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Originally posted by Little Black Francis

It's impossible for it to go down like it did literally, and that is something that is not consistent with the prior 60 episodes.

How come he has hair? How can he be the most wanted man in the country yet walk into a diner, have a conversation with the waiter, and then just get in his car and leave. Not just leave, but visit his own home with no one watching his house? Get into a mansion with no security? And really, what would they do with that money, of course Walt jr. would never see it. And after he tells Lydia she's been poisoned we can assume she called 911 and was probably fine. And the machine gun, how would they let him park the car right in front of the house? There's no way he had the time or the means to make such a device, the recoil of the gun would be impossible to aim. How is it possible that it killed everyone in the room, there weren't any other Nazis in the basement or in another room? Shit like that is far more out of character than having a fantasy. And it's more of "the thoughts of a dying man" than it is a dream.

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Walt Was Already Dead

This theory, mainly from the New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum, but also posed by comedian Norm Macdonald, postulates that, as Nussbaum writes, "what we were watching must be a dying fantasy on the part of Walter White, not something that was actually happening—at least not in the 'real world' of the previous seasons." Nussbaum's theory is partly a rationalization for why Nussbaum thinks the finale was so discordant with the later developments in the storyline.

Much of the theory rests on an alternate reading of the episode's first scene of Walt in that snow-covered car. Nussbaum suggests Walt never really started the engine and instead froze to death. One point of evidence for this theory's plausibility, as one person offered in a Twitter conversation with Nussbaum, is that it seems like Walt broke the ignition lock when he was trying to start the car with a screw driver. If so, it might have rendered the key he found in the visor useless. The scene is shot in such darkness that it's hard to tell what exactly happens. We can see him toggling with the car, and something falling off of the steering column.



The next cut is Walt trying and failing to start the car again. When it won't budge, he seems to fall back, perhaps resigned to death. Steam escapes out of his mouth like the life leaving him.



Soon the car is illuminated with a police car's lights and Walt gets very still. He whispers "just get me home" as if in prayer. Macdonald writes, "He never made it out of that car in the snow, surrounded by police. That's where he died, his final prayer unanswered." The keys magically fall into his lap and he somehow is able to easily drive away despite the car being completely snowed in. Matt Yglesias at Slate pointed out that his ability to remove snow with just the windshield wipers seemed too easy when usually ice needs to be scraped off. There's a deus ex machina quality to that whole incident.

In her Walt-was-dead theory, Nussbaum points out that it would explain how he was able to evade the national manhunt and visit all the people he needs to (the Schwartzs, Skyler, Flynn, etc.) without being detected. "No one spots Walt when he enters Skyler’s home, either—or when he leaves," she writes. "No one notices when Walt goes to see his son for the last time, even though you’d imagine that area would be flooded with surveillance. Walt is not noticed even when he steps inside a brightly lit, crowded Albuquerque restaurant, where he sits down with Lydia and Todd." Perhaps the most ghostly moment is when you suddenly realize he's been in the room when Skyler talked on the phone with Marie about how he's back in town.



Nussbaum's theory dovetails nicely with the one offered by Zoller Seitz in his immediate recap that Walt's "Hello, Carol" to his next door neighbor can be read as a reference to Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol with Walt as Jacob Marley "materializing in people's homes to scare the hell out of them by pointing an accusing finger or moaning in misery while clanking his pitiful irons."

Of course, if this is all a fantasy of a ghostly Walt, why are there, in the words of Zoller Seitz, "unforeseen twists," like Jesse cooking under the control of the Nazis or how an almost magical weapon wipes out the whole gang? As for Jesse, perhaps Walt's subconscious wants Jesse to be alive and for the chance to save him, after abandoning him so cruelly early in the season. The latter can be explained that if it is his fantasy, he dies at his own hand. He even seems to be unfazed when he notices he is bleeding.



With Walt knowing he's dead, it makes more sense that he kills Uncle Jack before letting him tell him where his money is. He, after all, doesn't need it and can't give it away.

On Twitter Nussbaum also led us to another theory at the Tumblr Jamie Dew Oeuvre, where the Dew argues that Walt's prayer, the fantasy-like quality to the finale, and the fact that Walt travels most places undetected yields the conclusion that he made a deal with the devil.

While no one has asked Gilligan about this theory, yet, in his numerous exit interviews, Gilligan talks about Walt as a living, breathing, and dying person at the end of the series. For instance, in his Breaking Bad insider podcast, he explained how he ditched the idea of Walt going "Rambo" with the machine gun because they "realized how Walt’s cancer would resurface and how sick Walt would be." That is not the way you'd expect Gilligan to discuss a ghost. And when talking with Dan Snierson in Entertainment Weekly, Gilligan says that, yes, Walt did accomplish what he set out to do: get the money to his family.

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Originally posted by Little Black Francis

I'm liking this theory out there that Walt actually gets arrested/dies in the snow covered car unfulfilled either shot or in a cancer coma and that the rest of the episode after the keys fall into his lap is his fantasy/dream like. It helps explain a lot of the ambiguous endings, things that are a stretch, inconsistencies, and such that all seem to really be there just to redeem Walt's wishes. If I find a good article about it I'll post it, but think about it.

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