Walt’s ego fuels final eps of ‘Breaking Bad,’ says Canuck producer/director

TORONTO – After last season’s jaw-dropping “Breaking Bad” finale, there’s little doubt that prideful anti-hero Walter White has officially become full-on bad with a capital B.

The explosive death of druglord Gus Fring puts the former high school teacher at the top of his game heading into the fifth and final season, with a triumphant Walt in an unprecedented position of power, says the show’s Canadian executive producer and director.

“All hail the new king,” Michelle MacLaren declares in a recent phone interview from Los Angeles, just days after wrapping production on the first half of a two-part final season.

“The first eight (episodes) is a lot about what Walter White will do to be on top and how far does he have to go to stay there.”

Walt’s gradual transformation from mild-mannered chemistry teacher to stone-cold criminal has been a steady but inevitable course for the AMC smash, which creator Vince Gilligan has said was his attempt to turn Mr. Chips into Scarface.

And while it’s been surprisingly easy for fans to give Walt a lot of leeway so far — even as he took ever-more despicable steps to protect his interests — those loyalties have become harder and harder to maintain as devastation mounts around him, MacLaren acknowledges while keeping mum on what’s in store.

“He’s got a pretty healthy ego, Walter White, so I think that feeds a lot of what he does. And it’s a big part of where his character goes,” says the Vancouver-raised MacLaren, who joined the staff in Season 2 after meeting Gilligan on “The X Files.”

“Nobody can justify what he does better than Walter White himself. It’s amazing to watch this character who at times is just so unbelievably horrible at times and you’re just thinking, ‘Oh my god, this guy.'”

Just 16 episodes remain to wrap up the searing drama, which has earned Bryan Cranston three Emmys for his riveting portrayal of a cancer-stricken father who makes meth to support his family. The first eight begin airing this Sunday while the rest are expected to be shown in 2013.

MacLaren says the final batch of eight episodes have yet to be written and it’s far from certain how things will end for Walt, his world-weary assistant Jesse (played by Aaron Paul), his reluctant accomplice wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) and his relentless DEA brother-in-law Hank (Dean Norris).

Will Jesse discover the cruel manipulations and dark secrets Walt has been keeping from him? Will Gus’s death allow Hank to finally catch the mysterious Heisenberg and learn the truth about Walt? How will Skyler deal with the realization she is married to a monster? Will Walt’s unrelenting hubris be his ultimate downfall?

MacLaren is tight-lipped, willing to only state the obvious: “It’s an interesting time for the Walt and Jesse team.”

“We’re definitely building and we’re definitely heading in a direction and it’s exciting and challenging for everybody,” she says.

“We all said at the end of this eight we were really glad we weren’t saying goodbye to each other yet, we’re coming back to make eight more. But it’s intense and it’s exciting and we’re loving what we’re doing. We’re very excited about it.”

The new season picks up immediately where the last one left off, she allows, and there will be fallout from Gus’s death.

Laura Fraser joins the cast as Lydia, a woman who “offers some really interesting challenges both opportunistically and morally for our characters.”

“She has crossed paths with Gus Fring in the past and she’s going to cross paths with (Walt and Jesse),” says MacLaren, whose “Breaking Bad” colleagues include Vancouver writer/producer Moira Walley-Beckett and production designer Mark Freeborn.

MacLaren says she leapt at the chance to direct the series when Gilligan invited her on set during Season 2. At the time, she told herself to throw out all inhibitions and “just go for it.” That has turned into a guiding philosophy for the entire crew.

“We learned this on ‘The X Files’: Always make sure the camera is telling the story. No gratuitous camera movement. But one thing we do on ‘Breaking Bad’ is we break that fourth wall and … we will put our cameras into positions that don’t logically make sense,” she notes.

“I think we really pushed the line on that.”

MacLaren’s memorable episodes include Season 3’s “One Minute” — a tense potboiler that culminates with a heart-stopping daylight attack on Hank involving two cartel hitmen known as The Cousins.

It all takes place in an open-air parking lot where the suspense is cranked up with an anonymous phone call that warns Hank he has precisely one minute before all hell breaks loose.

“I knew that there was a line, somewhere in there, but I think we really pushed it,” MacLaren says of the scene, which plays out in real time and becomes a key turning point for Hank’s character.

“And really I thought, ‘You know, we should go for it and I think stylistically we can really push this line and go beyond it being just two guys walking through a parking lot with a gun.’ Vince and I talked about it … and he really wanted that to be a real minute in the car and for it to feel really uncomfortable and to really feel the tension and the pressure and really be in Hank’s head. So I thought, ‘You know what? Let’s really push the elements here and when I shot it I thought, ‘Oh my God, have I gone too far? Are people just going to look at it and go: ‘What is she doing?’ “

If anything, it’s those kinds of no-holds-barred moments that has critics hailing “Breaking Bad” as one of TV’s all-time great crime series, alongside “The Wire” and “The Sopranos.”

MacLaren gives all credit to Gilligan for his steadfast vision, adding that he encourages ideas from everyone on the show.

She points to a dedicated team of writers who spend months working on every beat of the scripts.

“You can go into the room at 10 o’clock in the morning and listen to an idea that’s being thrown around for about an hour and then I’ll go out for meeting and I’ll come back and they’ve thrown that idea out and they’re on a completely different tangent,” she says.

“They work through every single possibility and permutation and that is a lot of work for them. They’re very much going through that process.”

It would be foolhardy to predict how “Breaking Bad” will end, she adds. If anything is certain about the show it’s that anything can happen.

“I think there’s certain things that Vince has in mind that he might hit (in the series finale) but he would probably be the first person to say there are certain things he may not go back to,” she says.

“Breaking Bad” returns to AMC on Sunday.