Walter White (Breaking Bad)
Walter Hartwell White Sr., also known by his alias Heisenberg, is a fictional character and the protagonist of the American crime drama television series Breaking Bad. He is portrayed by Bryan Cranston.
Walter is a skilled chemist who co-founded a technology firm before he accepted a buy-out from his partners. While his partners became wealthy, Walter became a high school chemistry teacher in Albuquerque, New Mexico, barely making ends meet with his family: his wife, Skyler, portrayed by Anna Gunn, and their son, Walter Jr., portrayed by RJ Mitte. At the start of the series, the day after his 50th birthday, he is diagnosed with Stage III lung cancer. After this discovery, Walter decides to manufacture and sell methamphetamine with his former student Jesse Pinkman, portrayed by Aaron Paul, to ensure his family's financial security after his death. Due to his expertise, Walter's "blue meth" is purer than any other on the market, and he is pulled deeper into the illicit drug trade.
An antihero turned villain protagonist as the series progresses, Walter becomes increasingly ruthless and unsympathetic, as the series' creator, Vince Gilligan, wanted him to turn from "Mr. Chips into Scarface". He adopts the alias "Heisenberg", which becomes recognizable as a kingpin figure in the Southwestern drug trade. Walter struggles with managing his family while hiding his involvement in the drug business from his brother-in-law, Hank Schrader, portrayed by Dean Norris, an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Although AMC officials initially hesitated to cast Cranston due to his previous comedic role in Malcolm in the Middle, Gilligan cast him based on his past performance in The X-Files episode "Drive", which Gilligan wrote. Cranston contributed greatly to the creation of his character, including Walter's backstory, personality, and physical appearance.
Both Walter and Cranston's performance have received critical acclaim, and Walter has frequently been mentioned as one of the greatest and most iconic television characters ever created. Cranston won four Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, three of them being consecutive. He is the first man to win a Critics' Choice, Golden Globe, Primetime Emmy, and Screen Actors Guild Award for his performance. Cranston reprised the role in a flashback for Breaking Bads sequel film, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, and again in the sixth and final season of the prequel series Better Call Saul, making him one of the few characters to appear in all three, alongside Jesse Pinkman, Mike Ehrmantraut, portrayed by Jonathan Banks, Ed Galbraith, portrayed by Robert Forster, and Austin Ramey, portrayed by Tod Terry.
Concept and creation
Inspired by Tony Soprano, Breaking BadGilligan cast Cranston based on having worked with him in "Drive" from The X-Files, on which Gilligan worked as a writer. Cranston played an antisemite with a terminal illness who took Fox Mulder, portrayed by David Duchovny, hostage. Gilligan said the character had to be simultaneously loathsome and sympathetic, and that "Bryan alone was the only actor who could do that, who could pull off that trick. And it is a trick. I have no idea how he does it." AMC officials were initially reluctant with the casting choice, having known Cranston only as the over-the-top character Hal on the comedy series Malcolm in the Middle and approached the actors John Cusack and Matthew Broderick about the role. When both declined, the executives were persuaded to cast Cranston after seeing the X-Files episode.
Cranston contributed a great deal to the character's persona. When Gilligan left much of Walter's past unexplained during the development of the series, Cranston himself wrote a backstory. At the start of the show, Cranston gained 10 pounds to presage Walter's gradual physical decline. He had the natural red highlights of his hair dyed brown. He collaborated with the costume designer Kathleen Detoro on a wardrobe of mostly neutral green and brown colors to make Walter's appearance bland and unremarkable, and worked with the makeup artist Frieda Valenzuela to create a mustache he described as "impotent" and like a "dead caterpillar". Cranston also repeatedly identified elements in scripts where he disagreed with how the character was handled, and would go so far as to call Gilligan directly when he could not work out disagreements with the episode's screenwriter. Cranston has said he was inspired partially by his father for how Walter carries himself physically, which he described as "a little hunched over, never erect, the weight of the world is on this man's shoulders".
Gilligan has said it has been difficult to write for Walter because he is so dark and morally questionable. As the series progressed, Gilligan and the writing staff of Breaking Bad made Walter increasingly unsympathetic. Cranston said by the fourth season: "I think Walter's figured out it's better to be a pursuer than the pursued. He's well on his way to badass." Regarding Walter's fate in the series' ending, Cranston foresaw it as "ugly redemption", although earlier, Gilligan divulged his plans to "end on a high note, in a way that will satisfy everyone".
Character biography
Background
When Walter was six years old, his father died of Huntington's disease. He studied chemistry at the California Institute of Technology and, after graduate school, worked as a researcher at Sandia National Laboratory. There he conducted research on proton radiography that helped a team win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1985. Using some of the prize money, Walter then founded the firm Gray Matter Technologies with Elliott Schwartz, portrayed by Adam Godley, his former classmate and close friend. Around this time, Walter began a relationship with his lab assistant, Gretchen, portrayed by Jessica Hecht, who soon after became a partner at Gray Matter. However, after a disastrous Independence Day party, where they had intended to announce their engagement, Walter instead left both Gretchen and Gray Matter Technologies, selling his financial interest in the company for US$5,000. Gretchen and Elliott later married and made billions, much of it from Walter's research. Though they remain friendly, Walter secretly resents both Gretchen and Elliott for profiting from his work.At the age of 50, Walter works as a high school chemistry teacher in Albuquerque, New Mexico, providing instruction to uninterested and disrespectful students. Walter has a second job at a local car wash to supplement his income, which proves to be particularly humiliating when he has to clean the cars of his own students. Walter and his wife, Skyler, have a teenage son named Walter Jr., who has cerebral palsy. Skyler is also pregnant with their second child, Holly, who is born at the end of season two. Walt's other family includes Skyler's sister, Marie Schrader, portrayed by Betsy Brandt; her husband, Hank, who is an agent within the Drug Enforcement Administration; and his mother, who is never seen.
Appearances
The following appearances are based on the chronological narrative in Breaking Bad. Scenes from Better Call Saul fit into this chronology and are denoted appropriately.Season 1
On his 50th birthday, during his surprise party, Walter watches a news report about Hank arresting methamphetamine dealers. Walter is impressed by the monetary returns from the meth operation, and Hank offers to take him as a ride-along to a DEA bust. The next day, Walter faints at the car wash and is taken to a hospital; there, he is told he has inoperable lung cancer and will likely die within the next two years. During the ride-along, Hank busts a crystal meth lab, taking cook Emilio Koyama, portrayed by John Koyama, into custody. Walter sees Emilio's partner fleeing the scene, and realizes it is his former student Jesse Pinkman. Looking to secure his family's well-being by producing and selling meth, Walter tracks Jesse down and blackmails him into selling the meth that Walter will cook. Walter gives Jesse his life savings to buy a recreational vehicle that they can use as a rolling meth lab.After their first cook in the RV, Jesse brings a sample of the extremely pure meth to the distributor Domingo "Krazy-8" Molina, portrayed by Max Arciniega, and then brings Krazy-8 and the now-released Emilio to see the cook site. Emilio recognizes Walter as accompanying the DEA during the bust and believes he is an informant. Krazy-8 forces Walter to show them how he cooked such pure meth or risk being killed. Walter pretends to start a cook but instead produces toxic phosphine gas which kills Emilio and incapacitates Krazy-8. Walter and Jesse secure Krazy-8 to a structural post in Jesse's basement with a U-lock around his neck, and Walter struggles with the decision on whether to kill him. After realizing Krazy-8 has hidden a piece of plate broken when Walter passed out due to a coughing fit, he realizes he has no choice and must kill Krazy-8. Walter goes to unlock Krazy-8's lock and as Walter does so, he confronts him about the plate, causing Krazy-8 to grab the plate to stab Walter with as soon as he is freed. Walter panics and garrotes him to death with the lock while Krazy-8 wildly attacks behind him in an attempt to harm Walter. The experience shakes Walter, and he tells Jesse he will not cook meth anymore.
Walter eventually tells his family about his cancer diagnosis, and they urge him to undergo expensive chemotherapy. He initially does not want to go through the treatment, fearing that his family will remember him as a burden and a helpless invalid, much as he remembers his own father. Later he reluctantly agrees to undergo treatment but refuses Gretchen and Elliott's offer to pay for it, choosing to re-enter the drug trade with Jesse. He shaves his head to hide his chemotherapy-induced hair loss.
Dissatisfied with Jesse's slow pace of selling the meth, Walter pushes him to sell it in bulk to a local drug lord named Tuco Salamanca, portrayed by Raymond Cruz, who has taken over Krazy-8's former territory. Discovering that Tuco stole the meth and savagely beat Jesse, Walter visits Tuco's lair with another bag of crystals, claiming to be "Heisenberg", a reference to the theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg. After Tuco mocks Jesse, refuses to pay for the bag, and implies that Walter will suffer the same fate as Jesse, Walter blows up part of the lair; the bag contained fulminated mercury, not meth. Impressed by the boldness of "Heisenberg", Tuco reluctantly agrees to pay for his meth upon delivery in the future.
Walter revels in his success and adopts the Heisenberg alias in his business dealings going forward. In order to make larger batches of meth to take advantage of their new arrangement with Tuco, Walter and Jesse switch from using pseudoephedrine to methylamine as a precursor. This tints their meth blue, which becomes a signature of Walter's product. The pair begin to fear for their lives when, after testing the purity of the meth they delivered by snorting some of it, Tuco senselessly beats to death one of his own men, No-Doze.