But Breaking Bad, more than any other drama currently on television, is set in a moral universe (a quality it shares with The Sopranos, the closest Breaking Bad has to an antecedent on television). There's always been a kind of fatalism to Breaking Bad, from the plane crash over the White household that Walter inadvertently caused by letting Jane die, to the drug deal that Walter chose, both literally and metaphorically, over the birth of his daughter. Breaking Bad operates by the rules of science; every action causes an equal and opposite reaction, and at this point in the series, Walter is a man of very extreme action.

In "Live Free or Die," the immorality of Walt, Jesse, and Mike's plan to destroy the laptop—which, in addition to destroying the evidence against them, will destroy dozens of other unrelated pieces of evidence—initially seems to go unpunished. But the fates that govern the Breaking Bad universe have an ironic punishment to deal out. The magnet that destroys the laptop also breaks a picture frame that belonged to Gus, revealing the numbers of a series of offshore bank accounts—a piece of evidence that could easily prove to be far more damning than anything the laptop might have contained.

It's not yet clear what the long-term consequences of the newfound evidence will be, but "Live Free or Die" also opens a tantalizing glimpse into Breaking Bad's eventual future. The episode opens, jarringly, with a flash-forward to a nearly unrecognizable Walt's 52nd birthday, where he orders a solitary breakfast at a Denny's before entering the bathroom, where he trades a wad of money for a set of car keys. After exiting the diner, he opens the trunk of his new car to reveal a machine gun.

There's an inherent suspense to any flash-forward, which drops us into unfamiliar territory and asks us to puzzle out what might be happening. (Among the many dropped clues within last night's flash-forward, it's worth noting that the camera lingered on Walt popping a pill in the bathroom—a possible sign that his cancer has returned). But in Breaking Bad's case, the flash-forward also serves a deeper, more important thematic purpose: It reminds us that the fate of Walter White—and, by extension, the rest of Breaking Bad —is already set in stone. Walter White is on a path that he can't escape; no matter what happens this season, and no matter how long it takes to get there, his fate will lead him to that parking lot, and to that machine gun. There's a reason that virtually every critic (including me) predicts that Breaking Bad will end with Walter not living free, but dying: It's what he's earned. And Breaking Bad lets no bad deed go unpunished for long.