation Jesse
and Walt had in a New Mexico diner.
It appears to take place during the events of the Season 2 episode that saw them trapped
in the desert, just before Jesse dropped Walt off at the airport, judging by their clothes.
The conversation is seemingly innocuous and, let's be honest, it's mainly a way to get
Bryan Cranston back into the role for one last hurrah, but it also suggests hints for
Jesse's new future.
Walt urges him to think about going back to college, then says:
"You're really lucky, you know?
You didn't have to wait your whole life to do something special."
Is Jesse finally doing something that he sees as special?
Although Walter was probably referring to things like making piles of money and becoming
a respected drug kingpin, Jesse may see putting his regrets and mistakes in the past as a
more personal measure of what makes something special.
Before Jesse parts ways with Ed in Alaska, he pulls an envelope from his pocket and asks
Ed to mail for him as one last favor.
Inside is a handwritten letter, and when Jesse drives away we see that it's addressed to
Brock Cantillo, the son of his girlfriend Andrea, whom Todd shot.
What does the letter say?
The film never shows us, but most likely it's an apology to Brock, and maybe even an explanation
so he doesn't spend his whole life living with the question mark of his mother's death.
In the first scene of the film, Mike Ehrmantraut tells Jesse that while he may be able to start
fresh, the one thing he can never do is make things right.
And maybe a letter from his mom's boyfriend won't change Brock's life, but to Jesse, it's
important to try.
He won't bring back Brock's mom with the letter, but it may at least bring a smidgen of closure
to a tragedy which, in Brock's eyes, came out of nowhere and had no apparent cause.
The folks behind Breaking Bad have often described how the clothing on the show is designed to
clue viewers into a character's mental state.
For example, Walter White starts out wearing beige, but his clothes get darker the more
he transforms into Heisenberg.
Showrunner Vince Gilligan told Vulture:
"Color is important on Breaking Bad; we always try to think in terms of it.
We always try to think of the color that a character is dressed in, in the sense that
it represents on some level their state of mind."
That trend continued all the way to the end of El Camino.
When Jesse steps out of the shower, he's dressed himself in all black.
He even gets a last-minute gift from Pete, a black beanie, completing the look.
But when he drives off on his own in Alaska, he's donned a white sweater.
The wardrobe shift takes Jesse from a character consumed by inner turmoil into a man who's
driving a single road into a brighter, cleaner future.
Even the flashback scene with Walt in the diner pays attention to this.
Earlier in their partnership, Jesse was still clinging to the good inside him, plenty of
white in his outfit.
Conflicted, sure, but not yet giving in to anger, loss, and despair.
It took Jesse awhile to find the right clothes again, but he's finally leaving some of that
darkness behind.
In spite of all the positive connotations, there's a bitterness to the ending of El Camino
that's hard to deny: Jesse is truly, completely alone.
"Anyone else you want to say goodbye to?"
When he ventures into obscurity in Alaska, he does so with only memories of the people
he once cared about.
That's not to say that viewers weren't warned that it would come to this.
Prior to El Camino's premiere, Aaron Paul tweeted a scene from season 3 of the series,
along with the caption:
"Cats out of the bag...and the bag is in the river.
Here’s a moment from Breaking Bad to slowly prepare you all for what’s to come."
In that scene, Jesse is at his emotional wits end and flat-out turns down Walter's offer
to keep working together.
Jesse tells him, with heartbreaking intensity,
"I have never been more alone.
I have nothing.
No one."
Unfortunately, that hasn't changed by the ending of El Camino.
If anything, he's even more alone than ever.
Was it all worth it in the end?
Hopefully, the answer is...
"Yeaaah, b----!"
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