'Breaking Bad': Vince Gilligan and the cast drop hints about each character for the final episodes

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We are down to the final four episodes of Breaking Bad, and only one thing is clear: We have no idea if Walt, Jesse, Hank, Skyler or any other member of the ABQ crew will find light at the end of this terror tunnel. The final season of AMC’s crafty drug drama is becoming increasingly tense and grim by the hour, and the forecast is calling for giant s@%#storms ahead. “If you think you’ve seen darkness on Breaking Bad, you’ve truly seen nothing,” Aaron Paul tells EW. “It’s about to get messy.” Meanwhile, series creator Vince Gilligan offers up this cryptic tease for tonight’s episode: “Walt gets probably the most fateful phone call of his life.” Before you turn off your ringer and watch “To’Hajiilee,” heed this gentle SPOILER ALERT and then scroll through these character-by-character hints from Gilligan and the cast for the last half of the last half of the last season.

Walter White (Bryan Cranston)

LAST SEEN Filming a bogus confession video to keep Hank in check; calling Todd to apparently order a hit on ex-partner Jesse; lying to anyone who will listen

GILLIGAN SAYS “In these final four episodes, a great many chickens will come home to roost for Walt.”

CRANSTON SAYS “It’s just a spiral now for him. He can’t grab onto anything and it just spins out of control…. The clock is ticking on him and he knows it. He’s battling his health. He’s battling his sensibility and the connection with his family. He’s battling everything. Everything’s a battle.”

Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul)

LAST SEEN Joining forces with Hank to go after Walt; pulling out of his plaza meeting with Walt at the last second; telling Hank that there is a “better way” to take down Walt.

GILLIGAN SAYS “The student may threaten to become the teacher.”

PAUL SAYS “At the end of episode 4, you see something trigger inside of Jesse’s mind and he thinks, ‘Wait a minute, I know this guy so well. I have an idea.’ And his idea is perfect. It’s going to come out of left field and it’s going to surprise everyone. It surprised the hell out of me. I think Walt was so used to being able to manipulate Jesse, he never really had to take him too seriously, because he could always control him. But now, that’s not really the case.”

Hank Schrader (Dean Norris)

LAST SEEN Not quite treading lightly; telling Gomez (Steve Michael Quezada) that he’s cool with sacrificing Jesse’s life if it helps them nail Walt

GILLIGAN SAYS “It’s a case of strange bedfellows indeed between Hank and Jesse. But that goes to illustrate the drive that Hank has to catch his brother-in-law. It shows the anger, the rage that he possesses for his brother-in-law who he formerly loved… Hank is definitely not letting go. He’s a bulldog now more than ever.”

NORRIS SAYS “The morally low point of his life was willing to let Pinkman be killed. While that’s a bad thing for Hank, it demonstrates that he is more focused than ever on catching that great white whale…. He becomes the DEA agent he’s always been. He’s always been about being a good cop and he becomes that again.”

Skyler White (Anna Gunn)

LAST SEEN Metaphorically donning the pork pie hat and shades while asking Walt to take out Jesse, reasoning “What’s one more?”

GILLIGAN SAYS “There’s definitely a sense of a Lady Macbeth scenario. Skyler has just slept in the devil’s bed for too long now… She truly will do anything to keep the family safe.”

GUNN SAYS “She’s fully aware that she has entered into some sort of pact with The Devil. She is now living in Hell. And she knows that there is no way out of it…Because of the fact that she does say [“What’s one more?”], and because of the fact that she is feeling like everything is closing in on her, there is an unpredictability about what she might do… I keep thinking of the animal being cornered. It’s reactionary behavior, more than anything.”

Marie Schrader (Betsy Brandt)

LAST SEEN Researching poisons on the Internet; trying to adjust to the new parking rules at work

GILLIGAN SAYS “She is hurt and betrayed by Walt and worse by Skyler, and she’s not a woman that you want to find yourself on the bad side of.”

BRANDT SAYS “Don’t mess with the purple.”

Walt Jr. (RJ Mitte)

LAST SEEN Catching Walt in one lie but believing another

GILLIGAN SAYS “Walt Jr. has always been the uncorrupted innocent on this show. He’s the good young son who we’ve watched grow up on camera. Unfortunately for him, he’s got a lot more growing up to do.”

MITTE SAYS “He has some realizations he has to make. And I think when it ends, you’ll find a different Walt Jr.”

Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk)

LAST SEEN Having his face bloodied by Jesse, who impressively deduced that Walt had poisoned Brock; using colorful metaphors to suggest to Walt that he eliminate Hank and Jesse

GILLIGAN SAYS “You can look forward to Saul protecting his own skin first and foremost, but you can look forward as well to some rather sage advice given by this clownish-looking attorney.”

ODENKIRK SAYS “At this point, Saul doesn’t even want the money, which is amazing. He wants to live. He goes from being a greedy guy to realizing that staying alive is better than making more money.”

Lydia Rodarte-Quayle (Laura Fraser)

LAST SEEN Teaming up with Todd to eliminate Declan (Louis Ferreira) and his crew from their meth business and then walking through the bloody carnage with her eyes covered

GILLIGAN SAYS “Lydia really is Darth Vader in Louboutins. You can expect to be further outraged by Lydia’s ice-cold behavior.”

FRASER SAYS “It can only get better after [the massacre]. I mean, can it get worse? Yeah. Hard to believe, [but] she just gets more and more morally bankrupt. And she didn’t really have much of a social conscience to begin with.”

Todd Alquist (Jesse Plemons)

LAST SEEN Wiping out Team Declan with the help of White Power-ful Uncle Jack (Michael Bowen)

GILLIGAN SAYS “For Todd, our lovable yet psychopathic Opie, the heart wants what the heart wants, and Todd’s heart wants Lydia.”

PLEMONS SAYS “He’s this ambush predator and you don’t even really notice him. That’s sort of been the point: He’s just around and then all of the sudden he does something. Opie Manson — there’s definitely more of that.”

For more on Breaking Bad, pick up this week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly, on newsstands now.