The Breaking Bad finale airs this Sunday, and the Internet has been speculating furiously about how the series will close. Will Walter White die? How will he die? What’s the M60 for? Who will ingest the ricin? My prediction is a bleak one: Jesse Pinkman takes revenge away from Walter White by killing Uncle Jack and the Aryans (and himself in the process), while a now purposeless Walter White is gunned down before he can even use the Ricin, leaving Todd and Lydia to continue the meth empire, making Heisenberg but an insignificant footnote in the meth trade that continues to chug along, same as it ever was.
However, market research firm Survata has actually polled viewers of Breaking Bad to ask how they want Breaking Bad to end, and how they think the series will end. The results are surprising, at least to me.
The first question Survata asked was how viewers wanted Breaking Bad to end. Here are the results:
For a guy as despicable as Walter White has become, I am surprised that more people want him to survive and escape police than any other option. WTF? If anyone deserves to die, it’s the guy responsible for all the death and mayhem over the last five years, including the fate of Mike, Jesse, Gus and, indirectly, that of Andrea and Jane. I agree, at least, that there’s no way Walter White is arrested: He showed in the series pilot that he’d rather kill himself than be apprehended by police.
As for viewers predictions, it is a slightly different story, in that as many people think he will die of cancer as think he will survive, while the third most popular prediction is that Jesse kills him.
I’m sorry, but there is no f***ing way that Walter White survives, and for him to die of cancer would be anti-climactic, to say the least. I don’t see Skyler killing him, either, but I do side with the many who hope that Marie kills him (I don’t see how, but if they could make that believable, it’s the best possible outcome).
You can check out the entire survey, including the gender breakdown, over at Survata, and much appreciation to Troy, the write with the firm who pointed me to the results.
