Breaking Bad’s final eight episodes kick started on Sunday, and were immediately celebrated by audiences and critics alike.
Fans of the show had been waiting over a year for Bryan Cranston’s Walter White and Aaron Paul’s Jesse Pinkman to return to the small screen, and the latter has admitted that the final instalments are both “raw” and “violent.”
Paul told Entertainment Weekly , “The final 8 is just such a violent sprint to the finish line. Each season we get progressively darker and darker, and this final season is hands down the darkest one yet. It’s just so raw and it doesn’t allow the audience to breathe because we don’t have time to do that.”
Meanwhile, Cranston, who also directed the opening episode of the second half of season five, echoed his cast mates sentiments, calling it “brutal” while noting that it “does not let up. It’s not going to give you a break.”
Breaking Bad’s lauded creator, Vince Gilligan, admitted that he was surprised at how much story he needed to stuff into the final episodes.
The writer remarked, “As much as I love this job, as wonderful as it has been, as sad as it is at the thought of this family dispersing to the four winds, I really feel, storywise, the time is right for this to end,” he says. “I don’t want to overstay our welcome. One thing I’m pleased about and grateful for is that I haven’t second-guessed the concept of ending the show since we decided to.”
Previously, Gilligan also revealed that there would be plenty of violence in the finally, noting, “As the movie title goes, there will be blood,” answers Gilligan. “To my mind, that’s not the most interesting thing. It’s the emotional moments and the character moments.”
He then added, “We’ve got some stuff that I think is going to be truly satisfying and truly shocking and jarring. It does not always center on moments of violence.”