We Finally Understand The Ending Of Breaking Bad

In many ways, Breaking Bad is about the American dream, the idea that if you do good work, then the people in charge will see your value and reward you for your skills. Of course, most people would prefer their paychecks come from legitimate bosses and not various criminal drug lords in the crystal meth trade. Not so for Walt. After all, the longer he stays in the game, the higher he rises. But the higher he rises, it gets harder and harder for him to argue that he's just leaving a nest egg for his family.

As he rises from a simple meth cook to the big boss, Walt is given plenty of options to retire. By the time he's working for Gus Fring, he's about as close to a mainstream chemistry position as he's ever likely to get, with the added bonus of an absurd amount of money. It all blows up, of course, partly due to Walt's loyalty to Jesse Pinkman, and partly due to Walt's continuing belief that he can do better than Gus. When Gus is dead, Walt makes even more money, and he's even given the option to leave the business forever by selling some of his chemical components to a rival gang. Instead, he tells Jesse the truth, that the meth business is all he has left, and that he wants to build an empire to make up for his earlier loss of Gray Matter.