Walter White also assumes his alter ego, Heisenberg, by choice in Breaking Bad, but eventually he needs Ed’s assistance to assume another identity and slip away to New Hampshire. Bob Odenkirk’s Jimmy McGill becomes Saul Goodman by choice, but he becomes a Cinnabon employee from Nebraska because he has to. A common denominator between all the Breaking Bad properties - the original series, Better Call Saul, and El Camino - is that each one focuses on a man who changes his identity, usually, at some point, with help from Ed. He relies on nobody more for that purpose than Ed, the fixer played by the late Robert Forster. He has to rely on other men, or the things that belong to other men, to achieve his objective. But it doesn’t seem quite right to say he’s acting independently. When he’s mocked for carrying such a low-caliber weapon, Jesse makes the gun sound like an artifact he inherited. 22-caliber pistol from another significant male in his life: his own father. In his final showdown with Neil and Casey, Jesse snatches the. He snags Todd’s money from where it’s stashed in Todd’s refrigerator, and later claims the rest from Neil and Casey, the two associates of Todd’s who also come searching for it. He swaps Skinny Pete’s Thunderbird for his El Camino, something Skinny Pete himself suggests. Jesse seemingly chooses Alaska as his destination because he is inspired by Mike, though it’s unclear whether he feels a responsibility to go there because Mike never got to go himself, or because he just likes the idea and steals it.Įvery tool Jesse uses to escape Albuquerque is something he takes from other men. Of course, Mike never gets the chance to start over anywhere: As we know from Breaking Bad, he gets killed by Walt. If he could start over as a young man, Mike tells Jesse, he’d go to Alaska. Jesse’s desire to make Alaska his new home springs from a conversation he had with Mike Ehrmentraut (Jonathan Banks), shown to us in an earlier flashback. But he’s gotten where he is because other men steered him down this snow-covered path. He does whatever he has to do to make sure he gets the hell out of Albuquerque, then he chooses to go to Alaska. One could certainly argue that in El Camino he does just that. Jesse, heading off on his own toward Alaska completely unencumbered by his old identity and connections, looks on the surface like someone who is making decisions for himself. “It’s better to make those decisions for yourself.” “I’ve gone where the universe takes me my whole life,” she says. In a flashback near the very end of the movie, El Camino takes us back in time to a conversation that Jesse had with his now-late girlfriend, Jane (Krysten Ritter), who tells him that going wherever the universe takes you is a terrible idea. The movie itself gives us reasons to doubt that. But I’m not sure if it’s quite that simple. It’s easy to watch the conclusion of El Camino and presume that Jesse is finally free as he enters that American state known as the last frontier, and that all his problems are solved. That certainly seems like a happy ending for the former crystal-meth maker, right-hand man to Walter White (Bryan Cranston), and perhaps most beloved character in the Breaking Bad universe. Jesse’s expression, for the first time in the entire movie, is calm. There are no tears, just a very slight, almost imperceptible smile. But this time he’s heading to Alaska and a new life that he’ll live with a new last name. The last time we see Jesse Pinkman in El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, the sequel film that reveals what happened to Jesse ( Aaron Paul) in the days that followed the events of the Breaking Bad finale, he is, once again, driving a car. The last time we saw Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad, he was behind the steering wheel of an El Camino, screaming through happy tears as he sped off the Aryan Brotherhood compound where he had been held hostage. Spoilers below for El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie and its ending. Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) on his journey in El Camino.
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