LAST EDITED ON 08-15-13 AT 09:15 PM (EST)Easily the best show in a long, long time, such a well-written and meticulously-thought out show. The final season just premiered on Sunday and what did you think? The drama just got amped up in a huge way with the Walt-vs-Hank confrontation ("Tread lightly"). This is one of the very few shows that got better with each passing season and has yet to have a jump-the-shark moment. I'm a huge LOST fan but that show really went off the rails after a while, completely in contrast of what's happening here with Breaking Bad.
How will the series end? What's going to happen with Walt, Skyler, Hank, Jesse? There's all kinds of predictions and theories out there (such as this, this and this). Your guess is as good as mine as to what will unfold.
Here's my not-so-scientific predictions of what might happen in this final season, using some of the ideas generated in these links plus some of my own that I haven't seen discussed yet:
Lydia shows up to confront Walt and to try to convince him to return to cooking, but he isn't there and Skyler is there instead. Lydia kills Skyler - this is foreshadowed by Skyler angrily telling Lydia to leave at the car wash. Skyler's eventual death has seemed to be inevitable for some time now and is explained well in one of the links above (the 'mindblowing' one).
The general consensus out there seems to be that it is Lydia who would die at the hands of Walt/Skyler, but I'm presenting an alternative scenario because of the car wash scene and Lydia being out of luck with Walt's sudden decision to quit the meth business)
Walter dies... or so we think. I like the idea presented in one of the links above that his death could be foreshadowed by the spinning of the gun eventually pointing to the beanbag chair and then Jesse killing him with it. But this is what I think could happen: Walt realizes he needs to disappear and takes a poison to eventually put him to sleep for an extended period of time (as a chem teacher, he'd certainly know how to make it happen and maybe Saul is in on it to ensure he doesn't get buried alive after his funeral) and he goes over to pick a fight with Jesse - perhaps even using the beanbag chair, i.e. they grapple and Walt dives into the bag and "asphyxiates". Jesse thinks he has killed Walt in the fight and that's the last everyone sees or hears from Walt, until the "Hello, Carol" moment that we saw in the flash forward at the beginning of this season's premiere. I think it's also possible that Walt disappears and then as an epilogue in the finale, he reappears as in the flash forward scene and then goes after Hank.
I see Walt Jr. dying in his car - we've been shown a couple of times where he says he has to use both feet to drive the car and I see this as a foreshadowing. Perhaps Holly dies with him as well? We saw Walt Jr. and Holly bonding in the last episode and there's been a couple of mentions of how he was 'really good' with Holly.
Marie has a relatively small role compared to the others in the family - it wouldn't surprise me if Walt uses her to send a message to Hank to stay off his back, so let's say sayonara to Marie.
Jesse, who knows? I think he lives. There's talk that there will be a spinoff series with Saul (so we know he's safe) and his bodyguard, so I can easily see Jesse continuing in the spinoff.
In the end, I think we are seeing Walt being despondent and physically run down after fakes his death because the one main reason he has done all this meth business was to be able to provide for his family - it's the whole point of Walt's actions as we've seen played out umpteen times, so to me the most logical outcome of the entire series is that his family ends up being all gone while Walt is the only one still alive.
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Or I could be completely wrong on all of the above ideas. We'll see.