Last night’s episode of Breaking Bad one of the best in memory. It started strong and ended stronger. Now one of the stars is discussing one of the big surprises.

Major spoilers ahead!

Jonathan Banks, who plays Mike, spoke to Zap2it about the death of his character and how long he’s known it was coming. “I knew about nine months ago. I knew before we even started shooting this season. We were at Aaron [Paul]’s engagement party, and Sony still hadn’t made my deal. So I said to [creator Vince Gilligan] — he was talking to somebody about the caterer, and I said, ‘Can you quit talking about the hors d’oeuvres and let’s take care of my life here?'”

To us, it seems that Banks goes on to imply that Mike’s character would’ve played things out differently if it weren’t for series creator Vince Gilligan making the final call. “The writers control the pen. If Jonathan controlled the pen, Lydia [Laura Fraser] would have been shot in the head. It goes back to Season 3 and the ‘half measures’ speech. Anybody who’s been watching the show is going to look at that and go, ‘Uh, that’s a half measure’ — which indeed it was. Listen — the reality is these writers have given me one of the greatest characters ever. But you’re going to kill him, he’s gotta make some mistakes.”

Do you think Mike’s death made sense in the scope of the story? Did he have any other choice?

Watch a preview of Breaking Bad’s season finale.