WALTER WHITE: We tried to poison you.  We tried to poison you because you’re an insane, degenerate piece of filth and you deserve to die.

Teacher. Husband. Father. Cancer patient. On paper, Walter White (the brillaint Bryan Cranston) is an incredibly sympathetic man who you can’t help but feel sorry for. Season One of AMC’s spectacular Breaking Bad worked hard in establishing its protagonist as an ultimately good guy, someone to root for. He gave up on the opportunity to be a rich scientist, instead working as a high school chemistry teacher, not being paid enough to afford his cancer treatment. His son (RJ Mitte) suffers from cerebral palsy, and we are left cheering when Walter turns to violence to stand up for his son. All of his aggressive little acts merit a smile, actually… From taking out his frustration on a smarmy business man’s car, to blowing up an insane drug dealers room, it’s hard not to be on Walt’s side. Even his violent murder of a chained up drug dealer in his basement was justified… Hey, that guy had a shard of broken plate, it was him or Walt. Season Two, making the best move it could have, heads in the opposite direction to Season One. Meet Heisenberg, an inverse of Walter White’s identity, and at the same time perhaps the man he’s been all along.

We ended Season One prematurely, perhaps, due to that ever-soul-destroying writers strike. It closed on Walter and his protégée Jesse Pinkman (the Emmy-nominated, and deservedly so, Aaron Paul) making a deal with the devil, the vicious and unpredictable Tuco (Raymond Cruz). Much like any Faustian arrangement, it quickly falls apart. Tuco, after beating a lackey to death on a whim, has dragged Walter and Jesse into his business, and now they’re a threat to him. This story actually fits very well into S2’s arc, despite the conclusion of it in “Grilled” feeling more like a season finale. Tuco, descending into a paranoid crazy son of a bitch who kidnaps the pair with wild dreams of having them shipped off to Mexico to cook meth for him there, really does lose sight of why he is dealing. His uncle, a wheelchair bound man who can’t or won’t appreciate his grandsons efforts, serves as a bleak reminder of Walter’s own situation. Both men, in the space of one episode, risk a loved one for their own sick need to dominate in the drugs trade. Tuco almost loses his grandfather to poison intended for himself; Walter almost loses his brother-in-law (Dean Norris) to a bullet meant for him. Eventually, Tuco dies much like he deserved to… Gunned down to stop him from a fit of intense rage. You could say the threat is now over. Everyone got away safely. As the pink toy bear in the opening scene of the season tells us: no fucking way.

Following this almost-season-finale, we begin a new journey into the depth of identity. For Hank, it is not only having a chink in his armour revealed, but having the entire helmet pulled off of him. Having faced what isn’t short of a monster, suddenly the man who laughed at a dead body crushed beneath a car is jumping from a bursting bottle of beer. His bravado is utterly annihilated in perhaps one of the most jaw-dropping scenes I have witnessed on television, as he is faced with a mans head on a tortoise and a fellow agent with his leg blown off, a horrific glimpse into the true hell of the drug world. And despite the devil being dead, Walter is still bound for this hell, walking directly into it of his own accord.

Walter’s identity undergoes multiple changes, contrasting with the guy we forgave for dealing back in the first season. Does he cover up the terrible climax of his encounter with Tuco by going back to his family, ready to make up for sins past? Not at all. He figures faking amnesia in an elaborate scheme involving walking around a supermarket naked is the way to go. Who knows, perhaps he’s naked because he’s a newborn again… Heisenberg has officially been born. Lying to his pregnant wife (which he does over and over again throughout the season, even though it is tearing their relationship to pieces) is the best option in his eyes.  Skylar (Anna Gunn) has every right to turn on Walter after his actions this season.  She even goes back to work, showing she is willing to lead an honest life and try to scrape through that way.  She’d never accept the money Walter is making if she knew the source.  Her reaction to her new boss, who she seems tempted to have an affair with, breaking a fairly minor law is telling.  She almost walks out of her job because of it.  Walter’s lies in turn leads to the eventual disintegration of their relationship, concluding with her leaving him in the finale. His own son changes his identity to Flynn, which amusingly Walter objects to completely despite doing the same thing to himself in his dealer lifestyle. His handling of his son is generally awful, from corrupting the innocence of his sons appeals website by replacing the kindness of strangers for money made on the back of fuelling drug addicts. The image of Walter hiding a gun and drug money in his own impending child’s bedroom shows the sick contrast between the two sides of his personality. His overwhelming need to dominate leads to him literally making his son drink himself ill, whilst arguing with Hank over his “territory”, foreshadowing the eventual fate of another “kid” he will encounter later in the season. By the end of the season, we see not a family man, but a man alone, watching the sky literally fall down because of his actions. Alone.

His role as a teacher is also looked at in good detail this season, and ultimately he fails completely as one. Jesse Pinkman, despite no longer being at school, is no doubt Walter’s student. Except this time he isn’t asking for homework, he is asking for a thieving addict to be punished for stealing from him. This leads to the disturbing “Peek-a-Boo”, in which Jesse’s life is put in danger undergoing that very task for Walter. The most important thing to note, perhaps, is Jesse actually looking out for a kid in need, trying to protect him as opposed to exploit him. This isn’t where Walter’s going to lead Jesse over the season, unfortunately. Another lie leads Jesse and Walter into the desert, with nobody there to help them, where Walter rips Jesse apart with words rather than encouraging his better side. The fact remains, however, that on some level Walter does care… This isn’t some one-dimensional asshole who only uses Jesse for drugs. The teacher/student dynamic is still there, but it is one torn between that of Walter caring for Jesse and Heisenberg’s frustration. In a way, Jesse’s friends make up a class. One of them being shot dead by a child, and the other arrested, shows where it’s all going to end up for the students of Heisenberg. With the entrance of Jane (an excellent turn by Krysten Ritter), we finally hit a tipping point. She’s a threat to Heisenberg, and she brings out the worst in Jesse. She’s the real catalyst that leads to the tragedy looming in the distance, inevitable, since the first scene of the season. Ultimately we see Walter White, the father figure, in a scene where he talks to Jane’s father (John de Lancie) in a cruel quirk of fate in which Jane’s fathers love for his daughter ultimately convinces Walter of what must be done. Realizing that she’s going to drag Jesse down into the depths of addiction, and towards death, Walter finally finds the two sides of his identity meeting in one devastating scene as she chokes on her own vomit. Walter, protective of Jesse, needs her gone to save his student, hell, his family, and Heisenberg is well aware that she is blackmailing him. At the same time, this moment is a complete inverse of any other scene in which we witnessed Walter’s darker side… He lets a damaged girl die in front of him, his close friends girlfriend. She doesn’t have broken glass to stab him with, she isn’t threatening him with a gun. In this moment, we see the old Walter fighting beneath the surface, revealed in a tear. But what’s done is done. There’s no way back for him now.

In an interesting but ultimately needed twist, we also begin to move away from Walter’s role as a cancer-ridden man. I mean, a cancer patient doing it for his family? Yeah, we’ll make some exceptions. But now? He has the money, he is getting better physically and yet he doesn’t stop. His very reason for becoming what he has is gone and yet he doesn’t stop. In one scene we see him standing in a queue waiting to buy some paint with the everyday people, and walking out from their ranks to threaten some fledgling dealers to stay out of his territory. He’s becoming a territorial animal in many ways, and this in turn works well when he’s growling at small animals to get out of his way, but sooner or later he’s going to run into something a lot bigger. Be it the far more cautious and savvy Gus (Giancarlo Esposito), or the cartel who cut a man’s head off then blew up an entire group of police, it is going to happen eventually. There was a backlash against the final scene in which we found out those dead bodies looming in Walt’s future were just unknowns thrown from the wreckage of a plane crash Walt unwittingly orchestrated because it was expected that thugs had gone after someone in the White household… I wouldn’t rule out that fate for any of them just yet.

Going into S3, we will be moving into new territory yet again. Season One introduced us to a normal man who turned to crime out of desperation and a series of cruel circumstances. Season Two focused on the consequences of taking the route he chose, transitioning the man we had all grown to root for into a very different man, now deep in the drug trade and having driven everyone he cared for away… His family have left him, Jesse is devastated and in rehab… The movement of identity from Walter White to Heisenberg will no doubt continue, with his own brother-in-law beginning to really go on the search for Heisenberg whilst raising charity for Walter at the same time. Both family member and nemesis, father figure and corrupter, crime lord and fragile school teacher… Walter White is a man of contrasts, and I can only see S3 bringing the two worlds closer and closer together. There can’t really be a happy ending for Walter now… The events are still in motion, the plane crash was just some shock and awe to alert us to it even moreso. If anything I expect S3 to be even darker than what came before, from the man who took a deal with the devil in S1 to a member of the damned deep in the circles of Hell. And I can’t wait.