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In a recent interview, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan touched on how his feelings about Walter White as a character have changed over the years.
With Better Call Saul now at an end, and a new show on the way from Gilligan that is reportedly something completely different, the showrunner spoke to The New Yorker about the last decade and a half of his career, and how he views Walter White the more distance he’s gained from Breaking Bad.
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Now Playing: The Best Quotes From Breaking Bad
Gilligan noted that in his opinion, Better Call Saul has more of a happy ending than Breaking Bad, with the titular character Saul being able to find a sense of redemption that Walter didn’t. “The further away I get from Breaking Bad, the less sympathy I have for Walter,” Gilligan told The New Yorker.
“He got thrown a lifeline early on. And, if he had been a better human being, he would’ve swallowed his pride and taken the opportunity to treat his cancer with the money his former friends offered him. He goes out on his own terms, but he leaves a trail of destruction behind him. I focus on that more than I used to.”
The showrunner also spoke about how he now questions why he thought Walter was so great, calling the character “sanctimonious,” and that he was “full of himself,” with “an ego the size of California.”
“He always saw himself as a victim. He was constantly griping about how the world shortchanged him, how his brilliance was never given its due. When you take all of that into consideration, you wind up saying, ‘Why was I rooting for this guy?'”
Gilligan also touched on the widely unfair dislike of Skyler White that took place when the show first aired too. He explained that Skyler’s actress, Anna Gunn, and himself felt “troubled” by certain fan’s dislike of the character, believing that both Skyler and Gunn “did nothing to deserve that.”
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