Walter White started out as a man who lived his life the way he was told to, never doing anything extraordinary or special in his eyes.
One of the greatest tools of manipulation that White uses throughout Breaking Bad is his unassuming nature.
White is able to run an entire drug and money laundering operation without his Drug Enforcement Administration officer brother-in-law catching on until it is too late.
Not even his partner, Jesse Pinkman, ever saw this former high school chemistry teacher stooping as low as he does by the end of the hit drama series.
Why Did Walt Poison Brock?
Walter White poisoned Brock because he wanted Jesse Pinkman to believe that it was Gus Fring who poisoned the child, giving Pinkman the motivation to take out Fring and once again handle White’s dirty work.
Jesse Pinkman first got a call from his girlfriend, Andrea, about Brock having to be taken to the hospital after he suddenly collapsed.
After Pinkman visits Brock in the pediatric ICU with Andrea, he decides to go outside for a smoke.
Earlier that day, he was given a ricin-filled cigarette to use to poison Gus Fring.
When he went to grab a cigarette for himself, he realized that the poisoned cigarette was missing and immediately ran in to tell his girlfriend that Brock may have been poisoned.
At first, Jesse Pinkman believes that Brock may have stolen one of his cigarettes and taken the poisoned cigarette by mistake.
Pinkman then assumes that Walter White was the one who poisoned the child and decides to go to the White residence to shoot White.
White completely denies the accusations, claiming that he would gain nothing from killing a child.
After seeing that this logic isn’t calming Pinkman down, White begins to nervously laugh and pretends to realize that Fring must have set Pinkman up to kill the child.
This reasoning proves to be enough to calm Jesse Pinkman down and he decides to turn his attention toward taking down Gus Fring.
While waiting at the hospital, one of Fring’s men finds Pinkman and orders him back to the superlab.
Understanding how the situation could lead Pinkman to believe that Fring had poisoned Brock, Fring agreed to allow Pinkman to stay at the hospital until the boy recovered.
Although Pinkman feared the child had been poisoned by the ricin cigarette, it was actually a lily of the valley.
Are Lilies Of The Valley Actually Poisonous?
Yes, Lily of the Valley is incredibly poisonous and consists of over 30 cardiac glycosides, the majority of which keep the heart from being able to pump blood properly.
Although the majority of those who fall victim to the effects of these poisons are domestic animals and children, these plants contain more than enough poison to seriously injure a large man.
Not only is the Lily of the Valley poisonous to eat, but they are also poisonous to the touch as well.
These poisons can cause stomach aches, slow and irregular pulse, blurred vision, seizures, vomiting, diarrhea, heart arrhythmia, and even death.
Lily of the Valley poisoning is considered a severe toxicity case and should be treated with immediate emergency care.
On the poison scale, eating Lily of the Valley is a “1” and touching Lily of the Valley is a “3.”
In order for a poisoning case to be considered a 1, there must be a high risk of death.
Only two leaves of the plant can be a fatal dose, which is why they are not recommended for homes with pets or children.
After Brock’s doctors discover that he was poisoned by a Lily of the Valley, detectives called to the case begin to question Jesse Pinkman on why he thought the child had been poisoned by a rare poison like ricin instead of considering a Lily of the Valley.
Pinkman chose to wait to answer their questions until Saul Goodman got to the hospital, which allowed him to walk free once his name was cleared.
At the end of the episode Face Off, Walter White is shown sitting peacefully next to his pool with a potted Lily of the Valley plant at his side.
Most people point to this moment in Breaking Bad as the moment when White became truly evil.
Why Did Walt Take Holly?
Walter White took his daughter Holly away because he wanted to remind his wife Skylar just how powerful he was and he wanted to be around the last family member who had any respect for him.
White wouldn’t return Holly to Skylar or the rest of his family until he felt that she had betrayed him as well.
What often kept White alive throughout Breaking Bad was the way he could work in broad daylight and remain under the radar.
Yet, when an amber alert went off for a baby who was kidnapped by a bald man with a goatee, White knew that was the end of his safety.
The final nail in the coffin that made White believe that his daughter had no respect for him was when they hid in the bathroom and the baby chose to call out for her mother.
Because he barely knew the infant and due to the negative attention she brought to him, Walter White decides to drop her off at the local fire department.
By this point in Breaking Bad, the majority of White’s family members now see him as a monster and want nothing to do with him or even his money.
His brother-in-law is hunting him down, his wife turned him in to the police, and the son named after him chose to change his name to distance himself from his father.
Even his longtime partner, Jesse Pinkman, had abandoned him and teamed up with Hank Schrader, leaving him with nobody.
Rather than his family missing him because he died of cancer, Walter White’s criminal lifestyle led them to want him dead.
White thought that selling meth would help him keep his family in their home after he died, but he became the reason that his poor family lost everything they knew.
Did Walt Know The Police Were Listening To His Phone Call?
Yes, Walter White knew that the police were listening to his final phone call to the house after kidnapping his daughter Holly.
White most likely doubled down on his psychotic tendencies to clear Skylar’s name as much as he could.
Throughout the phone call, White paints Skylar as a poor woman married to a man who went mad after finding out he had cancer.
White called the house phone because he knew that the phone was loud enough to be heard throughout the entire house, which he already knew was filled with Drug Enforcement Administration agents.
The goal of White’s house call was to take responsibility for as many of the bad activities as he could and make it seem like he had forced his wife into being compliant by threatening her, their lifestyle, and even their children.
White even doubles down by complaining on the phone that Skylar was so disrespectful of the money that he alone worked to get, and she needed to tell his son to begin respecting him “or else.”
This phone call transforms Skylar White from part of the problem to the victim of the situation, whether he felt that what he was saying was true or not.
Viewers watch as tears roll down White’s face as he makes the aggressive call, leading most fans to believe that there was some truth to what he was saying—and even more regret.
When Walter White makes this call, he is attempting to give everyone in the situation closure.
He wants Marie to know she was right about White putting her husband’s life at risk and him being the cause of his death.
White wants to ensure that Walt Jr. knows that his uncle was the kind of man he should be.
How Does Jesse See Walt In The End?
Jesse Pinkman once saw Walter White as a simple man incapable of doing anything too risky, but Pinkman learns that his former chemistry teacher was never the good man he believed he was.
Breaking Bad fans get a better look at the results of White’s influence on Pinkman’s life in the film El Camino, where Pinkman is forced to run away from everything he knows and tries to hide in rural Alaska.
Although the last plan that White devised and executed was freeing Pinkman from the neo-Nazis’ control, White was still the reason that Pinkman found himself in such a terrible situation.
He now knows that his former high school teacher has poisoned Brock, allowed one of his girlfriends to die, and even tormented his own family.
El Camino takes a deeper look into the physical and psychological scars left behind by Walter White in Pinkman’s life.
While White was able to go out in a blaze of glory, Pinkman is forced to now live a life on the run.
Despite his criminal history, Jesse Pinkman is a generally innocent person who is simply dealing with the repercussions of turning to drugs when life became too difficult for him.
When Pinkman was cooking meth alone, he would have never considered murdering a person and definitely would have never harmed a child.
At the end of Breaking Bad, Pinkman realizes how White led him further down the dark path than he originally wanted to go.
Seeing the kind of monster he allowed to control him, Pinkman is forced to turn to Hank Schrader for help.
Although Walter White sees this moment as betrayal, White was the one who had betrayed Pinkman’s trust time and time again.
The Walter White fans who were introduced to was betrayed by the evil man he became.
Why Does Walt Cut Off The Edges Of His Sandwiches?
Walter White cuts off the edges of his sandwiches because he tends to pick up unique behavioral traits from those he murders.
White began cutting the edges of his sandwiches off after he discovered Krazy-8 preferred his sandwiches without crust while White and Pinkman were holding him captive, before the pair ended up killing him.
One of the most influential victims of White was Gus Fring, who had picked up certain traits after years in the criminal war.
Shortly after taking out Fring, White decides to drive around in an older model Volvo like Fring.
His brother-in-law Hank Schrader even made a comment to White about his new car, stating that cars like his are the kind that criminals use to hide in plain sight.
Just like Fring’s Los Pollos Hermanos, Walter White began running his own hidden-in-plain-sight money laundering business and playing a very public role in the business.
No matter who walked through his doors, White had adopted Fring’s tendency to remain in his “peaceful business owner” facade.
Another character whom White began to mimic after killing him was Mike Ehrmantraut, going as far as to even take on his drinking habits.
Throughout Breaking Bad, White is seen ordering his whiskey without ice.
It’s only after he kills Ehrmantraut that White begins to request ice in his whiskey.
He also quoted Ehrmantraut when he told Lydia Rodarte-Quayle to “learn to take yes for an answer.”
It isn’t unheard of for killers to take souvenirs from their victims, and White chose to take behavioral souvenirs with him.
It’s clear that his victims are constantly on his mind and that the unshakable guilt is rapidly piling up inside of him.
Who Was The Letter For At The End Of El Camino?
The letter from the end of El Camino was meant for Brock and was the way in which Jesse Pinkman poured his heart out to the young boy who had endured so much because of the criminal choices that Pinkman had made.
Although fans never got to know the true contents of that letter, they were originally going to hear it in a voiceover that was later cut from the Breaking Bad film.
According to the actor who played Jesse Pinkman, Aaron Paul, creator Vince Gilligan wrote the letter before he wrote the script.
In the actor’s opinion, the letter is one of the most honest, caring, and beautiful letters ever written.
It’s hard to imagine what someone who speaks so plainly as Pinkman would say to young Brock who has lost so much due to Pinkman’s actions.
While Pinkman was imprisoned at the neo-Nazi camp and forced to make Blue Sky meth, the only thing that kept him going was the promise that his work would keep Brock safe from becoming their next victim.
Knowing that fans would be dying to hear what Pinkman had written to Brock, Aaron Paul begged Vince Gilligan to allow them to release the audio clip or even the written form of the letter.
Until Gilligan gives in to Paul’s pleas, fans may never know what the letter truly says.
After a life of misery caused by his own mistakes, Jesse Pinkman’s reason for living becomes the young son of his former girlfriend.
