Todd Alquist Is the Sociopathic Villain of the Final 'Breaking Bad' Season. Here's What to Remember Before 'El Camino.'
There was no shortage of memorable villains in Breaking Bad, from volatile, sociopathic kingpin Tuco Salamanca to calm sociopathic kingpin Gus Fring—not to mention the show's protagonist, Walter White, whose gradual descent from antihero to villain was the core of the show. But of all the bad guys Walt and Jesse encountered on their meth-cooking adventures, nobody embodied pure, dead-eyed evil more memorably than Jesse Plemmons' Todd Alquist.
Although Todd was one of the many casualties of the Breaking Bad finale—more on that later—his presence looms large over El Camino, the Netflix movie that follows a traumatized Jesse after his escape from captivity. In case you didn't get time to finish your rewatch before the movie, here's a quick refresher on the horrors of Todd.
Who is Todd Alquist and How Did He Get Involved With Walt and Jesse?
Todd was first introduced as a mild-mannered employee of Vamonos Pest, the fumigation company whose tents Walt, Jesse and Mike temporarily used as a front for their meth-cooking, having lost their high-tech super lab when they killed Gus Fring. Todd seems quiet, obedient and extremely helpful, and he gains Walt and Jesse's trust by pointing out a hidden nanny-cam inside a tented house they were about to cook meth in.
Since Walt and Jesse's operation is a little short-staffed at this point, they bring Todd on to help out with an ambitious train heist (because yes, Breaking Bad is secretly a Western). Though they successfully steal the methylamine they need, the heist ends in horrifying disaster when a child unwittingly wanders into the crime scene, becoming a witness. Without a moment's hesitation, Todd shoots and kills the boy.
Though everyone is stunned by this, it disturbs Jesse more than anyone, because Jesse's the only member of the team who still has a fully functioning soul at this point. Todd shows no actual remorse for the murder—calmly justifying it by pointing out that he couldn't let there be any witnesses—but he does seem worried that he's upset Walt, asking "Did I make a mistake, Mr. White?” It's altogether creepy, and not just because "Mr White" is Jesse's thing.
How Is Todd Associated With White Supremacists?
The team are forced to keep Todd around in large part because it turns out he has a very scary uncle, Jack, who's the leader of a white supremacist gang. Jack becomes useful when Walt needs to have a bunch of Gus Fring's leftover employees murdered in prison, and for a while Todd becomes Walt's partner-in-crime after Jesse peaces out of the business. But as it turns out, Walt is a terrible judge of character, or maybe his own character has just been warped so profoundly at this point that he doesn't see the huge red flags waving all around Todd, Jack, and the entire Aryan Brotherhood gang.
What Does Todd Have to Do With Hank's Death?
Without retreading all the ins and outs of just how this partnership goes south, the headline is that Jack and his men kill Walt's brother-in-law Hank, take Jesse prisoner, and take almost all of Walt's hard-earned drug money. There are a couple of interesting Todd beats in this scene—one is that Walt's life is spared solely because Todd hero-worships him, which is pretty much the most damning indictment of Walt's moral character you can imagine. The other is that when Jesse is about to be executed, Todd volunteers to keep him alive and torture him instead, supposedly to get information out of him. But really, it's because Todd is a sadist and also has a weird attachment to both Walt and Jesse!
What Does Todd Do With Jesse?
So Jesse is imprisoned and tortured and forced to cook incredibly pure crystal meth for several months, and honestly we don't need to dwell too long on this horrifying turn of events, because I'm pretty sure El Camino is going to spend plenty of time on it.
Does Todd Die At the End of Breaking Bad?
Suffice it to say, Walt shows up to take his revenge on Jack & co with a homemade automatic machine gun, and is surprised to find Jesse still alive. In an unexpected moment of not being pure garbage, Walt saves Jesse, who seizes the opportunity to strangle Todd to death with the chains he's been imprisoned in.
It's.... a satisfying moment, I'm not gonna lie. And so ends the ballad of Todd the Mild-Mannered Sociopath. But assuming he actually does have a prominent role in El Camino, what more are we about to discover about him? The good news is, we only have to wait a few more hours to find out.
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