Breaking Bad‘s Krysten Ritter reflects on returning as Jane in El Camino. Ritter was introduced in season 2 of the hit AMC series as Jesse Pinkman’s (Aaron Paul) landlord and love interest. In one of the show’s most shocking moments, Walter White (Bryan Cranston) witnesses Jane dying of a heroin overdose but decides not to intervene, knowing that her death will help him regain control over his partner in crime. Her death ultimately played a major role in the crash of Wayfarer 515, a mysterious event that looms large over season 2.
After her death, Jane eventually returned for a flashback in the season 3 episode, “Abiquiú,” and then the Breaking Bad movie, El Camino, which was released on Netflix in 2019. The film is mostly an epilogue with some flashbacks to the events of Breaking Bad sprinkled in, some of which include Cranston, Jonathan Banks, and Jesse Plemons. After escaping the neo-Nazi compound in the film’s titular vehicle, Jesse eventually finds the vacuum guy (Robert Forster) and successfully disappears. As Jesse rides off into the Alaskan sunset, smiling at the prospect of new life, the film flashes back to an intimate moment he once shared with Jane.
Now, in an interview with THR promoting her role in Netflix’s Nightbooks, Ritter is looking back on her time as Jane Margolis. Even though El Camino was released nearly two years ago, Ritter is still ecstatic that she got the chance to reprise her breakthrough role in the Breaking Bad movie, especially since Jane’s scene wasn’t in the initial drafts of the script. Read Ritter reflect on her return in El Camino below:
[Vince Gilligan] said that I originally wasn’t there. Because the character is dead, you have to really make it make sense. But the ending of [El Camino] was so beautiful because he sent Jesse off into the sunset with Jane riding shotgun. So I thought it was such a beautiful ending for that character. It ended on a positive note. He was going to be okay, and she was there with him. So I thought it was awesome. I’m so glad that they included me, but yeah, I did hear that I wasn’t in the original draft.
Without a theatrical release, El Camino may have flown under the radar a bit, but it still provided a fitting sendoff for Breaking Bad‘s beloved deuteragonist. While the parent series on AMC was primarily concerned with Walt’s transformation from high school chemistry teacher to a ruthless drug kingpin and the prequel series, Better Call Saul, chronicles Jimmy McGill’s (Bob Odenkirk) slow descent into Saul Goodman, El Camino gave Jesse, one of this universe’s more sympathetic characters, his time to shine.
Jane was one of Jesse’s most formative relationships throughout the series and the unimaginable loss for the character, made Jane’s return El Camino‘s final moments a fitting sendoff for the character. With Better Call Saul set to air its final season, the question on everyone’s minds is if Cranston, Paul, or Ritter will make an appearance, even though it might be difficult to factor their characters into the plot. Fans will find out when season 6 airs sometime next year.
Source: THR
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