Walter White

Walter rides along with his brother-in-law, DEA agent Hank Schrader, on a raid and spots his former student Jesse Pinkman escaping. He blackmails Jesse into partnering with him, and the two start cooking in an RV in the desert. The first sale goes wrong: Walt kills Emilio with gas and, after a lot of hesitation, strangles Krazy-8 in Jesse's basement.

Walt refuses to let his old Gray Matter partners pay for his treatment, shaves his head and takes the name Heisenberg. To get paid by the dealer Tuco Salamanca, he blows up Tuco's office with fulminated mercury and closes the deal.

Tuco kidnaps Walt and Jesse in the desert, and Hank kills him in a shootout. To explain his disappearance, Walt fakes a fugue state. He hires the lawyer Saul Goodman to launder money and set up distribution.

Jesse gets involved with Jane, a heroin addict who threatens to blackmail Walt. One night Walt watches Jane choke during an overdose and does nothing. Around then his daughter, Holly, is born. Jane's father, an air traffic controller, falls apart with grief, and two planes collide over Walt's house. Skyler, his wife, sees through his lies and tells him to move out.

Skyler asks for a divorce and Walt swears he's out of the drug trade. Gus Fring, owner of the Los Pollos Hermanos chain, offers him $3 million for three months of work in a superlab hidden under an industrial laundry. Walt takes it and gets Gale Boetticher as his assistant.

The Salamanca cousins come for Walt and end up shooting Hank, who survives. When two of Gus's dealers threaten Jesse, Walt runs them down and finishes one off with a gunshot. He realizes Gus plans to replace him with Gale, and at the end of the season he sends Jesse to kill Gale to stay alive.

Gus kills his own henchman Victor with a box cutter in front of Walt and Jesse as a message. Skyler buys the car wash to launder the money. Hank, working from Gale's notes, starts looking into Gus. Walt tells Skyler he isn't in danger: he is the danger.

Gus pulls Jesse away from Walt and threatens the whole family. Brock, the son of Jesse's girlfriend, falls gravely ill, and Walt convinces Jesse that Gus did it. Walt teams up with Hector Salamanca, who hates Gus. Hector sets off a bomb at the nursing home and kills Gus. The final shot reveals Walt poisoned Brock with a plant from his backyard.

Walt sets up a new operation with Jesse and Mike Ehrmantraut, cooking in houses tented for fumigation. During a methylamine train heist, Todd kills a boy who saw everything. Walt kills Mike and has his men executed in prison. Then he announces he's out.

In Walt's bathroom, Hank finds a book inscribed by Gale and puts it all together. Jesse joins Hank. At To'hajiilee, the gang of Jack, Todd's uncle, kills Hank and takes most of the money. Walt flees to New Hampshire. Months later he returns to Albuquerque, secures money for his kids, poisons Lydia, frees Jesse and wipes out Jack's gang. Wounded, he dies in the lab.

Vince Gilligan pitched the show as the story of turning Mr. Chips into Scarface. AMC didn't want Bryan Cranston, known as the dad on Malcolm in the Middle, but Gilligan had worked with him on an episode of The X-Files. Cranston won four Emmys for Lead Actor for the role.