Vince Gilligan and the cast of Breaking Bad have done all they can to keep the events of the final eight episodes secret. But at the very end of the Breaking Bad panel today at Comic-Con, we were treated to one big sequence from the midseason premiere - presumably the opening, pre-credit sequence.
We begin with a loud noise that sounds like an airplane engine, but is revealed to be the sound of skateboards as we see some teenagers skating in the swimming pool of an abandoned house. As we cut to the street outside, something becomes clear… We are at Walter and Skyler’s house, but clearly no one has lived in it for a long time. There is a chained gate in front and the house looks terrible.
Sitting in a car out front is Walt, appearing as he did in the Season 5 flash-forward, with a full head of hair and a beard, looking very disheveled, with a stained shirt. He gets out of the car and opens the trunk, where we see the gun he got in that same premiere episode. He ignores the gun and take a tire iron. He manages to squeeze through the small space where the gate is chained and uses the tire iron to break the lock on the front door, going inside. As Walter closes the door behind him, he lets out a small cough.
The house looks terrible inside. People have tagged the walls and flies fill the kitchen, indicating food was left behind – and that the occupants of the house didn’t have time to prepare for their departure. But the most notable thing is the giant word “Heisenberg” spray-painted on the wall of the living room.
Walt looks at the word and then hears the kids skating in the pool, pausing to glance through the blinds at them. He then goes down the hall to the bedroom, where he unscrews a certain wall socket plate… and retrieves the ricin he hid there. As Walt exists the house and goes back to his car, his neighbor has just parked and is taking a bag of groceries from her car.
She sees Walt and suddenly freezes, mouth agape. “Hello, Carol” says Walt, as Carol drops the grocery bag to the ground in shock.
Breaking Bad's final episodes begin on August 11th. (I'll be updating this story in a bit with some more from the panel discussion looking back on Breaking Bad).