Breaking Bad: How ‘Granite State’ Revealed Who the Flash-Forward Ricin is Intended For

I’ve only personally known one person who had to drink Ensure to maintain a healthy weight. It’s not often thought of as a celebratory party drink.

Vince Gilligan and “Granite State” director Peter Gould were undoubtedly aware of that general perception when they plotted out last night’s penultimate episode of Breaking Bad. The Ensure, the cabin-based exile, the willingness to pay $10,000 for one more hour of forced company all added up to Walter White at his lowest point of the entire series- and that was before the bottom fell out.

For everything that has transpired so far, Walt still had hope, still had a purpose. Everything he had done was for his family, and he’d still find a way to get that money to them. Surely they’d accept it, perhaps somewhat begrudgingly, but it would make their lives better, and make everything that has happened over the last two years of Walt’s life worth it. Surely there would be some validation for every horrifically misguided choice Walter White had made. And then he called Walter Jr. at school.

As half the world tweeted about Assistant Principal Carmen Molina, a scene unfolded that ultimately sealed Walt’s fate. Through all of the series’ defining moments, for everything that has happened to Walt and that he’s made happen to others, and despite all of the ultra-dangerous enemies Walter has made along the way, it was Walt Jr. that fired the kill shot: “Why are you still alive? Why don’t you just die already?”.

Those two questions rendered Walt’s entire formula invalid. Everything he’d done was suddenly for nothing. Hiding became pointless. He’d never be able to spend the money or get it to its intended end user. He made the call to give himself up, but in a stroke of typical Heisenberg fortuity, moments later the universe presented him with one final reason for being. One last challenge for ‘the one who knocks’.

The insanely serendipitous timing of Walt finally making his pilgrimage to town allowed him to catch the Charlie Rose stop on Grey Matter’s “Create Distance from the Meth Lord tour” (and made for a super-bad ass use of the show’s main theme to close out the ep). This was juxtaposed with Jesse Pinkman’s signature can’t-catch-a-break-doomed-to-tragedy constitution, where he gets oh so close to escaping from his neo-Nazi captors only to end up falling short and subsequently losing the second-to-last thing in the world that meant anything to him. It was a perfect, one episode summation of not only the choices each of them have made to this point, but the hands each of them seem to continually be dealt. For every nail hammered into Pinkman’s coffin, Walt is offered another out. Another opportunity to carry out one more misguided mission.

The ricin we see Walt return home to retrieve in season 5’s “Blood Money” flash-forward scene has been the subject of speculation since it aired on August 11. As predictions abound, the final chapters have helped eliminate or handicap the possibilities. While a final conflict with Todd’s family seems imminent, the likely nature of that interaction lends itself to machine guns more than subtlety. The end destination of that ricin was determined at that lonely New Hampshire dive bar. Walter Jr’s damnation of his father, and more importantly Walt’s acceptance of it make the ultimate intended recipient of the ricin clear: it’s for Walt himself.

Walt’s reason to live, his rationale for all of this, for Heisenberg himself, was all contingent on his family’s acceptance of the rewards his hard work had wrought. The money, and subsequently what feels like Walt’s life’s work, no longer had purpose. It’s over. Dosing himself with the ricin as opposed to letting cancer claim his life would reflect his typical M.O., ending things on his terms, when he says so.

As Breaking Bad takes its victory lap, it has taken a decidedly anti-LOST approach to tying up loose ends. Gilligan and co. are circling back to put bows on every angle we could wish for and then some. I’m sure I was not alone in my “OHH yeah, them…” sentiment upon seeing the Schwartzes on that bar television set, and with 75 minutes left in the series I’m sure that won’t be the last time I feel it.

The Breaking Bad series finale airs Sunday September 29 at 9PM on AMC.