A significant portion of critics seemed to think it was imperative for Walter White to be served his just deserts. To this point, he had killed bad dudes, ordered the murder of good dudes doing bad things, opted not to intervene in the gruesome albeit self-inflicted death of his partner’s drug-addicted girlfriend, and poisoned an innocent child albeit not to the point of actually killing him. These qualifiers don’t justify any decisions he made, perhaps the most egregious of these being his initial decision to cook methamphetamine and lie to his family about it, which ultimately ended up in the killing of his brother-in-law and possibly the best friend he had in the world. They are, however, important.
They’re important because while it was clear that Walter had let his inner monster out, there was still humanity in him. To me, that doesn’t simplify the character, but it indeed complicates him. Just like it was fascinating to see a presumably decent man drag himself into the depths of human moral depravity, it was equally and perhaps more fascinating to see a man we had ultimately defined as evil make an attempt to redeem himself, and most fascinating of all was to see how this ended up being a virtually impossible pursuit. I’m not sure what specific sort of justice many were hoping to see dished out to Heisenberg, but what ended up happening was Walt got pretty much everything he wanted, and still died alone, with his son hating him and no real guarantee that his family will be provided for. The fact that he thinks he won doesn’t preclude the notion that his punishment was already received. Just watch “Ozymandias” again if you disagree.
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