Note:for the Breaking Bad series finale follow.

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That’s it. That’s all. Who saw that coming? Who saw it unfold just like that? Maybe you saw Uncle Jack vs. Walt, or Todd vs. Jesse, or Lydia getting ricin’d (oh my god they finally used the ricin), but who saw it go down exactly like that? The devil was always in the details with this show.Aside from all of the ads, which were abrasive and interrupted a good portion of the episode, Felina resolved just as well as we were promised. We know Hank’s body will be dug up. Walt got to see Holly one last time. The Neo-Nazis were killed. Jesse was freed. Walt died. In the aftermath, Skyler was freed as well, thanks partially to Walt pointing the DEA directly to the source of the blue meth, and Marie could properly bury Hank.For all of the work put into Breaking Bad, this series was a major accomplishment. We knew the end was coming. We knew Walt would have to do something, and we knew about the ricin and the M60. We saw it all coming and that didn’t even take away one bit of the ending.And thank goodness for that. For all of the shows that have ever aired, we’ve had maybe a handful that got to deliver an ending like this (The Wire, The Sopranos, The West Wing, and Lost are the ones I’m thinking of). There were no thank you’s (except the final one), no highlight reels with “Good Riddance” playing over it. We weren’t left questioning, we weren’t left wondering why they ended it like that and we weren’t left unsatisfied.

What if You Don't like the Breaking Bad Ending?

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I keep coming back to Jesse’s ending. For all of the punishment the sadists writing this show heaped upon him, he got out. He was alive. He killed Todd—he killed Todd!! Oh god, thank goodness he did. He did it just like Mike would’ve done, too: choking him from behind. How sweet. And he was free.Picture it again in your mind: Jesse, driving in the car, laughing hysterically. He was finally free. God knows what happened to Brock or where Jesse goes from there, but it was wonderfully liberating.There were a lot of similarities between the endings of “Felina” and “Salud”: both had a massive wipe out of the evil enemy; both had a second in command choking someone important; both had the ringleader of the event hoisted by his own petard. Walt didn’t escape like Gus did, though.And I’m so very happy that when Walt asked Jesse to shoot him, he finally said no to Walt. (And I’m also happy he didn’t say “bitch” because that would’ve completely taken me out of the moment).Lydia getting the ricin was … also pleasant, though I feel bad for saying that. But she deserved to die after Mike let her off the hook. I’m glad we didn’t see that ending for her because it’s horribly painful.And we also got the final pieces of Elliot and Gretchen getting a little mess their way. Walt was forgiving them in his own way. I’m glad they started the episode with that scene. It was tense and we were all on the edge of our seats because it was the beginning of the finale. It let us unwind a bit, but it also served us some closure.Maybe one of the finer parts of this series is how Walt is the only character that changed so directly in personality traits from start to finish. It was his journey all along. Skyler was always direct and didn’t take BS; Hank was always the buddy, a bit of a badass, and the guy you wanted to have a beer with; Marie was always a gossiper who used information to stay relevant; Jesse was always the good-spirited one who could withstand any punishment.Walt went from repressed dying man to megalomaniac to dying man who wished he’d done it differently, but accepted what he’d done. It was very morality play-like.And yet, in the end, Walt was as humanizing as he was in the beginning of the series. He didn’t ask for forgiveness, but he knew what he had done. He saw Holly one last time and he made sure Skyler knew he did it for himself. He was no longer the monster and he wasn’t the slimy, squirmy mess trying to wriggle his way out from the wrong side of a gun.

IGN's Review of Breaking Bad's First Episode

In the final moments of Uncle Jack, the money really wasn’t the thing that drove Walt. How beautiful that Jack offered him all of the money in his Uncle Jack way and Walt, with all of the power in his hands, just said no thank you by pulling the trigger.It wasn’t redeeming, though. He was too far past redemption. But he did free Jesse.“Felina” was the victory lap. “Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair,” said Vince Gilligan and company. Yes, Saul is getting a prequel, but I don’t expect any follow-up or alternate ending or spinoffs from the ending to Breaking Bad. This was the end of the end. The story is over and now we close the book.What a story it was.