By the time it wrapped up, it was agreed that one of Breaking Bad's critical strengths was
its clear purpose, making it a rare series without too many plot holes, dropped storylines,
or extraneous scenes.
The acclaimed 2013 final episode of Breaking Bad decisively concluded the story of Walter
White, but the fate of Jesse Pinkman was left unknown.
Now El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie is here to fill in the blanks.
Let's delve into the details and dig up some Easter eggs and references you may have missed.
And be warned: Spoilers are ahead.
El Camino begins with a flashback of Jesse and Mike Ehrmantraut making conversation about
where they might escape to if they ever ended up as fugitives.
Mike is clear in his answer: Alaska, "the last frontier."
By the time we catch up with Jesse screaming down the road after the events of Breaking
Bad, it's clear he's had escape to the great white north on his mind for a while.
But first, he has to take care of a few things.
Jesse's dash for freedom is almost immediately derailed by an army of police officers, alerted
to the white supremacists' compound by the pounding hellfire of Walt's military-grade
swan song.
Seeing the red and blue approaching, Jesse swerves his car into a driveway, laying low
with the lights off as the police pass.
When they do, he backs out swiftly, knocking over a mailbox.
The mailbox hangs there, holding in the corner of the shot as Jesse flees.
The address number: "212."
"Phoenix" is the twelfth episode of Breaking Bad's second season, or episode 212.
It's the episode where Jane, Jesse's then-girlfriend, dies.
It's a turning point in Jesse's life that takes him from a bad situation to true, prolonged
misery.
Considering that one of El Camino's last scenes is a flashback to Jesse and Jane, this shoutout
seems suitable.
Over the course of their time on Breaking Bad, Skinny Pete and Badger prove themselves
to be surprisingly adorable.
They have surprising depth, from Skinny Pete's showstopping piano skills to the duo's abiding
passion for sci-fi.
In the season 5 Breaking Bad episode "Blood Money," Skinny Pete and Badger have an extended
dialogue about Star Trek.
"So you're telling me every time Kirk went into the transport, he was killing himself?
So over the whole series there's like 147 Kirks?"
"At least!"
With that background in mind, it's a real pleasure to see Skinny Pete's house so decked
out in Star Trek paraphernalia, from starships on the bookshelves to sci-fi inspired chairs
in front of the TV.
It's just another detail to further flesh out characters we thought we already knew,
showing how their possibly addictive personalities can be put toward interests way more wholesome
than what you'd find at the end of a meth pipe.
One of the more obscure easter eggs in El Camino doesn't require an extensive knowledge
of Breaking Bad or its spinoff Better Call Saul so much as it relies on the viewer's
knowledge of both shows' creator, VInce Gilligan.
The charming and folksy showrunner has come to inspire great loyalty in the people that
he works with, but he also draws similar praise from fans of his work.
Apart from the quality of his art, that fandom seems to be partly owed to the fact that he's
proven so willing to engage audiences with callbacks and references.
In El Camino, one of those nods is a lot more personal.
As Todd is driving Jesse to his apartment to help with an ambiguous, but foreboding
errand, the car passes by the intersection of Holly Avenue and Arroz Lane.
Holly, of course, was the name of Walter and Skyler White's daughter, the newborn whose
future security so motivated Walt's twisted turn toward crime.
But Holly's name was itself a reference to a real-life figure: Vince Gilligan's longtime
girlfriend, Holly Rice, since "arroz" is the Spanish word for "Rice."
Of all people, who would have thought the Breaking Bad movie would spend so much time
on Todd?
One of the most loathsome villains in a series that had plenty to go around, Todd returns
in El Camino in extra-large fashion, with an extended flashback to a dreadful weekend
Jesse spent in his very weird company.
With his apartment full of serial killer-esque trophies, sparse decor, and an actual dead
body, Todd in El Camino comes off like a combination between Jeffrey Dahmer and that kid from St.
Elsewhere.
The most perplexing objects in Todd's home can be found in his collection of strange,
apparently hand-made snowglobes.
While they'd be innocuous decor for your average kindergarten class, they come off as eerie
in the context of Todd's apartment.
The one held up by the faux-police officer just before a cornered Jesse makes himself
known seems to show a representation of Todd locked in a winter wonderland with Lydia,
the high-powered operative in the global meth scheme whom Todd developed an unsettling fascination
with.
She is shown literally submerged in a giant teacup, frolicking while Todd watches.
What a creep.
Breaking Bad loves its motifs, whether it's a one-eyed pink teddy bear floating in the
pool or the sky-blue color of methamphetamine, and so much else.
Another minor motif is dogs, with different characters being described as dog-like, relating
to whatever is going on in the story at the time.
Walt's lab assistant Gale Boetticher is described euphemistically as a dog who needs to be put
down by Jesse for being an inconvenience.
"He was just like a…
I don't know, like a... problem dog."
In season five, the unhinged, revenge-focused Jesse becomes a "rabid dog."
Then, after Walt flees Albuquerque, a single stray dog crosses the street on the road behind
him, all alone.
El Camino brings the dog motif back in the dynamic between Jesse and Todd, who further
proves his creepiness through the way he treats his prisoner.
On multiple occasions, from the hair combing to remarks about keeping him better groomed,
Todd reveals that he thinks of Jesse as nothing more than a domesticated animal.
It's deeply unsettling, and speaks to the depths of abuse Jesse suffered during his
captivity.
Jesse's escape from Albuquerque is an arduous process.
When Jesse returns to his parents' home, sneaking in with a hidden key after luring them off
of the premises, he makes a beeline to a locked safe, working to retrieve some old guns for
a coming conflict.
As he makes his way through the house, he briefly pauses to look up as he's standing
over an evident crawl space outlined in the floorboards.
Jesse would have no way of knowing this, but a crawl space like this one played host to
one of the most iconic shots in the entire series, and a low point for Walt.
In the episode "Crawl Space," Walt ended the hour literally sunken under ground.
The famous shot had intense implications for the story to come: Walt, it seemed, was a
dead man.
But Jesse's not going to the crawl space, he's going upstairs, to find a tool for his
freedom.
Seeing Breaking Bad itself seems like a given requirement for El Camino, but would viewers
also have to be caught up on Better Call Saul?
It's a good show, but one easy to sleep on.
The fourth season isn't even on Netflix yet.
Vince GIlligan was asked this very question in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
While he had hopes that the dramatic stakes would be clear enough to engage new viewers,
he did agree that it's a better movie for a fan of the series.
"By all means, see Breaking Bad first.
Better Call Saul, not as much."
You can't say the man lied to you.
There is indeed at least one Better Call Saul reference tucked away in El Camino, working
to further establish this fictional Albuquerque as a living, breathing place.
When Jesse arrives for his final confrontation with Jack and Todd's affiliates, he has to
wait patiently as the group is entertained by a group of strippers, brought to the location
by a bodyguard named Clarence.
This is the same Clarence who proved to be uniquely unfit for bodyguard duties during
a previous encounter with Mike in the season 1 episode "Pimento," where he was only referred
to by his size, rather than his name.
"You want one?"
"All right."
When Breaking Bad first started, it was easy to see Walter White as a good man with his
back against the wall, and Jesse Pinkman as his amoral, necessary foil.
Boy, did that flip by the end.
One of the ways the audience learned to view Jesse with compassion was in the way he himself
was compassionate toward those around him, particularly children and animals.
Jesse even treated typically loathsome animals like creepy-looking insects kindly, as was
shown in the season two episode "Peekaboo."
That episode involved Jesse going off on his most arduous solo mission to date, fending
off violent, far-gone methheads as he attempted to also do right by their sorely neglected
child.
Before that episode took off, though, Jesse whiled away the time by letting a large black
bug crawl onto the back of his tattooed hand, regarding it with a smile as it crawled around
his fingers.
That Skinny Pete then immediately moved to crush the bug seems to have done little harm
to their abiding friendship.
El Camino makes a reference to this scene as Jesse waits for the strippers to leave
before his final attack on the welding company crew, letting a similar bug crawl onto his
hand.
He regards it closely this time, keeping his thoughts private.
At least it's not a housefly.
On Breaking Bad, flies drive you crazy.
Going into El Camino's mysterious release, you had to wonder: "Are we going to see any
Walt in this thing?"
While few really thought the bullet-riddled Mr. Lambert would be coming back to life,
it was asking the questions of whether Bryan Cranston would be back in the role in a flashback
and a bald cap.
The answer to both questions turned out to be "yes" — a somewhat obvious yes, in the
case of the bald cap.
From the clothes they're wearing and their general demeanors, Jesse and Walt's flashback
scene seems to take place immediately after they've found their way back to civilization
after being stranded in the season two episode "4 Days Out."
The scene features plenty of fanservice, from Walt absentmindedly forgetting Jesse graduated
high school to one last, grandiose
"Yeah, b----!"
During their discussion, Jesse and Walt get into the mildest of disagreements about the
value of pineapple, which Walt can take or leave.
Jesse claims it's good for you, "full of bromine," which Walter corrects to "bromelain."
While Jesse's attempt at trivia is, as Walt says, not even close to being right, it is
a reference to the chemical element with forms the "Br" in Breaking Bad's memorable title
card.
When it was first announced as the official title of the mysterious, shot-in-secret Breaking
Bad movie, the name El Camino struck many as only deepening the mystery.
What could it mean?
Obviously, the name "El Camino" is most known as a classic Chevrolet car/truck hybrid, with
the hood stripes on some models forming the basis for a few of the Breaking Bad movie's
promotional posters.
It's specifically the model of car Jesse uses to immediately flee from the white supremacist
camp, but he doesn't hold onto the car for that long.
Instead, it remains stowed at Skinny Pete's place as part of an improvised plan to keep
Jesse safe.
After the first fifteen minutes, it's barely in the movie anymore.
So what gives?
Breaking Bad was always a series that enjoyed playing around with titles.
Like in season two, when the titles of each of the ominous plane crash flashforward episodes
ultimately spelled out "737 Down Over ABQ," or how the last episode's name "Felina" is
both an anagram of "finale" and a reference to the Marty Robbins song that scores a critical
part of the episode.
Translated into English, "el camino" means "the way," which is a turn of phrase as open
to interpretation as Jesse's original fate.
He spends the movie looking for a way out of his predicament, and a way forward in his
life, perhaps ending up, as Aaron Paul told us so many years ago, as a carpenter living
quietly in Alaska.
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