Vince Gilligan discusses 'Breaking Bad' finale planning

Breaking Bad went off the air last year, but the series remains one of the most beloved and discussed shows to ever grace our screens. And thankfully, the finale provided a satisfying close to the series.

EW recently ran a story called "The Art of Saying Goodbye," for which it interviewed the brains behind 10 iconic television series about crafting a series finale. Vince Gilligan, the man behind Breaking Bad, was one subject, and the site posted a full interview with him. He discusses how he created the series finale, and he described the path to getting there, including the numerous iterations he had before he and his crew settled on the version that made it to air:

"We had so many versions of the ending, and we really had boxed ourselves into a certain number of corners well in advance of the ending. Out of cockiness or stupidity, 16 episodes from the end, we had Walter White show up in a beard, long hair, and a new set of glasses, buying an M60 machine gun in a Denny's parking lot. We didn't really know how we were going to get to that story point - we didn't even know what that meant or what Walt was going to use that machine gun for. So that was kind of ill-advised. I wouldn't recommend to my fellow showrunners doing that unless you really know where it's all headed. That led to a great many dark nights of the soul, many days in the writer's room where I was like, "We're never going to get there.' The question always came up: 'What the hell do you need a gun that big for?' We had an idea for the longest time that Walt was going to break into the downtown jail in Albuquerque and just shoot the s- out of the jail with this M60 machine gun and rescue Jesse. Of course, we kept asking ourselves, 'Well, how bad is Walt going to be at the end here? Is he going to kill a bunch of upstanding, law-abiding jail guards? What the hell kind of ending is that?' And then we had some version of it where he's going to shoot up a prison bus. We had so many crazy ideas. But the crazier ideas went away bit by bit and step by step as we kept filling in the blanks of each episode."

For the full interview, which offers some great insight into the process, click here. What do you think of Gilligan's approach? Let us know in the comments below.