Is This What The Pink Bear Really Means in Breaking Bad?

The pink bear that lands in Walt’s pool in Breaking Bad after a tragic plane crash isn’t just his fault, it has far-reaching implications according to several people that actually makes a lot of sense when it’s really seen for what it is. While the actual bear doesn’t make the same appearance throughout the popular series, it’s not the only pink bear that we get to see or the only time that pink is used in a very telling manner. Pink is used as the color of innocence, purity, and something that is in danger of being lost and damaged by the actions of evil men, something that Walt ends up becoming at one point. The fact that he indirectly causes the crash that causes the bear to land in his pool is karmic in a big way since by not saving Jane he stresses out her father, unknowingly, who happens to be an air traffic controller, a job that requires a steady mind and that one has their wits about them. When the planes collide and send this charred remnant falling into Walt’s pool, along with the disembodied plastic eye, it kind of becomes the work of fate telling Walt that he’s well and truly damned, as the eye reminds him that he’s sucked into his orbit the very thing that he might have been seeking to avoid, the notice of fate that he’s been seeking to escape for so long. At that point, the audience knows, if they didn’t already, that Walt’s life doesn’t mean much, as he’s tossed away just about everything that could have possibly pulled him back from the brink.

Thinking that Walt was truly evil and simply needed an excuse to break bad is kind of harsh, but it might be true. Unfortunately, this would mean that inside each and every person there’s the capacity for great cruelty as well as a great good, which is something that many people would debate until they were blue in the face. Humanity isn’t perfect after all, and this is shown in Breaking Bad in quite a few ways, though since it’s Walter White’s story one can easily imagine that we’re being given a unique look at how his soul is up for grabs throughout the story, but it’s definitely forfeit in some instances since the evil he’s done has spilled over into the world beyond his sphere of influence, taking a course that he didn’t necessarily design but that his actions inadvertently caused. As to his own life, the emergence of the bear in his life was a moment that was bound to come since the notice of several pink bears throughout the series is hard to deny when it comes to the burgeoning innocence that was within Walt’s grasp so often. But the final image of the pink bear, charred and beaten to hell, leaving his life, is a sign that not only was his life about to hit a true bottom point but that he’d done everything he could to facilitate it, no matter how little he wanted to do such a thing. In a lot of ways, Walt wanted to be bad, but something deep down within him fought every step of the way, reminding him that he had something to lose. In the end, he lost it all anyway, but there was still the presumption that he could be a wicked man that might turn things around for the better.

Maybe that was a little too presumptuous though since Walt didn’t have much of a chance when he saw the opportunity and the ability to do what he wanted with the knowledge he possessed and the opportunity he was given with Jesse. By the time all was said and done he was the most reviled person in the show and had no one left to turn to, not even his family, who had for the most part abandoned him and left Walt to his own devices. One might think that’s a sad bit of commentary on a life that could have been saved on a number of occasions, and it is, but it’s also the price of living out the kind of existence that Walt eventually chose. Life is about many things obviously, but choices are what direct the whole show from time to time, and the choices that we make often come with consequences that some folks don’t want to think about, or face. The thing about that however is that there is something out there, a force, call it fate, or karma, or God, that makes it nearly impossible to go without having to pay the proverbial piper once that choice is made and our course is set. The pink bear is fate’s way of telling Walt that he messed up, that he took what was innocent, pure, and he tore it apart.