Breaking Bad Almost Killed Off RJ Mitte's Walter White Jr. - Here's How
In the world of "Breaking Bad," the innocent often suffer, and they do so in ways that are appalling and tragic. Whether it's a teenage drug mule like Tomás Cantillo (Angelo Martinez) or the arguable love of Jesse Pinkman's (Aaron Paul) life, Jane Margolis (Krysten Ritter), being clueless to the actual evils happening around them or acting as an impediment to the drug cartels that rule the show's world means that one is almost destined to wind up in a body bag.
Surprisingly, there's one death that showrunner and "Breaking Bad" universe creator Vince Gilligan considered, but ultimately didn't go through with. During a 2018 interview on "Conan" archived on the show's official YouTube page, Gilligan revealed that he planned on killing off Walter White Jr. (RJ Mitte). "Early on, I pitched to my writers — I had this idea where Walter Jr., there's this horrible, you know, he gets killed by this nasty guy that Walt is somehow in business with," Gilligan revealed. Apparently his idea was so long, involved and gruesome that his writers' poor reaction compelled him to avoid putting it to paper. "All my writers looked at me like I had completely lost my mind and was the most horrible person who ever lived," he admitted. "You know the old saying, 'Enough people tell you you're drunk, you need to sit down.' My writers essentially told me I was drunk."
Ironically, Mitte approved of the notion of Walt Jr. dying. He revealed during the same interview that he not only expected to be killed off due to his diminishing late-series line count but pitched his own idea for Walt Jr.'s death at the hands of the Salmanaca twins. That wasn't the only time he spoke about his hopes for Walt Jr.'s ending.
RJ Mitte had his own ideas about Walt Jr.'s death
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly in 2018, RJ Mitte went into deeper detail about his idea for Walter Jr.'s passing.
"Initially, I wanted Walt Jr. to have a good death scene. I thought they were going to kill me off for a second. And I thought, 'Walt Jr. should be brutally murdered. Pretty much bludgeoned and beaten to death. That'd be a good scene for him.'" The uber-violent scene may have putting a fitting capstone on the innocent character's story arc, but the gruesome conclusion to Mitte's character's life never materialized — to the eternal gratefulness of his bank account. "I realized financially it wouldn't be good for me."
When asked who Walt Jr.'s assailants would be, he once again named the Salmanaca brothers, Marco (Luis Moncada) and Leonel (Daniel Moncada). He added that the assault would take place while Walt's mother, Skyler (Anna Gunn) was out of the house, leaving her to return and find the house ransacked, her son dead and her daughter missing. "I was just like, 'That's what we needed,' but I realized that's not what would have been best for the show," Mitte concluded.
While that ending would have undoubtedly continued the show's long streak of tragic mishaps and awful calamities and may have become one of the best episodes of "Breaking Bad," in the end Walt Jr. survives and going into witness protection with his mother and infant sister, Holly. There's no telling as to where Walt Jr.'s future may go from there, but Mitte expressed his desire to continue the character's story to Entertainment Weekly. Perhaps someday audiences will find out what sort of hand fate dealt the family.