“I don’t have any plans right now to do anything more in this universe. I know I probably gave the same answer at the end of Breaking Bad. I gotta prove to myself that I got something else in me. I’m not a one trick pony, that’s what I’m hoping.”
This is all understandable. Gilligan is a man with a keen sense of awareness for his own creation. If he feels there’s nothing left to explore in New Mexico, he’s probably right. At the same time, we live in an era of entertainment overload. The advent of streaming television has turned franchises like Star Wars into something that will live infinitely on our screens.
House of the Dragon is just the first in a long line of potential Game of Thrones spinoffs that prove fans of George R.R. Martin’s fantasy spectacle are hungry for much more content. There’s always more to milk from a franchise if you look for it. This is obviously a double-edged sword.
You walk a tightrope between angering your fans with watered-down fluff that overshadows the high-quality that defined your franchise initially, or leaving your series to the annals of history, only to be remembered during late-night binges or cable marathons. The Breaking Bad universe’s reputation is superb, leaving them in an ideal position to avoid both of these fates. People will hopefully always look back fondly at these two shows no matter how many years pass. Any more spinoffs risk ruining this sterling legacy.
But that doesn’t mean there’s not more to explore if Gilligan and Saul showrunner Peter Gould choose to do so. While characters like Walter White, Jesse Pinkman, and Saul Goodman have seen every detail of their lives extracted and depicted on the television, there are so many other iconic characters we’d love to see more of in some capacity.
Gus Fring or Mike Ehrmantraut Prequel
Even though we saw more of Gus (Giancarlo Esposito) and Mike (Jonathan Banks) in Better Call Saul, there’s still so much left to learn. Gus’s background is in Chile, something that was hinted at quite a bit in Breaking Bad’s fourth season. Hank Schrader (Dean Norris) was poking around this fact when trying to shut down the blue meth operation in New Mexico. Mike’s younger years are equally ambiguous. He was a police officer in Philadelphia, but how did his personality fit into that profession?
