El Camino: Breaking Bad Netflix Movie - What We Know So Far

After running for five explosive, meth-fueled seasons on AMC, the powerhouse drama Breaking Bad finished its run in 2013 with a blood-soaked finale that left a trail of bodies in its wake — including that of protagonist, Walter White (Bryan Cranston). While the ending of the series provided fans with a satisfying and seemingly definitive conclusion to the ever-spiraling misadventures of Walt and his young accomplice, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), rumors began to circulate in the fall of 2018 that a Breaking Bad film was on the way.

For nearly a year, information on the Breaking Bad movie was practically as elusive as Walt and Jesse themselves, with neither Cranston nor Paul willing to even confirm that a film was happening. However, Paul finally broke his long silence in an interview with The New York Times in August of 2019, announcing that not only was a Breaking Bad film on its way, but that it's much closer than anyone realized. We've gathered every last shard and crumb of information we could get our hands on while we wait for the Breaking Bad film to finish cooking and finally crystallize on our screens.

Although Paul spent the better part of a year playing his cards extremely close to his chest, numerous sources speculated early on that he'd be reprising his role as Jesse in the eventual Breaking Bad film, and that the film would revolve around him. Now those suspicions are confirmed — not only with the teaser trailer, but with the logline of the show: "In the wake of his dramatic escape from captivity, Jesse must come to terms with his past in order to forge some kind of future."

Breaking Bad saw Jesse evolve from a high school dropout who taught Walt how to deal drugs into the heart and soul of the show, holding fast to the conscience and morality that Walt slowly and methodically stripped away. As Walt became more ruthless, Jesse seemed to balance him by becoming increasingly more sympathetic. The final season of Breaking Bad led to Jesse getting kidnapped by a gang of neo-Nazis and forced to cook crystal meth for them, until Walt ultimately came to his rescue in the finale. The last we saw of Jesse, he was driving away from the neo-Nazis' meth lab in a stolen car — an El Camino — laughing in relief at the endless possibilities granted to him by his long-awaited freedom.  

Although Bob Odenkirk seems to be more in the loop than most people regarding El Camino, he still speaks about the film as though it's simply something he's heard about, and not something he's worked on. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Odenkirk said, "I've heard so many different things about it, but I am excited about the Breaking Bad movie. I can't wait to see it."

Of course, as any Breaking Bad fan could tell you, no one is better at selling a lie than Odenkirk, who plays the slippery lawyer Saul Goodman — or Jimmy McGill, back before he changed his name — on both the original series and the spinoff, Better Call Saul. If he was trying to throw us off the scent and he actually is in El Camino, we'd probably never even suspect the lie until his face suddenly showed up on our TV screens. So while right now we're willing to take Odenkirk at his word that he's merely eagerly awaiting El Camino as a fan, just like the rest of us, we also won't be too surprised if he has a supporting role after all.

Even before the logline of El Camino was revealed, Breaking Bad fans already had reason to suspect that any potential Breaking Bad film would have to take place after the finale of the series. Not only were rumors already swirling around the possibility of a Jesse-centric film, but there's simply no other time in the Breaking Bad narrative where a feature-length story might fit. Walt and Jesse meet in the pilot of the series. Before that, Jesse is a small-time drug dealer and Walt is a high school chemistry teacher — hardly the stuff movies are made of. After that, the tale of Breaking Bad was so tightly woven that it didn't seem possible that there were another two minutes of relevant story that we didn't see play out during the course of the series, let alone two hours. 

Cranston confirmed the post-finale time frame in an interview with ET, where he said that he's "still dead" in the film, and the official logline also indicates that El Camino will be picking up right where the finale left off. However, if it's been a while since you've watched Breaking Bad and you're worried you won't remember enough to understand El Camino, Aaron Paul has suggested you rewatch only one scene prepare yourself for the film — Jesse's heartbreaking monologue from season three, where he tells Walt he has never been more alone. Gather your tissues, because if that scene is any indication of what El Camino will be like... ouch. 

Breaking Bad would never have become the critical and cultural smash it was without the vision of Vince Gilligan, who not only created the show, but was responsible for penning some of its most memorable episodes, including "Box Cutter," "Face Off," and the series finale, "Felina." Back when the news first broke that a feature-length follow-up may be in the works, fans were relieved to hear that it would, once again, have Gilligan at the helm. 

While Gilligan did not write or direct every episode of Breaking Bad, it looks as though he'll be doing both for El Camino. This will not be the first time Gilligan has ventured back into the story of Jesse and Walter since the show wrapped in 2013. He is also the creator of the ongoing spin-off series Better Call Saul, which premiered two years after the conclusion of Breaking Bad, and of which he has written and directed several episodes. After being immersed in the Breaking Bad world for more than a decade, there's no one better than Gilligan to bring Jesse and the tattered remains of Walt's once-great meth empire back onto our screens. 

On the heels of the Breaking Bad finale, Gilligan told GQ his theory about what happens to Jesse after the events of "Felina." "My personal feeling is that he got away," Gilligan said, likely referring to Jesse's escape from the DEA agents that would've surely been after him. "But the most likely thing, as negative as this sounds, is that they're going to find this kid's fingerprints all over this lab and they're going to find him within a day or a week or a month. And he's still going to be on the hook for the murder of two federal agents. But yeah, even though that's the most likely outcome, the way I see it is that he got away and got to Alaska, changed his name, and had a new life. You want that for the kid. He deserves it." 

The murders Gilligan is talking about are of Walt's brother-in-law Hank Schrader and his partner Steven "Gomie" Gomez (Steven Michael Quezada), who were both killed in the final few episodes of Breaking Bad. Of course, Jesse didn't commit either murder — Hank and Gomie were killed in a shootout with the neo-Nazis Walt hired to kill Jesse when he thought Jesse was stealing the money he'd buried in the desert — but the DEA has no way of knowing that. Assuming Gilligan hasn't changed his mind in the years since Breaking Bad ended, it sounds like although we can expect Jesse to still have some quick thinking and stealthy maneuvering ahead of him, we can hopefully look forward to a happy ending.