Vince Gilligan and the cast of Breaking Bad have done all they can to keep the events of the final eight episodes secret. But at the very end of the Breaking Bad panel today at Comic-Con, we were treated to one big sequence from the midseason premiere - presumably the opening, pre-credit sequence.

Loading

[For those who don't want to read about the scene before it airs, you can skip to the portion about the Q&A after the video embedded below.]We begin with a loud noise that sounds like an airplane engine, but is revealed to be the sound of skateboards as we see some teenagers skating in the swimming pool of an abandoned house. As we cut to the street outside, something becomes clear… We are at Walter and Skyler’s house, but clearly no one has lived in it for a long time. There is a chained gate in front and the house looks terrible.Sitting in a car out front is Walt, appearing as he did in the Season 5 flash-forward, with a full head of hair and a beard, looking very disheveled, with a stained shirt. He gets out of the car and opens the trunk, where we see the gun he got in that same premiere episode. He ignores the gun and take a tire iron. He manages to squeeze through the small space where the gate is chained and uses the tire iron to break the lock on the front door, going inside. As Walter closes the door behind him, he lets out a small cough.The house looks terrible inside. People have tagged the walls and flies fill the kitchen, indicating food was left behind – and that the occupants of the house didn’t have time to prepare for their departure. But the most notable thing is the giant word “Heisenberg” spray-painted on the wall of the living room.Walt looks at the word and then hears the kids skating in the pool, pausing to glance through the blinds at them. He then goes down the hall to the bedroom, where he unscrews a certain wall socket plate… and retrieves the ricin he hid there. As Walt exists the house and goes back to his car, his neighbor has just parked and is taking a bag of groceries from her car.She sees Walt and suddenly freezes, mouth agape. “Hello, Carol” says Walt, as Carol drops the grocery bag to the ground in shock.As for the panel, the Q&A was a fun, funny and nostalgic one, but Gilligan and the cast were careful to never discuss the final episodes’ events.Aaron Paul said he felt that when Breaking Bad began, Jesse was, “a lost kid, searching in desperate need of some guidance.” Walt provided that guidance, but “Now going into the final season, he’s terrified of this man… He just wants to stay as far away from him as possible and stay alive. “Bryan Cranston, currently clean-shaven and with his hair grown back, came onstage wearing a creepy, uncanny valley-like Walter White mask, which moderator Chris Hardwick noted Cranston wore on the floor of Comic-Con, walking around incognito with a mask of… himself. Cranston then proceeded to put the mask on top of his mic, facing him and speaking directly into it – nearly making out with it at one point, which Paul then emulated.Paul, noting how dark Breaking Bad is, praised Cranston for helping make the set “very loose and very comical,” saying Cranston was “the most professional person I’ve ever worked and also the most immature man, which is a beautiful combination.”Anna Gunn said she felt Skyler, like Walt, was “dealing with a lot of disappointment” when the series began. She said she felt Skyler’s downfall was trying to solve the issues that rise up herself. “She thinks if I do this, it’ll make it better. But actually each action she takes makes it worse. “A fan asked exactly how exactly Walt poisoned Brock, and Gilligan said he and the writers had their idea of “the evil juice box man,” and how Walt could have gotten into Brock’s school. Said Gilligan, “Our best guess is the way we worked it out in our timeline he had just enough time to do it,” noting “It was improbable perhaps but not impossible.” He added, with a grin, “It would have been tricky timing but he was a very motivated individual at that point.”An audience member said she loved Skyler but asked about fans who disliked the character, which lead to an interesting conversation about her. Said Gunn, “In a show you need a protagonist and you need an antagonist. [In Breaking Bad], you have the anti-hero as the protagonist and you need to be behind them. Fans are behind Walter White and they need to stay behind him. If she becomes someone who is really sympathetic and you start siding her, then it weakens how you feel about him. It would have undercut the entire thrust of the show.”Gunn went on to say she thought Gilligan had come up with a, “Really brilliant, interesting way to have the audience stay with Walt. “ She added, “It does say some things about the way people still see women and men and roles of wives and husbands and things like that, but that’s a very complex subject, so for a different day.”Gilligan recalled a conversation he had with a writer of Key & Peele about Skyler and their surprise that audience members wouldn’t like her and that one thing they felt was, “I think what it is is people don’t like characters who are powerless - Not to say Skyler is powerless. Skyler is very powerful, but she does find herself fin a box.”He said he felt a turning point was when Walt “played chicken” with her and she called the cops but couldn’t go through with naming Walt’s crimes in front of Walt Jr. Said Gilligan, “She can’t go through with it for very, I think, good reasons. It’s just a hard thing to do. And from that time on, he’s really put her in a box. And from that time on, people don’t want to identify with powerless characters. “Bob Odenkirk noted the key to Saul was that he was funny and buffoonish but also “good at what he does.” He later noted, “I have so much fun playing those violent scenes where I’m being attacked by these lunatics. “Noting he was 14 when Breaking Bad began and now nearly 21, R.J. Mitte said the series meant so much to him because “Most people had high school. I had Breaking Bad.”Dean Norris said, when it came to Hank, “He’s saddled with morality. And maybe that’s a good thing and maybe that’s a bad thing. His conscience won’t allow him to do the wrong thing, to his detriment.”As the panel ended, Gilligan said, “I am so sad the show is over. I’m going to miss you guys so much. I’m going to miss Comic-Con. But I am satisfied with the ending. I hope you will be too.”Breaking Bad's final episodes begin on August 11th.