20 Questions for Breaking Bad Season 5

By Rick Morris

With the start of Breaking Bad Season 5 (previewed by us here), many questions are lingering as the show starts what will be its third and final arc.  Seasons 5 and 6, following the pre-Gus and Gus eras of the program, will take the series to its final conclusion, likely Walt’s day of reckoning with both Jesse and Hank.

As such, here are 20 questions to be answered by the show’s creative team in the final 16 episodes of the series.  The answers to these questions, when provided, will reveal the final direction that Vince Gilligan is steering this franchise.  These questions are separated into different categories.

1 LOOSE ENDS

1A With Gus’s death, will the DEA know immediately that Hank and his family are out of danger, or will the protection linger?

1B Will anything from Gale’s notebook tie into the new discoveries the Feds will be making about Gus’s network and the superlab?

1C With Hank’s suspicions about Gus and a superlab now proven correct, what will the DEA forensics people discover about the chain of people involved in Gus’s operation as they comb the chicken store and whatever remains of the superlab site.

1D Presumably, Mike will be wiping Gus’s laptop and records – are there any other henchmen still wandering around?

1E With Mike’s illicit income having dried up, what will his relationship with the meth cookers be given that he respects Jesse and dislikes Walt (and will blame him, justifiably, for his employer’s death)?

1F Does Gus have any additional cartel or Chilean connections that will come back into play?

1G Will Ted’s death or IRS problems end up coming back into play?

2 CHEKHOV’S GUN

2A Since Walt and Jesse don’t socialize, will Walt end up pitching the incriminating poison plant that’s in his backyard?

2B Could Mike’s end up causing Jesse to be suspicious of Walt’s complicity in Jane’s death?

2C Having been referenced twice already, will Saul’s resource who is able to “erase people from the grid” come back into play?

3 HANK & WALT

3A To what extent will Hank recover enough to come back to work and start chasing Heisenberg full-time?

3B What will be the mechanism to make Hank realize that Walt is Heisenberg?

4 STORYLINES AMONG DIFFERENT CHARACTERS

4A Where will Walt/Heisenberg’s newfound willingness to risk innocent people (his elderly next-door neighbor, Brock) take him?

4B How much more alienated from Walt will Skyler be know that she knows beyond a doubt that “Walt is the one who knocks?”

4C With a chance to have a normal family life with Andrea and Brock, what will it take to get Jesse cooking again?

4D Will Brock’s ingestion of poison lead Jesse to question his role in poisoning so many other people – including children?

4E If Jesse moves into a normal family life with Andrea and Brock, might his own family come back into the picture?

4F Will Walt Jr. or any of his friends end up coming into contact with the blue meth?

A RETURN TO COOKING AND THE LOGISTICS

5A With the cancer possibly returning at some point and the nest egg wiped out by Skyler rescuing Ted from the IRS, will Walt feel that he’s received a second chance to run a meth operation, this time on a big scale?

5B Is it as obvious as it seems that the White family car wash will be the perfect front – from the chemicals passing through there to the space available – to set up at least a mini-superlab?