Last night’s Breaking Bad season 6 (season 5B) premiere had a surprise ending.
So why did it happen so soon?
Warning: Spoilers ahead!
Breaking Bad series creator Vince Gilligan spoke to Vulture after last night’s highly-anticipated premiere in which we saw Hank confront Walt about his theory that his brother-in-law is Heisenberg.
While we knew that this season would focus on Hank versus Walt, we didn’t know that this would happen so soon in the final eight episodes. Gilligan knows that many people had that reaction.
“When I talk to folks [who’ve seen the premiere], so many people seem surprised that we did that so quickly,” he said to Vulture. “I guess the best way to answer is to say we tried to take it moment by moment, scene by scene, and see where the characters took us and the writing.”
Gilligan admitted that the show hadn’t planned on introducing the plot twist so soon. “It was not our initial thought to do that. We didn’t initially have the idea to have Walt figure out that Hank was on to him so quickly. We thought we might string that out for a few episodes. But when we got to the end of the episode, we thought to ourselves, We always want to end every episode of Breaking Bad, particularly the final eight, with a big development, a big finish. What better than Walt being on to Hank, who is on to Walt? It became apparent to us that, you know, we only got eight of these things left. We wanted to move like a bat outta hell and let the chips fall where they may.”
We were pleasantly surprised by the end of last night’s episode. In case you weren’t feeling satisfied, co-star Rj Mitte tweeted last night that this Sunday’s episode is even better:
East coast… I know is was great, but next week is even better @BreakingBad_AMC @AMC_TV @BreakingBadFans
— Rj Mitte (@RjMitte) August 12, 2013
Last night’s episode was directed by series star Bryan Cranston, and it was one of the most memorable episodes in the series’ history in our opinion. Check out our recap to get a blow-by-blow of what went down.
Breaking Bad season 6, episode 2 with the ominous title “Buried” airs Sunday, August 18 at 9 p.m. eastern/pacific on AMC.
Do you agree with Gilligan that how last night’s storyline played out is reflective of how the characters really would’ve reacted?