Who Was Jesse Pinkman Talking To At The End Of The El Camino Trailer?

The road to freedom starts here. 

Netflix has just dropped the full-length trailer for El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, which stars series favorite Aaron Paul back in his role as Jesse Pinkman. The film picks up some time after Jesse made his great escape from a band of Neo-Nazis, known as Jack's White Supremacist Gang, in a stolen El Camino during the Breaking Bad finale. From there, El Camino follows Jesse as he attempts to evade imprisonment and forge a new life far different from the one he experienced alongside notorious meth cook Walter White (Bryan Cranston). 

Throughout the El Camino trailer, we see shots of Jesse all over the place: arriving at his friend Skinny Pete's (Charles Edward Baker) house, showing his heavily scarred face and disheveled hair to his other old pal Badger Mayhew (Matt Jones), rinsing blood and dirt off his body in the shower, placing a gun on a windowsill, staring out onto a river, hiding from law enforcement on a busy city street, cruising along an open stretch of highway, returning to the desert where Walt buried his meth money, and flicking a lighter in what appears to be an abandoned warehouse. Finally, Jesse meets with a man whose face we don't see, but whose voice we hear loud and clear. 

"You ready?" the man asks Jesse, who confidently responds, "Yeah."

So, who exactly was Jesse talking to at the end of the El Camino trailer? We have an idea.

To us, it sounds like the disembodied voice belongs to Ed (Robert Forster), otherwise known as the Disappearer — the vacuum cleaner repairman whom Walter White called after Jack's White Supremacist Gang murdered his brother-in-law Hank Schrader (Dean Norris) and Hank's partner at the DEA Steven Gomez (Steven Michael Quezada) during season 5. After Walt left his family behind, Ed gave him a new identity, gathered all the documents he'd need to start with a clean slate, detailed how to get to his safe house in New Hampshire, and warned him that he'd be caught and likely killed if he left the premises. 

Ed is obviously an expert at giving criminals new lives (his plans worked for Walt until he went against Ed's orders and willingly left New Hampshire to return to Albuquerque), so it's not unreasonable to think that Jesse might seek the same service in El Camino. After all, it isn't like Jesse and Ed don't know each other: on season 5 of Breaking Bad, Walt's shady lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) arranged to have Ed "disappear" Jesse, but Jesse backed out of the plan in the 11th hour. Maybe now that he's truly desperate for freedom, Jesse will reach out to Ed and ask for help. 

However, there's the chance that the man is someone else — with popular guesses being the former crooked cop Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks), who is confirmed to be in El Camino, or Walter White himself. However, the voice in the El Camino trailer doesn't really sound like Mike or Walt. Plus, Breaking Bad made it pretty obvious that the two men are dead. On the Breaking Bad episode "Gliding Over All," Mike's body can be seen in the trunk of Walt's car, and Walt says that it was necessary for him to shoot Mike. And on the series' finale, Walt suffered gunshot wounds in a shoot-out with Jack's White Supremacist Gang, ultimately succumbing to his injuries on the floor of his old meth lab.

That considered, it's possible that the El Camino trailer is purposefully misdirecting us. The voice we hear in the last few seconds may very well belong to a random person and could have been dubbed in during post-production to throw fans off, catching their attention and sparking speculation without revealing the true identity of the man Jesse was talking to. This type of trickery is not at all uncommon — movie trailers lie to us all the time — and would be a smart move to make when it comes to the highly-anticipated El Camino.

Of course, with Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan having revealed that El Camino features more than 10 characters from the beloved drama series, there's also a chance that the mystery man is someone we're just not yet thinking of. 

Whomever Jesse Pinkman was seen talking to in the final moments of the El Camino: A Breaking Bad trailer, one thing seems obvious: Jesse is about to embark on a mission, and the mystery man is involved in some capacity. 

Since Netflix isn't in the business of spoiling the movie — especially since the entire project was kept a secret for months on end — it stands to reason that most of the snippets shown in the El Camino trailer lead up to Jesse's clandestine meeting rather than take place afterward. But what happens to the former meth-maker after that moment is anyone's guess. Perhaps instead of continuing to run from police, he's partnering with them to take down people higher up in the New Mexico drug world in exchange for a more lenient (or totally waived) prison sentence. Maybe he really is orchestrating a grand plan with Ed to take on a whole new identity, flee the country, and start fresh — finally tasting the freedom he's been after for so long. Or Jesse might just be looking for a right-hand man to aid him in exacting revenge on everyone who has wronged him. 

Bigger than the question of what Jesse will do in El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie is what will happen to him in the film. Jesse has proven scrappy and resilient, even in the toughest of times, and we're certain he won't abandon any of his intentions without a serious fight. But he's a wanted criminal, so Jesse is bound to put his life on the line no matter what he chooses to do. Will he live to see another day when all is said and done, or will his story conclude with El Camino? It's difficult to say one way or another, as either could end up happening. 

If Jesse gets his way — whether he owns up to his law-breaking past or ties to retaliate against his enemies and abusers — he will survive the events of El Camino. If those who want to "put Jesse Pinkman back in a cage," as Skinny Pete noted in the first teaser for the film, are successful, then Jesse may wind up incarcerated or even six feet under by the time El Camino's credits roll. The latter could serve as a way to definitively cap off the Breaking Bad franchise, but the former would be much more rewarding for longtime fans of the series and of Mr. Pinkman. The only guarantee here is that Jesse won't be alone during his tense endeavors: at the very least, he's got Skinny Pete, Badger, and the mysterious man in the new trailer along for the ride.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie hits Netflix on October 11. The film will also screen in select theaters from October 11 to October 13.