They have no grudge against Walt - he's done plenty for them.  Until that moment they were working for him.   But the job was just to kill one lowlife methhead.  Now with two DEA corpses on their hands, the Bros are in a lot deeper than they planned to be, and decided to compensate themselves accordingly.

However, due to their own code of honor, they offered Walt the choice of walking away with his life plus one barrel of consolation cash - or being the third body.  Walt took the deal.

Yes, they were contracted to Walt. They wanted him to cook for them. I don't see why two dead cops (who they were prepared for and dealt with accordingly) would change the original deal. It was more than just $70M compensation for extra inconvenience. It was robbery. There was no discussion. They even threatened to kill him. Why the sudden change from loyal contractors to stealing from their business partner (and bizarrely allowing him to live). I didn't buy why that change took place. One could just say 'they're gangster nazis - that's how they roll' but they didn't seem duplicitous or capricious before.

Yes, but it was Jack, not Todd, that made all the decisions about robbing & threatening Walt. In any case, having Walt talked up as a formidable badass only increases the future threat of an aggrieved man. All the more reason to finish him off if you're going to steal his life savings.

Last edited by avatar (2013-09-17 00:26:42)

Walter White's new alias is "Lambert" (which is Skyler and Marie's maiden name).

I had to go back and rewatch the flash forward cold opening of episode 5.1.

The episode opens a year into the future in a Denny's restaurant, across the street from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Walt, full head of hair, full beard, new glasses and no wedding ring, is sitting alone and is served his breakfast: bacon, eggs and hashbrowns. Walt breaks the pieces of bacon in half, then arranges the pieces into the number "52" (which recalls the pilot episode).

A waitress tries to make conversation with him, Walt gives her the aforementioned fake name by showing her his ID from New Hampshire. Walt goes to the bathroom, swaps an envelope of cash for a set of keys in the bathroom with Lawson, his previous gun dealer. Lawson asks Walt for his word that "it" won't be crossing the border. Walt assures him that "it" won't be leaving town. Before exiting the bathroom, Walt lets out a slight cough and pops a pill. He then leaves a $100 tip for the waitress, exits the diner and locates the car that the keys belong to. Opening the trunk, "it" is revealed to be an M60 machine gun with ammunition, which has to be to kill Jack and his crew (or the czechs).

Before Lawson left the bathroom, he wished Walt luck ("Well...good luck, I guess"), and as shown in the opening flash forward of episode 5.9, Walt then goes straight to the house to get the ricin.

Walt is coming back to protect Skyler and the kids, who he thought were safe following his pretend Heisenberg theatrics over the phone, from his past. Whether Jesse has anything to do with the White family being in danger, who knows?  Lydia obviously knows about his family and his real identity, but for all we know her existence and Walt deciding that she lives gave her the motivation to act as a buffer between the czech end of things and Walt's life. And her coming to the carwash seemed out of pure desperation, like she needed him to know that regardless if he is 'out' or not, the fact that the purity has gone down could have serious consequences not just for her but for everybody else involved.

I think the phonecall to Skyler and the police was the end of Heisenberg. Heisenberg, who is Walt's super alter-ego, was in the empire business. Walt's now in the family protecting business, which of course means destroying any trace of his business empire (Blue Sky being back on the streets, his ex-partner, who is now making said blue meth for Todd and Lydia, and former associates) that will lead back to his family.

Hmm.  Doesn't seem right to me.  I think Walt truly doesn't care about the meth business anymore.   

Okay, I could maybe buy it if his cancer has reached the point where he's got a very short time left and he wants to settle that score while he still can.   But the plotting of the show has been so solid all along that that seems... thin.

This is what's called the "pregnant moment" in storytelling - i.e. why is this happening NOW?   You don't just have a character get up one random day and go on a killing spree - you give the character a solid, compelling reason to do it.   Something new about today that wasn't there yesterday.

I think Walt's back because of a specific threat to the family, and I think it's something that only just happened.  Obviously it'll involve the Bros and Jesse somehow but I bet it's something more specific than just Walt deciding this would be a good week to come home and kill them.

Where we are as of now, Walt's best way to protect the family is to stay gone.  Something's overridden that, even though him coming back puts his family in danger again.  So there must be a bigger danger that's arrived.

Typos fixed.

And even if I go with Walt's ego as motivator - the Bros have already taken over the bizness and Walt knows they're cooking.  That was already going on for the past couple of episodes.  So it doesn't answer the "why NOW?" question.

It might be Jack's gang doing the stealing, but there's clearly a family-dynamic theme, and as Jack says...Todd would never forgive him if he killed Walt. Todd more than respects Walt, there's some serious hero worship going on. That's the reason he teared up in the desert, he saw his hero utterly broken as a result of Hank's death.

Jack covered it when he said that Todd wouldn't forgive him and yea, he was in a great mood in that he just made $70 million. It's true that Walt may not be happy, but it's not like these guys are not chess playing criminal masterminds. In their minds it's as simple as: "We're stronger, we've proved it, we'll take what we want and if they come back we'll kill them."

Oxymandias episode the greatest thing since fellatio...

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter … 21985.html

Yeaaah, I don't really want to read anything from the promos. I think stuff like this should be in a spoiler window, even in this thread.

Aha.    Clues clues clues.