Jesse Pinkman

• 1. Introduction

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  Jesse Pinkman is the only character besides Walter White to appear in every episode of Breaking Bad. Aaron Paul plays him. When the story opens, Jesse is a crystal meth cook and dealer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and his former high school chemistry teacher is about to become his partner.

  Over the show's run, Jesse is blackmailed, beaten, lied to, and held captive in a cell. He later returns in a feature film and in the final season of Better Call Saul. Early viewers and critics often saw him as a screwup. Later ones called him the show's moral compass.

  How did a young man who barely passed high school become the person audiences trusted most? Why was he almost written out before anyone had seen him develop? And where does a man like Jesse go once the story around him is finished?

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• 2. A Near Miss

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  Marion Alan Dupree was the name on the original pilot script for the character who became Jesse Pinkman. Series creator Vince Gilligan did not plan to keep him for long. He intended Jesse to die at the end of the first season in a botched drug deal, leaving Walt to carry the guilt.

  Gilligan changed his mind quickly. By the second episode of that season, he said, "it became pretty clear early on that it would be a huge, colossal mistake to kill off Jesse." He was impressed by the character and by Paul's performance. He also liked the chemistry between Paul and Bryan Cranston.

  Paul first thought of Jesse as "black-and-white." Over time he decided that Jesse "has a huge heart; it just got messed up." He felt he had a "lock" on the character while making the episode "Cancer Man," which introduces Jesse's family. After Jesse's parents disown him, Paul noted, the character searches for a father figure in Walt and in Mike.

  The writers kept asking how long Jesse's innocence could survive Walt's influence. Gilligan has said that Jesse's naivete makes him a better man than Walt. The writers' answer unfolded over five seasons, starting in Albuquerque with a young man who had already lost his family.

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• 3. Student and Teacher

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  Aunt Ginny's cancer taught Jesse most of what he knew about the disease. After his parents forced him out, he moved into her home and cared for her until she died. The house stayed available to him afterward, although his parents owned it.

  In high school, Jesse preferred friends and marijuana to studying. His chemistry teacher, Walter White, gave him a failing grade. Walt later admitted he never expected Jesse to amount to much. Jesse's mother, Diane, remembers it differently. She says Walt "must have seen some potential in Jesse; he really tried to motivate him. He was one of the few teachers who cared." Jesse graduated anyway, with Walt on stage when he collected his diploma. He almost always calls his old teacher "Mr. White."

  The earliest moment in Jesse's timeline comes in 2004, in the Better Call Saul episode "Waterworks." Outside Saul Goodman's office, he borrows a cigarette from Kim Wexler. He recognizes her as the public defender who helped his friend Christian "Combo" Ortega after Combo stole the Baby Jesus from a Nativity display. Jesse is there with Emilio Koyama, who picked Saul from a TV advertisement. Asked whether Saul is any good, Kim answers, "when I knew him, he was."

  Breaking Bad proper begins when Walt, newly diagnosed with lung cancer, rides along on a raid with his brother-in-law Hank Schrader, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent. Walt spots Jesse fleeing while Emilio is arrested. He realizes Jesse is "Cap'n Cook," the cook Hank is hunting. Walt uses student records to find him and blackmails his way into the business.

  Walt hands Jesse $7,000 to buy an RV to serve as a rolling lab. Jesse blows most of it at a strip club. Combo rescues the plan by selling Jesse his family's RV for $1,400.

  Walt's first batch strikes Jesse as the purest he has ever seen. He pitches it to Emilio's cousin, a distributor named Domingo "Krazy-8" Molina. The meeting turns deadly. Emilio and Krazy-8 try to kill Walt, who answers with phosphine gas that kills Emilio and disables Krazy-8. Walt then drags the unconscious Jesse to safety.

  Walt wants Emilio's body dissolved in hydrofluoric acid and sends Jesse to find a large plastic container. None is big enough, so Jesse uses the upstairs bathtub in Ginny's house. The acid eats through the floor and the remains spill into the hallway below.

  The pair's next buyer, a kingpin named Tuco Salamanca, beats Jesse badly enough at their first meeting that he needs a hospital.

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• 4. Desert and Heroin

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  No Doze, one of Tuco's henchmen, is beaten to death while Walt and Jesse watch helplessly. That scene opens the second season. After a DEA raid, Tuco grows convinced the pair are about to betray him. He kidnaps them and takes them to a remote desert house, where he looks after his paralyzed uncle, Hector Salamanca. Tuco says he will take them to a superlab in Mexico.

  Walt and Jesse escape after a struggle. Hank, who has followed the LoJack on Jesse's car while searching for Walt, kills Tuco in a firefight. He never sees the two men walking away through the desert. The DEA then seizes Jesse's car and money.

  Jesse's life shrinks fast. Badger's cousin Clovis stores the RV for a $1,000 fee, of which Jesse can pay only half. His parents evict him after discovering the basement lab. His motorcycle and few belongings are stolen, and he ends up sleeping in the RV on Clovis' lot.

  He tries to rebuild. Jesse buys a Toyota Tercel and rents an apartment from Jane Margolis, a part-time tattoo artist and recovering heroin addict. They become involved, and Jane hides the relationship from her father, Donald, who owns the building.

  When Skinny Pete is robbed, Walt tells Jesse to "handle it." At the robbers' house, one addict kills the other in front of Jesse. It traumatizes him, yet it helps business, because a rumor spreads that Jesse did the killing. Jesse also helps bring in the corrupt lawyer Saul Goodman to launder money.

  Combo is murdered by rival dealers, and Jesse starts using heroin with Jane to cope. His state nearly costs Walt a $1.2 million sale to the distributor Gus Fring. Walt withholds Jesse's half until he enters rehab. Jane blackmails Walt into paying, hoping to use the money to escape to New Zealand.

  Walt visits the apartment to make peace and finds the couple asleep after getting high. He accidentally rolls Jane onto her back. When she begins to choke, he lets her die. Jesse finds her body the next morning and blames himself. He binges until Walt pulls him out of a crack house and checks him into a clinic.

  Jane's death reaches far beyond that apartment, through her father, who works as an air traffic controller.

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• 5. Gale and Gus

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  A drug counselor in rehab told Jesse to accept himself for who he is. By then he had learned how Donald's grief over Jane had led to a deadly mid-air collision. Jesse told Walt he had taken the advice and now accepted that he was the "bad guy."

  Paul found the sober Jesse of the third season hard to play. He has said it "really threw me for a loop," and that Jesse was "so numb and cut off from everything." To prepare, he spent time at a rehabilitation clinic, watching patients and interviewing its director.

  Once out, Jesse settles old business. With Saul's help, he tricks his parents into selling him Aunt Ginny's house at a sharply reduced price. He then falls for Andrea Cantillo, a single mother he meets at Narcotics Anonymous. He learns that her 11-year-old brother, Tomas, killed Combo for two rival dealers. After Tomas himself is murdered, Walt steps in and kills the dealers before Jesse can.

  Gus then replaces Jesse with Gale Boetticher, Walt's former assistant in the superlab. Walt decides Jesse must kill Gale first. Jesse begs him to go to the police and insists he cannot kill anyone. Cornered at the lab by Gus' men Mike Ehrmantraut and Victor, Walt phones Jesse and tells him it must be done. At Gale's apartment, Jesse hesitates for a moment and then shoots him.

  The fourth season shows what that costs. Gus slices Victor's throat with a box cutter as a display of force. Jesse tries to numb his guilt with a nonstop drug party at his house. Gilligan said he wrote those scenes to show that the characters' actions carry major consequences. The writers chose the party in part because they thought it would surprise the audience most. Cranston called it "a great way to show a person going through a private hell." Two details came from Paul. Jesse's solo go-karting echoed outings with the crew, and the shaved head was also Paul's idea.

  Gus, learning of the parties, sends Mike with Jesse on a pickup and quietly tests his loyalty. In a later job, Jesse fixes one addict on digging a hole and disarms the other, which impresses Gus. Gus takes Jesse to Mexico to teach Walt's formula to cartel chemists. There Gus poisons the cartel's leadership, including Don Eladio Vuente, and Jesse saves the wounded Mike. Gus offers Jesse a full-time job, and Jesse accepts only if Walt's life is spared. In the premiere, Walt had pleaded with Gus for Jesse's life, which Paul called the first time Jesse realizes Walt's loyalty is to him.

  Then Andrea's young son Brock falls deathly ill. Jesse assumes ricin and confronts Walt at gunpoint. Walt persuades him that Gus did it. Jesse's tip about Gus visiting Hector in a nursing home helps Walt set a pipe bomb beneath Hector's wheelchair, and Gus dies. Afterward, Jesse learns Brock was poisoned by lily-of-the-valley berries, not ricin.

  The season's last shot shows a potted lily-of-the-valley in Walt's backyard, a plant Jesse has not seen.

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• 6. Ricin and Brotherhood

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  One cigarette holds the key to Jesse's fifth season. It hid the ricin, and Jesse became obsessed with finding it. Walt planted a replica in the vacuum cleaner for Jesse to discover. Walt also steered Jesse's feelings so that he left Andrea and Brock, supposedly to keep them safe.

  Jesse, Walt and Mike then start their own operation. Their supplier, Lydia Rodarte-Quayle, points them to a way of stealing 1,000 gallons of methylamine from a moving train in New Mexico. During the heist, their accomplice Todd Alquist shoots Drew Sharp, a young boy who witnessed the crime. Jesse is horrified and wants out. The rival drug lord Declan agrees to buy the methylamine for $15 million, and Walt keeps cooking for Declan. When Walt withholds Jesse's pay to lure him back, Jesse walks away, saying he would rather lose the money.

  Guilt over Drew drives Jesse to a desperate act. Saul refuses to deliver his money to Drew's parents and Mike's granddaughter, so Jesse drives around Albuquerque tossing bundles of cash onto sidewalks and lawns. Police arrest him. Hank, who now knows Walt is the kingpin "Heisenberg," questions him, and Saul posts bail.

  Just before Jesse vanishes with a new identity, he realizes Saul's bodyguard Huell Babineaux took the ricin cigarette. That proves Walt orchestrated Brock's poisoning. Jesse beats Saul until he admits it, then douses Walt's house in gasoline. Hank arrives before the match is lit and persuades him to help bring Walt down.

  The plan to record Walt falls apart at a meeting when Jesse spots a stranger and wrongly assumes Walt has hired a killer. Jesse then tells Hank to go after Walt's buried money. Jesse phones Walt from the desert, claiming to have found the cash. Walt drives out, realizes the trick, and calls Todd's uncle Jack Welker, who leads a biker gang with ties to the Aryan Brotherhood. When Walt sees Hank and Steve Gomez with Jesse, he calls Jack off and surrenders. Jack's crew arrives anyway. A gunfight kills Hank and Gomez. Walt tells Jesse he watched Jane die, just before Jack's men take Jesse away.

  In captivity Jesse is tortured and made to cook for the gang. After a failed escape, Todd takes him to Andrea's house and kills her in front of him. Jack threatens to kill Brock if Jesse tries again.

  The finale begins a few months later. Walt returns from New Hampshire and tells Jack he has a new formula. He has Jesse brought in and tackles him to the floor just as a machine gun hidden in his car opens fire. Jesse strangles Todd with the chain from his shackles. Walt hands him a pistol and asks to be killed. Jesse tells him that if he wants to die, he can do it himself. Walt gives him a final nod, and Jesse drives off in Todd's El Camino, laughing and crying.

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• 7. Escape North

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  Skinny Pete and Badger hide the El Camino and give Jesse a place to sleep. That begins El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie. Old Joe will not take the car once he finds its LoJack. Pete and Badger hand over the money they got from Walt, and Badger gives Jesse his Pontiac Fiero. Badger then drives Pete's Ford Thunderbird several hours south to suggest Jesse fled to Mexico.

  Jesse sneaks into Todd's apartment to find the rest of the drug money. After hours of searching, he finds it, but the henchmen Neil Kandy and Casey arrive disguised as police. Neil disarms him. Jesse offers to split the cash, and as they leave he recognizes Neil as the welder who built the tether he wore while cooking in captivity.

  Jesse finds Ed Galbraith, Saul's "disappearer," played by Robert Forster. Ed wants $250,000 to help him leave town, and Jesse is $1,800 short. Jesse phones his parents and pretends he is ready to surrender, which draws police away from the Pinkman house. He slips inside and takes two pistols from his father's safe.

  At Neil's shop, Jesse asks for the $1,800 and is refused. Neil, high on cocaine, challenges him to a duel, and Jesse kills both Neil and Casey. He recovers the cash and sets an explosion to cover his tracks.

  Ed gives Jesse the surname "Driscoll" and smuggles him to Haines, Alaska. Jesse hands Ed a letter for Brock, saying there is no one else he wants to say goodbye to. As he drives away, a flashback shows him with Jane, admiring her talk of going wherever the universe takes her. She calls it "metaphorical" and urges him to make his own decisions. Jesse drives on, smiling.

  After the film, Francesca Liddy takes a payphone call from Saul, hiding in Omaha, Nebraska, as Gene Takavic. She tells him everyone connected to Walt is dead or cooperating with the authorities. She adds that Jesse's car was found "down by the border," so Pete's plan seems to have worked.

  Gilligan had deliberately left Jesse's fate open at the end of "Felina." On the 6th of November 2018, rumors began of a Breaking Bad sequel film about "the escape of a kidnapped man." Gilligan imagines Jesse enjoying the local brewery and perhaps working for a ski manufacturer. Paul believes Jesse will keep his nose clean and live modestly, and become "the artist that he was always meant to be." After two episodes of Better Call Saul, Paul called it his farewell to the character.

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• 8. Verdicts and Echoes

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  Alan Sepinwall noticed the audience's sympathy shifting from Walt to Jesse, who had a mixed reception in the first season. Paul points to the episodes "Peekaboo" and "ABQ" as turning points. Erik Kain of Forbes saw Jesse growing more human as Walt grew less sympathetic, and Emma Rosenblum of New York Magazine said her opinion changed beginning with "Peekaboo." Seth Amitin of IGN called Jesse the "coward in all of us in tough situations." Entertainment Weekly said that killing Gale cost Jesse the last of his innocence.

  Not every critic accepted the tidy label. Robert Downs Schultz of PopMatters argued that both men are liars, thieves and murderers. Only Jesse, he wrote, is consumed by guilt, remorse and self-hatred. Yet Schultz rejected calling Jesse simply the "conscience of the show." In his view, Jesse is more complex than that.

  Paul was just as surprised by viewers' loyalty. He told The Guardian that everyone, himself included, first saw Jesse as "just a drug burn-out." He said Walt and Jesse had "completely trading positions," with Jesse trying to be good while terrified of Walt. Donna Bowman of The A.V. Club said that in El Camino, Jesse finds his own redemption and avoids his mentor's fate.

  The awards followed. Paul won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 2010-2012 and 2014, for the episodes "Half Measures," "End Times" and "Confessions." He was nominated in 2009 and 2013. Paul was the first actor to win that category three times since the drama and comedy awards were separated. He also won three Saturn Awards for the role. In 2012, he lost a Critics' Choice Television Award to his castmate Giancarlo Esposito, then won it in 2014. His only Golden Globe nomination, in 2014, lost to Jon Voight.

  The character has also turned up elsewhere. In the 2016 animated film Zootopia, Walter and Jesse are parodied as "Woolter and Jesse," voiced by John DiMaggio, using a subway car as a lab. In August 2017 the Camp Camp episode "Cookin' Cookies" has silent cameos of the pair, threatened by Flower Scouts Troop #789.

  In July 2022, Vince Gilligan and Sony Pictures Television donated bronze statues of Jesse Pinkman and Walter White to the city of Albuquerque. They stand in the Albuquerque Convention Center.

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