'El Camino' Movie Teaser Is an Essential, Traumatic 'Breaking Bad' Recap

Netflix’s upcoming El Camino film explores what happens to Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad after the events of the main series, and the streaming platform released what feels like an essential recap video on Tuesday morning set to the tune of a new Chloe X Halle song called “ENCHANTED.”

The video is 3 minutes, 17 seconds and opens on the recorded interview Pinkman did with DEA Agent Hank Shrader late in Breaking Bad’s run. From there, it takes an emotional look at the events that shaped his life during the series, from first teaming up with Walter White to go up against local drug dealers all the way up to his imprisonment by a white supremacist gang. This is pointedly shown from Jessie’s perspective, reflecting on the emotional highs and lows and thinking about the worst things he’s done and best people he’s known.

There’s the time Jesse shot the coffee-loving Gale Boetticher point-blank to save himself and Walt, along with various other criminal acts. But there are also a few touching moments between him and girlfriend Jane Margolis, who died of a drug overdose when Walter refused to do anything about it — or later between Jesse and another girlfriend Andrea Cantillo with her son Brock.

Most of the final seasons explore Jesse and Walt’s falling out, mainly due to Jesse’s rage over Walt letting Jane die. All of it is a grim reminder of just what made Breaking Bad so engaging and popular. It’s a story about interesting people who do bad things and have terrible things happen to them. Jesse struggled with addiction and emotional issues for years, and getting embroiled in the drug trade didn’t help whatsoever. If anything, it made his life so much worse.

Getting a beat by beat reflection of Jesse’s most traumatic moments lets us see the Breaking Bad finale in a new light, particularly Jesse’s complex cocktail of emotions as he drives away in an El Camino vehicle. The mixture of rage, relief, joy, worry, and simmering frustration is palpable, making this the perfect, essential way to relive Breaking Bad ahead of El Camino’s release in October.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie will be released on Netflix on October 11, 2019.