“Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan has no interest in a Walt Jr. spinoff
Heisenberg Jr.? He won't be the one who knocks — at least, not if Vince Gilligan can help it.
The Breaking Bad creator said in a new interview with Variety that he has no interest in a spinoff centered on RJ Mitte's character, Walt Jr., following in the footsteps of his late drug lord father (Bryan Cranston). "That's probably the kind of thing somebody will pitch 10 or 15 years from now — Walter Jr. as an Albuquerque crime lord succeeding where his father failed," Gilligan said. "I could pretty much guarantee right now that I have no interest in seeing that happen."
He continued, "That'd be a sad tribute to the show. It's fun thinking about what would happen to the characters, but it doesn't rise to the level of, 'Gee, I'd like to tell more about the story.' But who knows, in a few years maybe."
Breaking Bad concluded back in 2013, after after five seasons, and Gilligan acknowledged that "It's not a very happy ending for those characters at all." But, he said, "it is presented that their lives go on. I'd like to believe things get better for them."
Ursula Coyote/AMC/Everett RJ Mitte on 'Breaking Bad'
Though he would be game to work with the "wonderful" and "sweet" Mitte again, such a spinoff would "be depressing as hell," Gilligan said. "That would be the wrong lesson from the show, if there are any lessons at all to be gleaned from it."
In the series finale, Walt Sr. dies from a shoot-out at a meth lab after he rescues his former partner Jesse (Aaron Paul) from bad guys Jack (Michael Bowen) and Todd (Jesse Plemons). Walt doesn't have a proper goodbye with his son before his death, only watching him from afar and leaving him with a trust fund he can access when he turns 18. Mitte didn't appear on the prequel series Better Call Saul (nor was his character referenced) or in 2019's El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, but he has previously shared an idea for what became of his character.
"Walt escapes capture, Jesse came back to Walt after the whole shoot-out, Walt and Jesse disappear for five years, and Walt Jr. is still living with his sister, almost in like DEA housing," Mitte proposed to the Wrap in 2019. "Then Walt Jr. pretty much joins the DEA and is hunting after his father. He kind of takes Hank's role where Hank left off. My idea is that he's trying to go out, find what happened to Hank and go after Jesse and Walt."
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