The horrific scene Vince Gilligan cut from ‘Breaking Bad’
Bryan Cranston’s Walter White was greeted by many viewers of Breaking Bad as the antihero they found themselves rooting for, hoping that the former chemistry teacher’s rise to the top of the criminal underworld would see him emerge unscathed by the end of the show’s run.
However, that’s not what creator and showrunner Vince Gilligan wanted anybody to think, with the filmmaker having gone on record many times to make it patently clear that the audience isn’t supposed to be sympathising with or glorifying the person who’s effectively the overarching villain of the piece.
Admitting that “after a certain number of years, the spell wears off,” Gillian laid out why Walter was a terrible person. “He was really sanctimonious, and he was really full of himself. He had an ego the size of California. And he always saw himself as a victim,” he said. “He was constantly griping about how the world short-changed him, how his brilliance was never given its due. When you take all of that into consideration, you wind up saying, ‘Why was I rooting for this guy?'”
One of the most noticeable effects of Walter’s popularity was the vitriol that ended up being pointed in the direction of his on-screen wife, with Anna Gunn’s Skyler White becoming one of the most widely-detested characters on all of television. It wasn’t particularly fair or well-merited considering the narrative circumstances, but Gilligan nonetheless considered killing her off before the credits rolled for the last time.
Discussing possible alternate endings for Breaking Bad, he confirmed that Walter and Skyler were almost kidnapped and tied up at a motel before they escape, and Walter discovers his spouse in the bathtub having committed suicide. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed.
“I was leaning toward that and the other writers were like, that’s a bridge too far,” he acknowledged on the Breaking Bad Insider podcast. “Let’s not do that. And they were right. I think that would have been very unnecessary.” It wasn’t even shot, but it still troubles Gilligan to think about.
“We talked about a possible version where Skyler and Walt are tied up at a Motel 6 kind of place and he’s talking to her in a bathroom saying, ‘It’s going to be alright… I’ve got a plan. Skyler? Skyler?'” he explained. “And he finally forces the door open and she’s in a bloody tub or something like that.” After discussing the idea with the writing team, the decision was made to abandon it altogether.
As unpopular as Skyler proved to be among certain sections of the Breaking Bad fandom, she didn’t deserve to be killed off. After all, at least a couple of characters needed to escape the wreckage alive so as not to make the ending too bleak, with Walter’s wife and son two of the only characters left standing.
