'Breaking Bad' Creator Vince Gilligan Settles Once and for All If Walter White Is Dead

With El Camino right around the corner, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan waited until the last minute to reveal the fate of Walter White in the upcoming movie. Gilligan's drug-cooking drama has inspired a spinoff series, and now a sequel movie, but one of the show's biggest mysteries has endured -- until now.

Warning! Spoilers for Breaking Bad and El Camino are ahead!

As fans know, Breaking Bad ends with its titular antihero, Walter White (Bryan Cranston) lying on the ground in a pool of blood. By all appearances, he was dead, although it was a little ambiguous in TV terms. With the new sequel movie El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie coming soon, some have speculated that Heisenberg might be alive, but Gilligan says that that is not the case.

"Yeah, I'm going to give you that one, Rich, because I love you so much. Yes, Walter White is dead. Yes," Gilligan said in a new interview on The Rich Eisen Show.

This announcement practically broke the Breaking Bad fandom, which has spent years theorizing about how the teacher-turned-drug-lord could somehow still be alive. Some figured that Walter White would have to be alive for the movie to work, while others guessed that he would appear in flashbacks.

The fans mourned for Walter White all over again on social media this week. They mourned for their fan theories as well, some of which were years in the making.

"That's the last bit of hope gone then," one person tweeted glumly.

"I feel like it knew it was coming, but it still really sting," added another.

"Nooo! RIP Walter," a third person wrote.

Gilligan held this news until the very last moment, as El Camino comes out this weekend. The movie will premiere on AMC and Netflix on Friday, Oct. 11, with screenings in select theaters as well.

Even before fans knew Walter White's fate for sure, the movie promised to be about Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul). Jesse was a tragic foil for Walter in the original series, and he was one of the few characters with a somewhat hopeful ending.

Still, his story could go in almost any direction based on how Breaking Bad ended. After spending months in captivity, forced to cook meth for a white supremacist gang, Jesse was freed by Walter and drove off in a stolen car. Fans have a lot of questions about how he got away from the police, and if he suffered any consequences for his forced actions.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie premieres on Oct. 11.