Whatever happened to Jesse Pinkman?
It was perhaps the only question left lingering after Breaking Bad‘s explosive finale, in which Walter White spent his last breath saving his old partner from Uncle Jack and the neo-Nazis. So when Aaron Paul’s newly-liberated cook was sent racing into the night, fans were left to ponder over Jesse’s fate.
That is, until the Breaking Bad movie, El Camino, arrived on Netflix… more than 10 years after its predecessor debuted. And though Jesse Pinkman was undoubtedly one of the show’s most-liked characters – if not the only likable character – you would have been forgiven for questioning the existence of El Camino.
Despite its flaws, Breaking Bad was a near-perfect TV show that ended just at the right time, so why bother with a spinoff movie? Of course, all those fears and trepidations melted away within the first 10 minutes of El Camino, largely thanks to Vince Gilligan’s expert direction. And we weren’t the only ones who flocked to see it in action; new figures published by Netflix have revealed the Breaking Bad continuation was streamed in more than 25 million households in its first week of release.
El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie was watched by 25,734,392 households in its first seven days pic.twitter.com/FDyPlYc8YO
— Netflix US (@netflix) October 23, 2019
Very impressive, indeed. This is the second time this week that Netflix has flaunted the viewing figures for one of its original IP; just yesterday, for instance, we learned that Stranger Things season 3 is now officially the platform’s most-watched original series ever. In an earnings report, Netflix announced that the show’s third installment was viewed by a record 64 million households in its first four weeks.
And at 25.7 million in just seven days, El Camino came pretty damn close. It is, without question, the last hurrah for Breaking Bad, given the ways in which Gilligan was able to tie up all the loose ends and, in so doing, give Jesse Pinkman the send-off he deserves.
