Breaking Bad’s Walt Is A Dark Mirror Of Lost’s Saddest Character
Breaking Bad's Walter White acts as a dark mirror for a major character from Lost. First released in 2008 and 2004, respectively, Breaking Bad and Lost both came to define the third Golden Age of Television across the mid-to-late 2000s. Though the two TV series are set in entirely different universes, Walter White (Bryan Cranston) is a dark version of what one of LOST's saddest characters could well have become in a darker timeline of events.
Breaking Bad's Walter White is a middle-aged high school teacher who feels underappreciated, having sold his majority stake in a now multi-billion-dollar chemical research company, Gray Matter, for just $5,000. When Breaking Bad begins, he finds out that he has lung cancer, tipping him over the edge and convincing him to cook crystal meth with his former student, Jesse Pinkman. Conversely, Lost's John Locke (Tery O'Quinn) also personifies a tragic life, being abandoned by his mother and never knowing his father from a young age. Although Locke does eventually meet his father, he turns out to be a con man who tricks John into giving him his kidney and pushes him from an eight-story building, forcing Locke to use a wheelchair for the rest of his life. This only changes when John is healed by the Lost island's magic, leading him to think he has been chosen for a higher purpose.
Related: Breaking Bad: What Walter White's Heisenberg Name Really Means
In this way, John Locke and Walter White mirror each other as middle-aged men defined by their losses in life and the belief that they deserve more. For Walt, this takes the form of an aggressive ego that only grows larger as he transforms into the evil drug kingpin, Heisenberg. On the other hand, John is more sympathetic and is often a
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