Like finishing the pizza when you've had all but one slice.

Well, here's what Peter Gould (who wrote/directed Granite State) had to say about this question:

Now THAT'S interesting.

There's also the Todd/Lydia business that clearly needs some sort of resolution.   And good lord, they played the Stevia note yet again, suggesting that somehow or other Lydia's gonna get a steaming cup of Ricin.   But if that's not a red herring (it could be) then who, and how?   

The person who could most easily give Lydia a fatal dose is Todd.  But he's also the least likely one to ever to do it.    And yet... Todd's right/wrong meter is so bizarrely calibrated that I could see circumstances arising where he might do it. 

Finding out how they'll resolve this particular plot thread is what intrigues me the most, actually.

To bad ricen is so slow acting.  It would be awesome to see Todd try to do a Romeo and Juliet kiss the poison and play it off as that's the only book he's ever read.

Yeah, obviously Walt's bringing some firepower to the party - but if he doesn't also kill 'em with chemistry I'll be very disappointed.

I sense a plot to destroy the aryans...

I think you guys are right that chemistry will carry the day. When Walt and Saul were temporary bunkmates, Walt was thinking hard about hiring a team. I doubt it'll be "Avengers, assemble!" but it shows that Walt realizes he'll need some kind of help.

Walt and Jesse both have a beef with the aryans. Whatever else happened between them, they might team up to stage Mr. White's last chemistry lesson.

In the past, Walt has been able to secure some unlikely allies under the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" principle. (Walt didn't kill Gus Fring — Walt and Hector Salamanca killed Gus Fring. Hector was literally the button man.)

Walt goes to jail, where in prison he gets the health care he needs to treat his lung cancer.

I'm not seeing where any help would be coming from.  Saul is the one who would hook him up in the past and he's gone.  The guy hiding him said if he heard that he'd gone to town, he'd never be back.  If not for his previous purchase of a gun he wouldn't even know where to get that.  The only connection he has left in the underground is the guys he's after and that gun guy and he obviously didn't give him that much info as has been established in the flash forward to open the season. 

If this weren't the series finale, I could see a ragtag group of Walt, Badger and Skinny Pete assaulting the compound to rescue Jesse. THose guys are way too funny to fit into a series finale, in this context anyway.

I categorically don't think that's gonna happen. It's clearly set up as Walt going in lone-wolf style and going out in a blaze of glory.

Well why didn't you put it that way in the first place.

One thing this show specializes in is creating situations that make us say "Well I just don't see how X could happen, especially given Y and Z" and then showing us a surprising-but-somewhat-plausible way for X to happen. When it comes to the finale, it's hard to rule anything out.

BTW: Conan has the whole gang from the show on right now (Jonathan Banks is a solid talk show guest). Cranston said that the dvd/blu-ray boxed set will include a feature-length doc, part of which will show Paul and Cranston reading the final script together for the first time and reacting to it. Sounds kinda cool. Wait, I don't know... does that sound cool?

I have no idea what's going to happen in the final hour or how this could possibly be wrapped up in that amount of time. It feels like we're still introducing wrinkles to the story -- Skyler and the DEA is like a mid-season complication, you'd think.

The only expectation I have is that I'm going to be left wanting more, which is the way to go out I guess. The end of this episode could almost have been the finale (the music seemed to think it was) if not for the dangling promise of ricin and guns.