Editor’s Note: Massive Spoilers. Read at your own risk.

Breaking Bad is one of the most ethically complicated dramas on television today. The series explores themes of sin, guilt, forgiveness, and damantion through the transformation of Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin. Calling the series’s thematic landscape a philosophy fails to fully appreciate its religious dimensions; in this essay, I will sketch a few tenets of what we might call the theology of Breaking Bad.

In the beginning, Walter could hardly be a more sympathetic character. He is passionate about his subject (if not about his frequently inattentive students). But one day, he receives a diagnosis of advanced lung cancer that forces him to confront his mortality. With a disabled son and pregnant wife, Walter worries that his death will leave his family impoverished. As he runs the numbers, he realizes that to keep his family comfortable after his death, he would need to make more than a million dollars in just a few months. When he sees a drug bust on television, Walter realizes his best option to make fast cash is to put his chemical expertise to use manufacturing methamphetamine.

Over the course of five seasons, Walter descends deeper and deeper into evil, becoming the ultimate anti-hero. So how does one go from a common chemistry teacher to a murderous drug lord? Or as series creator Vince Gilligan puts it, “What if it was essentially me— in other words—a guy who has never broken a law, barely littered or jaywalked, who has never broken the law in any serious way suddenly finding himself being a meth cook, doing something reprehensible?” Gilligan’s answer takes three primary forms: Walter’s evil deeds are motivated by pride, rationalized with good intentions, and lead him slowly but surely into total depravity.