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Warning: The following recap contains spoilers from El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie. Read at your own risk
El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie has arrived, and the two-hour Netflix film reveals exactly what happened to Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) after he escaped the Neo-Nazi compound and left Walter White (Bryan Cranston) for dead at the end of Breaking Bad. The movie picked up seconds after Jesse fled the scene and drove away to start a new life, but it turns out getting away from Walt and making it to Alaska proved more complicated than anyone might have expected.
Jesse did encounter the cops as he sped away from the compound, but he pulled the Camino into a dark driveway and hid while the cops raced toward the compound to find Walt. It’s revealed later on that Walt was indeed killed by his machine gun booby trap, so those “Heisenberg Lives” conspiracy theories can be laid to rest.
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Jesse’s next stop is at Badger (Matt Jones) and Skinny Pete’s (Charles Baker) house. His best friends let him get a good night’s sleep, take a shower, shave, and return to a semblance of his former self. The next order of business was to ditch the Camino and get out of town, and this was where things started to get weird. Joe (Larry Mankin) showed up to tow the car but accidentally triggered the lo-jack. Pete helped Jesse get away by giving him Badger’s Fiero, allowing Jesse to once again avoid the cops. The best bros also gave him some cash to help him get out, but it wasn’t enough for Jesse’s master plan.
Flashbacks to Jesse’s time in the cage at the hands of Todd (Jesse Plemons) and Jack (Michael Bowen) revealed that Todd kept a secret stash of cash in his apartment — a place that Jesse once visited on a tortured mission to help Todd get rid of the body of a housekeeper he had murdered. Jesse returned to the apartment and tore it apart in search of the cash, eventually discovering it early in the morning, just as two “detectives” arrived to check out the place as well.
Cop jackets must be really easy to find, because the guys weren’t police officers at all. One of them was the blacksmith who helped Jack and Todd build the rig they kept Jesse handcuffed to during his time in captivity. The blacksmith forced Jesse to show him where the money was in exchange for letting him go, and Jesse let him keep two-thirds of the stash, for the time being.
Aaron Paul, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
Jesse then took his share of the dough and headed to find Ed (Robert Forster), the vacuum cleaner repairman who helped Saul (Bob Odenkirk) escape at the end of Breaking Bad. Unfortunately for Jesse, his third of the money wasn’t enough to cover both a new identity and what he already owed Ed for the pick-up he missed before he was kidnapped. Jesse decided to track down the hostile blacksmith to get more money and then once again try to convince Ed to help him skip town.
The second confrontation with the blacksmith ended with a shoot-out in which Jesse killed him as well as all of his cronies and then took all of the money, because why not? Then Jesse blew up the crime scene to destroy any evidence he might have left behind, and also because it looked awesome. With more than enough cash, Jesse made it back to Ed and paid for his ticket out of town to finally start a new life.
The journey to Alaska was punctuated by two emotional flashbacks, both to the Season 2 era of Breaking Bad. The first was to a breakfast with Walt during which Jesse’s former mentor encouraged his young protégé to think about college. The second was to a road trip with Jane (Krysten Ritter), who shared her insights about the plan of the universe and why it’s stupid. They were bright moments before Jesse’s entire life went to sh–, and they served as motivation for him to make better use of his fresh start.
Aaron Paul Says He Only Rewatched One Breaking Bad Episode to Prepare for El Camino
The final beat of the movie saw Jesse hand Ed a letter he wrote to Brock, the young boy with whom Jesse had grown extremely close in the final season of Breaking Bad. The precise contents of the letter weren’t shared, but the audience can presume Jesse attempted to make amends for the tragedy he wrought on Brock’s life in the final episodes of the show.
There’s no word on what happened to the White family after Walt’s death, but El Camino confirmed that Jesse Pinkman survived the compound siege and that he made it to Alaska a free man, ready to start over.
El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie is now streaming on Netflix.