On Saturday, Netflix released a teaser trailer for its Breaking Bad movie, El Camino, and I’m ready for it to ruin my life.
The trailer looks like it picks up where the original series left off, as Skinny Pete, one half of everyone’s favorite tweaker duo, is questioned by the authorities about Jesse Pinkman’s whereabouts. Last we saw Jesse, he was speeding out of a neo-Nazi compound in a stolen El Camino, screaming in joy as tears fell down his face.
“I don’t know what to tell you I ain’t said, like, 500 times already,” Skinny Pete says in the teaser. “I have no idea where he is. Don’t know where he’s headed, either. … But yo, even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. … No way I’m helping you people help put Jesse Pinkman back inside a cage.”
Not much is known about the movie’s plot. A statement Netflix gave The New York Times’ David Itzkoff said, “In the wake of his dramatic escape from captivity, Jesse must come to terms with his past in order to forge some kind of future.” And last fall, The Hollywood Reporter said the film “tracks the escape of a kidnapped man and his quest for freedom.”
In November, it was reported that series creator Vince Gilligan was working on a Breaking Bad film with AMC—which originally aired the show from 2008 to 2013—and Sony Pictures. Aaron Paul, who plays Pinkman, told Itzkoff that Gilligan reached out to him two years ago with an idea for what happened to Jesse after the show’s closing credits. “I couldn’t speak for a good 30, 60 seconds,” Paul said about reading the script. “I was just lost in my thoughts. As the guy who played the guy, I was so happy that Vince wanted to take me on this journey.”
The movie, which will be released on Netflix on October 11, isn’t Gilligan’s first effort in the extended Breaking Bad universe. Gilligan has shepherded Better Call Saul, which follows the origin story of Bob Odenkirk’s Saul Goodman, since its inception. In that series, we learn that following the events of Breaking Bad, Goodman is now living in Omaha with a new alias, working as a Cinnabon manager. Any sightings of him in El Camino might fill in the gaps regarding how he got there. And while there’s always risk in adding plot to an already beloved (and once-completed) narrative, nothing suggests El Camino won’t be a worthy entrant to the canon. Personally, I’m thrilled about returning to Breaking Bad’s world.
I was a freshman in college in 2013, when the final season of Breaking Bad aired. Young and naive, I entered my first semester a prospective economics major. To graduate with that degree at my school, students had to complete multivariable calculus. After doing less than stellar on my first exam, I told myself I’d buckle down and do better on the next one. Seven days before that test, and six before the Breaking Bad series finale, my roommate persuaded me to start the show.
I watched 61 episodes in six days, leaving my dorm room only for hygiene and sustenance. I watched the finale at its airing, and left it, like most others, in a celebratory mood. The next morning, I walked into class having completely forgotten about the midterm, took it, handed it in to my instructor, and said, “Professor, I think I’m dropping your course.” That was the end of my time as an econ student and I started writing the next week. Which is to say, I guess this serves as a six-week notice to my employer. I think my next pivot will be to criminal law.