"I’d be slowly banging my head against the wall"- Vince Gilligan reflects on Breaking Bad's incredible finale and the "dumbest thing" they did

It's been a decade since the final season of Breaking Bad, arguably one of the greatest TV shows ever made, reached its timely conclusion. Still remembered by most as the greatest TV finale ever, "Felina" continues to be as popular today as it was a decade ago. A large part of the appeal of Felina was down to the poetic ending and the perfectly tied loose ends.

It was such an intelligent scripting job that the show tied up enough loose ends to make it a satisfying finale (albeit, a sad oneroom ), but it left enough for future spinoffs like El Camino and Better Call Saul.

Vince Gilligan, the mastermind behind one of the finest shows on earth, recently caught up with Variety to discuss the finale of Breaking Bad, and one particular bad choice that had them hyperventilating before it ultimately fell in place. This decision was showing Walter White (Bryan Cranston) buying a machine gun but not exactly knowing where it would lead.

Gilligan revealed to Variety:

"I’m very proud of it, and I have to stress that it was a group effort....The biggest single fear we had was what to do with that damn machine gun. At the beginning of the final run of 16 episodes, we had Walt buy a machine gun in the trunk of a Cadillac. That was the thing I remember freaking us out the most because we did that, I committed to that. 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."

He added:

"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."

Ultimately, the machine gun falling into place paved the way for Gilligan to create a perfect finale for Breaking Bad.

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"It was the dumbest thing I ever did"- Vince Gilligan on depicting Walter buying a machine gun at the start of Breaking Bad season 16

After shooting the first sequence, which would ultimately tie the entire story of the fifth season together, it came down to a lot of unforgiving complications when Gilligan and his team failed to figure out what to do with the machine gun.

Initially, there seemed to be a lot of time before the 16th episode of the season, but it turned into a nightmare when the team struggled to figure out this angle. Gilligan said:

"Once we figured out this machine gun, that was when the dam broke and things started slowly to click together...It was the dumbest thing I ever did. I was like, 'Let’s start off this season with a bang.' It’s Walt’s 52nd birthday. Let’s do the thing with the bacon, and he’s all alone in a Denny’s.

"And he looks like hell. He looks like the Unabomber. What’s he at a Denny’s for? Well, he’s buying a machine gun, of course! It was self-evident that Walt’s story should not end well, so the idea of him looking like the cancer had returned felt right. But you just kind of feel your way through. We didn’t know where it was going."

Thankfully, the team was able to drive the story of Breaking Bad in a direction that would perfectly tie up the rest of the narrative and the machine gun in place.

Thanks to these incredible efforts, Breaking Bad remains one of the most revered television shows of all time.