There’s an interview with Breaking Bad showrunner Vince Gilligan in GQ’s Men of the Year issue, and if you want to read about his take on the finale, or what he thinks of Walt and the people who rooted for him, or the story about the terminally ill young fan who contributed to the finale’s plot, then you should probably check it out. In this space, however, we will be discussing Jesse Pinkman.
What do you think happened to him?
My personal feeling is that he got away. But the most likely thing, as negative as this sounds, is that they’re going to find this kid’s fingerprints all over this lab and they’re going to find him within a day or a week or a month. And he’s still going to be on the hook for the murder of two federal agents. But yeah, even though that’s the most likely outcome, the way I see it is that he got away and got to Alaska, changed his name, and had a new life. You want that for the kid. He deserves it.
Now, Gilligan has mentioned all of this before, but he’s even more of a downer here, bringing up the fingerprints and the murders Jesse will almost definitely be charged with once he gets caught. And he still insists that, in the good scenario, Jesse, who has spent his entire life in a warm climate, moves to a frozen abyss and stays there until he dies.
This brings me to my point: Jesus Christ, Vince. Next time someone asks you what happened to Jesse after the show ended, can you please just leave the commitment to realism behind for a minute and say something like, “Oh, he became a rock star and went on tour with Bon Jovi” or “He moved to the beach, changed his name to Shoop, got a dog, became a teacher, and spent a whole wacky summer trying to reach a class full of troubled students” or “He owns a successful trampoline company now”? Give me this one. I’m begging you.
