Breaking Bad creator reveals El Camino’s two alternative endings

The creator of Breaking Bad and new spin-off movie El Camino has revealed the way they originally planned it all to end. WARNING: Spoilers

Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan has revealed two alternative endings for Jesse Pinkman in Netflix’s El Camino.

The movie premiered last week and follows Aaron Paul’s character Jesse in the moments after the Breaking Bad finale when he escaped from the white supremacist compound where he was being tortured.

WARNING: Major El Camino spoilers ahead

The movie follows Jesse’s story.

Jesse ultimately eludes the cops and escapes to Alaska for a peaceful new life as Mr Driscoll.

But one of Gilligan’s earlier drafts for El Camino didn’t have things tie up so nicely for Jesse.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, he said: “I didn’t get super far down the road, but it was probably going to be a young woman who needed some help.

“He was hiding out by the Canadian border, and this woman was working at a motel as a housekeeper or something.

“(He) goes into the process of saving her, knowing full well that he’s going to suffer for it, he’s going to get caught for it, but he does it anyway.

“And the last scene would be maybe him in a jail cell but at peace for the first time since the movie began.

“I think there was going to be this component where he couldn’t sleep. He wouldn’t get a single night sleep for a week or so upon escaping.

“The police are looking for him and he’s too haunted and he’s too adrenaline-charged.

“And at the end of the thing, he’s in a jail cell, and ironically, he can fall asleep like a baby. And I thought, ‘Ah, that’d be kind of cool’.”

Vince Gilligan at the premiere of El Camino. Picture: Jean-Baptiste Lacroix/AFP

However, Gilligan’s girlfriend Holly Rice and Breaking Bad’s executive producer Peter Gould didn’t agree, and with hindsight, Gilligan is glad he ended up going down the writing route he did.

The movie nearly had a very different ending.

Meanwhile, Paul revealed another alternative ending that was written by Gilligan but ended up on the cutting-room floor.

In the final moments of El Camino, Jesse hands Ed a letter to send to Brock, the young son of his ex-girlfriend Andrea, who was shot in the head in front of Jesse in the final season.

Paul told Entertainment Weekly: “That letter to Brock was the very first thing that Vince wrote when writing this script.

“Once he completed that letter, he started the script. Originally, the voiceover of that letter was how the movie ended — just driving through Alaska and you could hear what was inside of that letter …. It’s heartbreaking, it’s beautiful, just honest.

“But Vince just thought, ‘You know what? Maybe it’s best left unknown’. And we don’t need it.

“He was right. But I love knowing what was in the letter.”

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission