Breaking Bad Almost Ended With Its Most Explosive Episode (And Netflix Saved It)

Breaking Bad is a cultural touchstone that many rightfully consider among the greatest television shows of all time. The celebrated program ran for five seasons, but a fifth series installment wasn’t always a foregone conclusion. In fact, creator Vince Gilligan thought that the show may go off the air after the Season 4 finale, so he went out of his way to ensure that the last episode of that season could work as a series finale if needed. Fortunately, the program eventually got renewed for a fifth and final season, rendering those efforts unnecessary. But the extra planning that went into creating that iconic episode makes “Face Off,” the Season 4 finale, all the more enticing in hindsight.

The idea that such a compelling series came so close to cancellation shows that the way we consume and discover content has evolved over the years and how easy those changes sometimes make it for quality programming to slip through the proverbial cracks.

Breaking Bad Almost Concluded After Just Four Seasons

As fans of the series know, Breaking Bad eventually came back for a fifth season and wrapped things up more definitively. However, the program often struggled to stay on the air, with renewals sometimes coming after much deliberation and uncertainty. If it weren’t for Netflix helping the show discover a broader audience, we’d likely still be wondering what happened to several of the characters to this day.

Many television shows see their audience shrink over time, Breaking Bad did just the opposite. The celebrated program actually grew its base over the years, thanks, in part, to new viewers who tuned in to watch past seasons via Netflix and then continued with the current episodes as they aired on the AMC network.

Season 4 finale episode “Face Off” definitively ties up the ongoing feud between rival meth impresario Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) and antihero Walter White (Bryan Cranston). Walt works with his rival Hector Salamanca (Mark Margolis) to rig a bomb to Hector’s wheelchair to take Gus out for good. The episode ends with a soon-to-be fully dead Gus missing half of his face, a development to which the playful episode title is paying reference.

We also ultimately learn that Walt is responsible for poisoning Jesse’s (Aaron Paul) girlfriend’s son, Brock (Ian Posada), in a cynical attempt to frame Gus. Oof, that was quite the low blow, Walt. Additionally, Gus’s lab goes up in flames, thus why “Face Off” might well have worked as the final episode of the series.

Gilligan spoke with The New York Times shortly after the show was picked up for a fifth and final season and gave some context on the finality of Gus’s demise and the preparation involved.

“…it was something my writers and I worked on pretty much the whole season, knowing that at the end of the year, one of them would have to go,” Gilligan explained. “The town wasn’t big enough for the both of them, as it were.”

No, the town wasn’t big enough for both, but we’re sure glad that Walt (and the series) lived to fight another day. That allowed the writers to address some of the details that still remain unresolved at the end of ”Face Off.” Namely, this allowed the final season to address Walt’s righthand man Jesse’s fate, Walt’s brother-in-law Hank’s (Dean Norris) investigation into Walt’s meth empire, and the ultimate conclusion of Walt’s arc.

Imagine if the last we saw of Walter White (Bryan Cranston) was a shot of the character’s backyard revealing that he had the motive, means, and opportunity to poison an innocent child to serve his agenda. It would have been a massive bummer not to see more of the narrative unfold, but that would have absolutely been a powerful stopping point.

Breaking Bad Is Proof Positive That Television Can Be as Artistic as Film

Along with series like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad helped elevate television to an art form. The origins of TV are slightly more cynical than those of cinema. Television has historically been designed to keep people engaged between advertising breaks, but Breaking Bad proves that small-screen programming can be just as powerful and effective as film within the right parameters.

Bravo to Gilligan and company for challenging convention and delivering a celebrated series that injects the kind of artistic merit into the proceedings that we’d normally have to turn to cinematic fare to find.

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Although Breaking Bad almost concluded after its fourth season, we are eternally grateful that the powers that be gave the show the time and monetary resources to plot a fifth and final season. According to Gilligan, it sounds like we have Netflix to thank, in large part, for that.

How did you discover Breaking Bad? Did you tune in on AMC from the jump or come across the series on Netflix after it was already underway? Make sure to let us know in the comments section!

In addition to five seasons of Breaking Bad and six seasons of the prequel series Better Call Saul, the show’s canon also includes the Netflix original film El Camino: A Breaking Bad Story, which provides a more definitive conclusion for Jesse. There are currently no plans for more Breaking Bad films or series in the cards at this point, however, we will alert you should that change.