Vince Gilligan Speculates On Jesse Pinkman's 'Breaking Bad' Fate

(Major spoilers for Breaking Bad follow.)

Breaking Bad is over for good, but not every character closed out the series with a definitive ending. One whose fate was left open-ended was Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), the gentle soul who had the spectacular misfortune to fall under the sway of Mr. White. The last we saw of him, he was driving off into the distance. Whether that ride ended with a fatal crash, jail time, a successful escape to Alaska, or a Disneyland trip with Brock, we don't know.

Series creator Vince Gilligan has previously said that the ambiguity was by design, stressing that "it's up to the individual viewer to decide what happens next for Jesse." However, that hasn't stopped him from coming up with some theories of his own. Hit the jump to see what he had to say.

My personal feeling is that he got away. But the most likely thing, as negative as this sounds, is that they're going to find this kid's fingerprints all over this lab and they're going to find him within a day or a week or a month. And he's still going to be on the hook for the murder of two federal agents. But yeah, even though that's the most likely outcome, the way I see it is that he got away and got to Alaska, changed his name, and had a new life. You want that for the kid. He deserves it.

Gilligan has previously gone on record as saying that "the romantic in [him] wants to believe that [Jesse] gets away with it and moves to Alaska and has a peaceful life communing with nature," and wrote in the script that Jesse is headed toward "something better." This latest statement is more or less in the same vein, but it acknowledges that what he hopes happened and what realistically would've happened aren't the same thing.

But even as his more pessimistic side peeks through, it sounds like Gilligan is making the choice to believe that Jesse got away. As someone who can't bear the thought of poor Jesse meeting an unhappy ending after all of that, I'm doing the same. Where do you think Jesse ended up?