Turns out Vince was in a bit of a hole while writing the last season.
It happens – writers come up with an epic scene or a great way to finish an episode or season and they have to figure out how to get to that moment. For Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan it involved one of the final season’s most memorable scenes: Walter White purchasing that massive machine gun. Not only did they have the idea, but they also filmed it and teased it out in an earlier episode in the season, meaning they HAD to use it at some point.
“That was the thing I remember freaking us out the most because we did that, I committed to that,” Gilligan said to The AV Club. “One of the dumbest things I’ve ever done in my career was committing to the idea of Walter White buying a machine gun when we did not know what he was going to do with it. We had no clue. There were literally months on end when I was completely freaked out. We’d be in the writers room’ for a full day, and I’d be slowly banging my head against the wall — not enough to hurt myself but just enough to jar the ideas loose. And everybody was kind of worried about me.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXNgL8M3bK0
Of course, the machine gun was used to blow away “Uncle Jack” and his neo-Nazi mates in a tense ending to the show’s final episode Felina. It was probably one of the most satisfying moments in the entire series…
“Once we figured out this machine gun, that was when the dam broke and things started slowly to click together,” Gilligan added. “It was after that point that we figured he’s got to win. He’s lost everything because of his hubris and his pride and his ego. He’s lost his family, he’s lost his soul. But he’s got to win on some level. He’s at least got to deliver that money to his family. How the hell does he do that once the world knows who he really is? When we figured out that Gretchen and Elliott could be the mechanism by which Walt wins and gets that money to his family, that was a good day.”
Watch the machine gun get put to good use below:
