We all know that Jesse Pinkman escapes the Neo-Nazi camp by the end of Breaking Bad, but the movie El Camino proved that it wasn't smooth sailing from the get-go. What's interesting is, director Vince Gilligan had a darker ending in mind.
Talking to Vulture, Gilligan reveals that he was supposed to have Jesse have himself willfully arrested by the end of the film. He explains, "I like irony in storytelling. I love ironic twists. Once I had set about coming up with this movie, for the longest time, I had it in my mind that the thing we wanted most to see was for Jesse to escape. And the thing he wanted most to do was escape."
"So I was trying to concoct a plot in which, hero that he is, he saves somebody else — somebody I would have introduced as a new character into the movie," he adds.
"Because he's such an innately heroic character in my mind, he saves someone at the end of the movie and he willfully gets himself caught knowing that it'll save this other person. At the end of the movie, he'd be locked in a jail cell somewhere in Montana or someplace. And he would be at peace with it. It was all this very interior, emo-type, very dramatic stuff," Gilligan ended.
Apparently, Gilligan changed his mind after he pitched it to his girlfriend Holly and Better Call Saul co-creator Peter Gould. Everyone insisted that Jesse should be free in the end, and Gilligan said, "As the saying goes if enough people tell you you're drunk, you need to sit down. So I dispensed with that idea."
Seeing that Jesse was Walt's punching bag for the entire series, a lot of fans feel that he definitely deserved to get his happy ending. While I can understand the "artistic" angle that Gilligan was going for, I think having Jesse in jail would be kind of a bummer, after everything he's been through.
For now, you can catch El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie on Netflix now.
Read Also: Breaking Bad: Aaron Paul Says El Camino Was Originally 3 Hours Long
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