We should've known we were in trouble the moment Saul Goodman showed up in a pink shirt.

There are a lot of ominous portents on a show like Breaking Bad: cigarettes laced with ricin that appear and disappear, murder weapons that surface inside coke machines, and tarantulas that creep languidly across the desert as symbolic reminders of dead little boys. But pink has played a very special and sinister role in the series since the second season premiere, which opened on a flashforward to a teddy bear floating in a pool in an episode titled “Seven Thirty Seven.” While everything else appeared in black and white, the bear alone was a startling magenta – and burned on one side.

It wasn't until the season finale that we learned the truth, that the bear was debris from a midair collision that involved a 737, a plane crash caused by a distracted air traffic controller mourning the overdose death of his daughter, Jane. What he didn't know – what no one but Walt knows – is that Walt caused Jane's death not only by accidentally flipping her on to her back while she she was high on heroin, but sitting back and watching as she choked to death on her own vomit. Is there a moral difference between putting her death into motion and causing it himself? Walt would like to think so, but the end result is the same.

Within the color theory of the show, pink seems to symbolize not just death, but the indirect damage caused by Walt – the destruction that he sets in motion, and the innocent lives that it can claim. (Edit: As many people have noted, this also has implications for Walt's perpetual whipping boy, Jesse PINKman.) Walt observes the plane crash while wearing a startlingly bright magenta sweater, and the pink bear itself – which literally ended up in Walt's backyard – directly suggests the death of a child. And Jane was someone's child too; even before the revelation of the plane crash, there was a pink bear lying in the rubble outside the motel in the cold open of the episode where she dies. Later, when Jane's father went to her apartment to choose a dress for her to wear at her funeral, we saw a mural that she'd drawn: a woman in black, drifting away while a pink teddy bear looms in the upper right hand corner.

It's also worth noting that Jane's death takes place in an episode named "Phoenix" – a mythological creature that dies and is reborn, among other meanings – and is followed immediately by the birth of Holly, who almost always appears in pink. Even more troubling, we've seen Holly wear clothes that not only featured pink bears, but once in a hooded outfit that actually made her into a pink bear. It's not a motif that bodes well for Holly; Skyler's greatest fear has always been that Walt's crimes would somehow blow back and cause collateral damage to their family, and the feminine, child-like associations of pink have always made it an odd choice to symbolize death. What if Breaking Bad's entire pink motif is the biggest flashforward of all?

Which is all to say that seeing Saul show up in a magenta shirt is like standing at the mouth of long dark hallway in a horror movie, the kind that makes you want to shout, "Don't go in there!" But much like the audience of a horror movie, we are all going in there, because this is what we signed up for. This was what we wanted all along.

So what sort of potentially fatal collateral damage is Walt going to cause this time? After last week's aborted meeting, both Walt and Jesse decide that it's time to do away with half-measures and finally come for each other: Walt by putting a hit out on Jesse with Todd's uncle, and Jesse by tricking Walt into thinking that he found Walt's money – and into leading Hank directly to it. And that's how they end up full circle at To'hajilee, the place where Walt and Jesse cooked for the first time together in the RV, the same place where Walt decided to bury his money.

When Walt arrives and realizes 1) Jesse's not there 2) no one has actually touched his money and 3) a car is now rolling in after him, Walt calls in Todd's uncle to take Jesse out. But seconds later, when Walt realizes Hank is there too, he calls it off – and surrenders.

It's a bit surprising, really, that Walt draws the line with Hank after crossing it with Jesse, and that giving himself up is preferable to idea of killing Hank – at least, for now. Some vestiges, at least, remain of the man he used to be; at least until the moment he puts his hands up, Walt has maintained the belief that he could somehow walk all of this back, the way he has walked Skyler and Jesse back so many times, to something resembling the status quo. While he might be able to keep Jesse's death under the radar, that would never be possible with Hank. Sure, he sees Jesse as family in an ersatz sort of way, but Hank is real family. Christmas card family. Walter's family, not Heisenberg's.

Refusing to kill Hank is the most human thing we've seen Walt do in a long time – maybe the most human since he saved Jesse from a potentially fatal downward spiral and got him into rehab. It's also far too little, far too late. Walt has caused an enormous amount of damage to the people around him, even if a lot of it doesn't look like damage (see: the abuse he perpetrates against Skyler) or can't be traced back to him directly (see: Jane's death). He's not always the man who pulls the trigger, or detonates the bomb – he's just the one who arms it.

But there's a reason that Season 2 opened on the detached eye of the pink teddy bear floating in the pool, why Walt kept it, and it turns up again and again like one of those "bad pennies" Saul likes to talk about. Call it the eye of God or Vince Gilligan or even the audience, but someone is watching, and we know what Walt did. And eventually, it's all going to catch up with him.

As creator Vince Gilligan said in a 2009 interview:

Maybe the best thing for Walt is to get caught and have to face the consequences of these bad actions. But he never has to face up to his misdeeds, and so many people suffer because of it — right up to an unknown number of people dying because of this plane crash he helped bring about.

Breaking Bad , "ABQ"

It's just not going to happen this episode. There's a look on Jesse's face when they finally put the cuffs on Walt, as though a spell has been broken – that a bogeyman who took on mythic proportions has been revealed, finally, as a man. But of course, Walt manages to find a way work his magic one more time and rain hellfire on the people around in him a way he will surely claim is not his fault. What did Jesse say in the last episode? "Mr. White – he's the devil. He is smarter than you, he is luckier than you. Whatever you think is supposed to happen, I'm telling you, the exact, reverse opposite of that is going to happen."

And indeed it does. When Jack and the heavily armed white supremacists roll up, determined to rescue Walt whether he likes it or not, there's a moment – after Hank tells them to drop their many, many guns and before they fire – that feels like so many moments on Breaking Bad. Nothing's gone wrong yet, and we can pretend that it might somehow end well, but the truth is that it's already over; it was over the moment they rolled up and aimed a massive arsenal at a pair of DEA agents. There is no scenario where both sides lower their weapons and somehow go their separate ways. There is no scenario where this ends well.

But then, we knew that too. This is a show predicated on dread, on the notion that things are going to go terribly, terribly wrong. And every Sunday, we slow down to rubberneck at the slow-motion accident that is Walter White, and find out exactly how it's going to happen. Breaking Bad has always been the backstory of a tragedy, and there's always been a wall waiting at the end of this ride: cancer, a bullet, or simply the series finale.

The most controversial moment of this episode is surely going to be its final moment, when the firefight finally explodes and you realize that you're very likely about to watch Hank die. Then just as the battle reaches its peak – it cuts to black and rolls the credits. It's a jarring, bold cut, and some will probably call it an unfair one, but it's also very in keeping with the structure of the show. The entire concept behind the cold opens that lead each episode is showing you what lies at the end of that long dark hallway, and daring you to walk down it anyway.

It's the midseason opener where Walt returns to a ruined, empty version of his house and sees his neighbor Carol, who is so stricken that she drops her groceries – before cutting to a seemingly idyllic White family cookout on the patio. It's the Season 4 premiere that flashed back to Gale, giddily opening his new lab equipment like a kid on Christmas, and convincing Fring to hire Walt – before flashing forward to the moment Jesse puts a bullet in his head at Walt's request. And it's the seared teddy bear bobbing in the pool as a symbol of the 167 bodies Walt is going to indirectly drop, twelve episodes before they fall out of the sky.

Hell, it's the series premiere of the entire show, and that coldest open of all: A man tearing through the desert in an RV full of drugs and bodies, wearing nothing but tighty-whities, holding a gun in the direction of the police sirens as they grow louder and louder – before flashing back three weeks to Walter White's boring, suburban pre-Heisenberg life at 308 Negra Arroyo Lane.

Breaking Bad cuts away in the middle of the firefight because as it has established many, many times its favorite moment is the moment before the end; and its favorite thing to do is dangle disaster in front of us like a fait accompli and tell us to buckle up and ride the ride. What did Jesse say to Walt on the phone before he completely screwed him over? "This is just a heads up to let you know I'm coming for you." Breaking Bad is like Jesse: It wants you to know it's coming.

And it wants to make us all into Walt, standing in his backyard and watching the planes crash midair, long after he knocked over the domino that set them in motion. Walt, screaming in the car for them to stop, but powerless to stop the hit from playing out.

Breaking Bad , "ABQ"

Previous recaps:

Season 5, Episode 12: "Rabid Dog"

Season 5, Episode 11: "Confessions"

Season 5, Episode 10: "Buried"

Season 5, Episode 9: "Blood Money"