Breaking Bad has seen a lot of iconic turns and twists, most of them curated by none other than the mastermind behind the series, Vince Gilligan, who served as one of the biggest reasons behind the show’s tremendous success. To say the least, that critically acclaimed crime drama was full of risky moves and unfathomable outcomes, with Gilligan pulling the strings of it all.
That said, at one point, the genius almost took one of the most daring risks with the show, which could have quite easily backfired and garnered a lot of negative attention from fans and viewers worldwide. In fact, the thing he had thought of was such a gamble to the show that Gilligan even admitted that even his writers looked at him “like I had completely lost my mind!”
Vince Gilligan almost took this gamble with Breaking Bad
One of the major reasons behind Breaking Bad‘s smash-hit success, besides its star-studded cast’s outstanding acting, was none other than the show’s element of incredibly low predictability, all thanks to the writer, creator, and producer Vince Gilligan‘s creative thinking. But one time, this creative thinking almost had him take the show downhill.
This is because Gilligan initially intended to kill off RJ Mitte’s Walter White Jr. in one of the most brutal ways possible. While the genius brainbox didn’t determine who the killer would have been had they taken this route, he did admit that it was on the cards. This revelation came out during the cast’s appearance on CONAN on TBS five years after the show concluded.
Candidly confessing to his plans of writing a crime that would have inevitably garnered him negative attention from fans worldwide, Gilligan said:
Early on, I pitched to my writers, I had this idea where Walter Jr.- there’s this horrible, you know, he gets killed by this nasty guy that Walt is somehow in business with. I had this whole thing why it would take too long to even picture.
This idea, ostensibly, was to keep the viewers hooked to the show with the unpredictable element striking yet again, making the show all the more captivating. But, of course, this idea was a bit too much of a risky leap even for luring viewers in with Walt Jr.’s stunning death, and thus, when it was pitched to his writers, they, too, looked at him like he had absolutely lost it.
Even Breaking Bad writers looked at Vince Gilligan “like I had completely lost my mind”
On the one hand, while Vince Gilligan was seriously considering killing off Walter Jr. early on just for the sake of keeping viewers completely on the edge of their seats, on the other hand, pretty much no one on the team took his idea in a positive note. To say the least, even the writers on Breaking Bad couldn’t help but look at the mastermind like he had lost his mind.
When Conan O’Brien remarked on the show how this decision would not have been taken wisely, Gilligan proceeded to admit and share:
And all my writers looked at me like I had completely lost my mind. I was the most horrible person on earth. I know, you know, they’ll say, and enough people tell you you’re drunk, you need to sit down. My writers, essentially, told me I was drunk.
Thankfully enough, though, the writers talked the show creator off the ledge, and this decision inevitably turned out to be the right one. This is because Walter Jr.’s innocent and kind personality as a teenager really did build up some intriguing and compelling drama for the crime saga as he got increasingly suspicious of his father’s strange behavior.
Not to mention, his disowning his dad after finding out about his dark secrets further served as the perfect conclusion to his story arc: While it did end his arc on a tragic note, it wasn’t really something like an undeserved violent demise, as opposed to what could have been had he been murdered early.
Breaking Bad can currently be streamed on Netflix.
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