Fans of Breaking Bad were treated to an amazing season finale this evening, and now the show creator as well as one of the big characters are speaking out about what happened!

Vince Gilligan, the creator, also speaks about the future of the show. Spoiler warning!

From Gilligan and the Times Blog:

As you mapped out Season 4, was this always the ending you were building toward: a conclusive showdown between Walt and Gus?

A. Yes, it was, and it was something my writers and I worked on pretty much the whole season, knowing that at the end of the year, one of them would have to go. The town wasn’t big enough for the both of them, as it were. In the best sense of the movie “Highlander,” there could be only one.

Q. And yet the show this season started to flesh out Gus’s back story, though it didn’t do so completely. Are there threads you might come back to later, or was that a deliberate choice to leave some things about him ambiguous?

A. Right on both counts. We may come back to it in the future. As I told Giancarlo Esposito, and I told him a few months ahead of time what we were planning for the end of the season, I was very apologetic that we were going to lose his character. But I also hastened to point out that even though characters may die on “Breaking Bad,” they don’t necessarily rest in peace. In other words, we flash back in time quite often on this show, and we revisit old characters who have already met their demise. And because of that, who knows? We may well see Gustavo Fring again in the future.

But as to the second point, we talked a long time, my writers and I, about what exactly was Gus’s back story? How bad a dude did he have to have been, back in Chile, for the cartel to spare him, even though they were very insulted by his actions? And we went back and forth, we talked about Pinochet and his government, what did he do back there, precisely? And we borrowed a bit from “Pulp Fiction,” I suppose. Because in “Pulp Fiction,” Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta are carrying around a briefcase, for the entire movie, that the contents of which are only hinted at. At one point, you see a glow emanating from inside the briefcase, but you never do find out for sure what it’s in it. And I always liked that, as a viewer. To me, the audience’s imagination as to who Gus was in his past life is potentially more interesting than any concrete answer we could give them.

Q. Given that Walt and Jesse know even less about Gus, and don’t know why he was so important that the cartel could not kill him, could their assassination of him come back to haunt them?

A. That’s a good question. We will be getting into that when the writers’ room reopens in November. But I can think of one gentleman who may have a problem with it, who’s a bit closer to home, who is Mike, played by Jonathan Banks. [laughs heartily] Mike may have a problem with what transpired, and I wouldn’t want Mike mad at me, I can tell you that.

Over on TV Guide, Giancarlo Esposito talked about his character’s death:

At what point did you know for sure that Gus wouldn’t make it out of the season alive?
Giancarlo Esposito: I knew in Episode 3 that Gus would meet his end. [Creator Vince Gilligan] and I sat down and talked, and he said, “Let me close the door.” And I said, “No, please don’t close the door,” and I started laughing. He said, “OK, I’m going to kill Gus,” and I said, “Oh, I had a feeling that was coming.” He explained to me that it’s best for the show. We didn’t realize Gus would ever be around as long as he would be. It was a very interesting conversation to hear that you’re going to have your ultimate, imminent demise. But it certainly felt right.

But you had a great season of material before the end.
Esposito: We talked about it, and he said, “It’ll be fantastic no matter what.” At that point in time, he explained to me we will have already gone into Gus’ background with the cartel [and get] some great stuff that maybe aligns [Gus] with the Pinochet government in Chile. I said, “OK great, as long as it’s in a very fantastic and explosive — pardon the pun — way.”

Obviously, Gus had to go for Walt’s story to continue in a believable way.
Esposito: Yes, it’s got to happen. The story is about Walter White. And it was at the right point for Gus because people have been rooting for Gus after [Episodes 8 and 10] when he was faced with his vulnerability with the cartel and he goes back and gets his revenge. People were really sort of pulling for Gus. But he is the mastermind here, and it builds up this tension in a fantastic way.