Admittedly, I am late to the game. But I caught some sickness in early January and needed rest, so I borrowed a priest friend’s Netflix account and began to watch what many consider the best television show of all time: Breaking Bad. I don’t watch a lot of television, but I agree that this dark drama about Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a high school chemistry teacher turned meth-making drug lord and his business partner, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), is the greatest television show I’ve ever seen. Hands down.
If you haven’t seen it, know that like the fiction of Flannery O’Connor, Breaking Bad is not for everyone. The show is dark, and violent, and there’s a lot of evil and a lot of death. The good news is that Breaking Bad takes sin seriously and presents it for what it is. The seven deadly sins—anger, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, pride, and sloth—are on full, technicolor display. A moral theologian friend of mine described Breaking Bad as a modern morality play; it does what the morality plays of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries did, teaching Christian virtue and vice through dramatic performance to twenty-first-century viewers. Far from being an abstraction, sin incarnates itself in particular characters doing particular human actions and failing to do others. The moral lessons embodied in these varied characters have a way of pricking the conscience of the viewer, an indisputable sign of good art.
The purpose of this essay is to consider whether the character of Walter White is saved or damned at the end of the show. If you haven’t seen Breaking Bad, spoiler alert: Walter dies in the end, saving his friend and former business partner, Jesse, from a gang of white supremacist drug dealers who have literally enslaved Jesse in chains and force him to cook meth. But this action of Walter’s self-donation only happens in the sixty-second and final episode of the series—after Walter has lied repeatedly to his wife and children, murdered his enemies, poisoned a child, created a bomb that detonated in a nursing home, and betrayed his closest friend in the previous sixty-one episodes. Vince Gilligan, the Catholic creator and executive producer of Breaking Bad—said he wanted to create a character in Walter White who changed from “Mr. Chips into Scarface” throughout the five-season series. He succeeded. But the question remains, is salvation possible for Walter White?
It does what the morality plays of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries did, teaching Christian virtue and vice through dramatic performance to twenty-first-century viewers.
Granted, what we’re doing here is theological speculation. Walter White is a fictional character, not a real person, and even if he were a real person, the most that we could do—unless a person has lived an exemplary, documented life of holiness—is to speculate about someone’s salvation. (Canonized saints have been saved and of this we are certain.) Yet theological speculation can be a valuable exercise for a Christian because it helps one to think deeply about faith and human action and the justice and mercy of God.
Two of Bishop Barron’s commentaries on other fictional characters have informed what I think happened to Walter White. First, recall the Grandmother in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” She is stubborn, prideful, judgmental, and selfish. It’s only in the final minute of her life when she has a moment of clarity and recognizes the humanity of the Misfit and reaches out to him in tenderness. Although the Misfit puts three rounds into her chest, when the Grandmother dies, she’s laying in the ditch with her legs crossed, looking up to the sky with a smile on her face. The Grandmother is now like a child (Matthew 18:3), her legs presenting the sign of her salvation, and she’s enjoying the beatific vision with a grin. The Grandmother is saved. (Compare this story to “A Stroke of Good Fortune,” where, according to O’Connor, the protagonist is damned.)
Or consider another Walt, the memorable and meme-able character of Walter Kowalski played by Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino (2008). Walter Kowalski is certainly a more virtuous character than Walter White, but both Walters die in a sacrificial act with the hope of saving others. Granted, Walter Kowalski’s self-donation is done in nonviolence, which makes the possibility of his salvation almost certain, especially if you understand the conversation with his young friend Thao through the screened basement door in the scene prior to be a sort of confession. But the real sign of salvation, according to Bishop Barron, is the posture of Mr. Kowalski as he dies—his legs are together, his arms are stretched out as if being crucified, and, like the Grandmother from “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” there is a slight smile on his face. Mr. Kowalski is saved.
So how about Walter White? Can we dare hope for his salvation (1 Timothy 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9)? I think we can. Before Walter drives off to save Jesse, he stops to see his wife, Skyler, to resolve unfinished business. The entire series, he has lied to her about where he’s been, what he’s been doing, and whom he’s been doing it with. But in his final interaction with his wife, he finally tells her the truth. It is similar to Walter Kowalski’s “confession” to Thao in Gran Torino before he takes off into the night to give his life away in sacrificial love. After Walter confesses to Skyler, he says goodbye to his baby girl, Holly, in her crib and then leaves to rescue Jesse from the gang that has imprisoned him.
Walter’s act of rescuing Jesse by entering the heart of the drug gang’s lair with a brilliant and perfectly executed plan is the stuff of Greek drama. But it’s Christian drama too. For once Jesse is freed and driving away from the compound, a wounded Walter takes a walk through the lab next door, where Jesse had been cooking meth as a slave for the gang. Although we the viewer don’t know what Walter is thinking at this moment, as he reaches out and caresses the stainless steel vat, I would like to hope that his final thoughts were not about taking pride in his nefarious actions as a meth cook over the past year but as a repentant man happy that his final acts before death were reconciling with his wife and laying down his life for his friend, Jesse.
The final shot of Breaking Bad gives me a reason to hope that Walter’s salvation is possible—even if it means he spends almost an eternity in purgatory—for his dying posture is much like that of Walter Kowalski’s from Gran Torino, except Walter White’s arms are not spread out straight, like the crucified Christ, but falling down a bit, indicating his need for the fire of Christ’s purifying love to burn away all his selfishness, which may take almost all of eternity, because he was a bad man and deserves hell. But as we pray in the Roman Canon immediately after invoking the apostles and martyrs of the early Church, “Admit us, we beseech you, into their company, not weighing our merits, but granting us your pardon, through Christ our Lord.” That line dares me to hope for the salvation of Walter White. And what’s wrong with hoping that someone spends eternity with God, and his angels, and his saints?