3. Walt Dies From Cancer
It's sometimes hard to remember that lung cancer was the reason Walter White turned to meth making, and understandably so. With all the twists and turns, the increasing complexity, the deep-delving into the underbelly of the meth world and the ever-evolving transformation of Walter White, it's easy to forget it all started with a simple lung cancer diagnosis. The cancer was the trigger that transformed Walter White, and perhaps it was a trigger with a delayed reaction; the trigger that may finally release the fatal shot this Sunday. Maybe Walter will crush all his enemies, finally to give in to the cancer at the end. Perhaps Walt will find peace in his last moments, and die asleep in a hospital bed. He would finally accept that all his attempts to stave off mortality were simply a delay for the inevitable. No matter how big his ego, no matter how grandiose his attempts at conquering the mortal world, the very nature he sought to erase couldnt be undone. It's chemistry, really. But does he deserve to go out in relative peace and comfort? Arguably all the devastation he's wrought on his family has earned him a slow and painful death. Perhaps suffering from the cancer and dying in a meek, weak, and altogether human fashion would be his most poetic comeuppance. Really, it's ironic. If he had never entered the meth business, he would still have died in bed with his cancer. But with one crucial difference: his family would be with him. The in-between years as Heisenberg will appear as a dark stain, ultimately worthless and destructive. They will have served only to remove the very things he claimed to be fighting for. Dying slowly and alone will serve as the most powerful reminder of his great error. Many would find this to be too straightforward an ending, but it would serve to bring the story full circle. It's unpredictable in its very predictability. By moving away from the subject of the cancer in season two, the show set us on a path that perhaps intentionally made us forget about it, instead causing us to believe that Walt would go out in some grander way. By throwing a curtain over our eyes and showing us Walt the superhuman, the eventual pull-back of the curtain has revealed something much more prevalent and shocking: Walter White the all-too-fragile human. As Saul watched Walt kneeling on his bunker bed, coughing and sputtering, his eye shone with pity. A once poweful illusion had been broken. As Saul so potently said, "It's over." A death from cancer. Predictable from episode one, yet so unpredictable because of Walt's own attempts to make himself (and us) forget it. Still, maybe Gilligan wants to bring us the kind of ending many of us have given up on...