[Mike F]

Time Magazine interviewed Vince Gilligan on last season, and the future. Many of the questions raised here are addressed.

On the finale:

Spoiler!

Q: You know, the whole ending whodunit about Brock's poisoning faked me out on a number of levels. And I realized in retrospect one thing that kind of cleverly helped confuse me was that I ruled out the possibility that Walt had done it because it was Jesse's theory. I think I ruled out that Jesse could have gotten it right, which he largely did.

A: That's exactly what we hoped for, I'm so glad to hear it. Jesse, God bless him, he's not, even a broken clock is right twice a day, you know? I think he came in with a theory, I think the motive that he ascribed to Walt doing it was wrong. But other than that, I think in the second to last episode, everything he said to Walt is correct, even as to, perhaps even as to how Walt was able to get the cigarette off him, you know, Saul's bodyguard, Huell. If you look very closely actually, if you look very closely, Huell, after he passed him down, is seen putting something into his left pocket. It's very subtle, it's right at the bottom right corner of the frame, but it is there.

On the future:

Spoiler!

Q: Now going forward: Gus is dead, Walt, as he says, has “won.” They've just burned the superlab. As far as we can tell it seems like Walt could walk away if he wants to. What drives the story forward from this point?

A: Well, I should preface this by saying I don't have a lot of what comes next figured out. I have shockingly little in fact, but two things that spring to mind is the fact that Hank Schrader is still out there looking in to Gus Fring and perhaps that could lead him into looking at Walter White. Or not; who knows. But I mean that's a big shoe left to drop potentially. But an even better answer than that I suppose is that Walter White's problem is Walter White ultimately. He's been his own worst enemy from probably the first episode of the series onward and there has been other times in the past where he could have stopped and walked away, minimized the damage he had caused to his family and to Jesse and Hank and taken whatever benefit he had financially gotten from this endeavor and just gone back to being law abiding. But at every turn going back to season one he's refused to do that. I think his sense of self and self-worth is so wrapped up in this illegal career he's got going that it would be hard for him to walk away from it.