Why Did Walter White Leave Gray Matter In Breaking Bad? Throughout the five seasons of the show, there were lots of references to the main character’s prior work. However, Vince Gilligan, the show’s creator, didn’t offer an explanation for Walt’s exit from his previous job until many years after the finale of the series.
Years before Walt became a husband and parent, he was concentrating on his studies at the California Institute of Technology, wherein he attended with Elliot Schwartz, his best friend. For their work on crystal structures, Walt and a group of individuals received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1985.
Elliot and Walt created Gray Matter Technology together after they received their degrees. Walt was long gone by the time Gray Matter, a scientific research firm, grew into a multi-billion dollar institution.
The Gray Matter Technology History
At the California Institute of Technology, Walt and Elliott were close friends, and they worked together on their thesis and the scientific research that earned them the Nobel Prize. After graduating, the two friends made the decision to start their own scientific research firm, which they called Gray Matter Technologies—a combination of their two last names.
Walt once noted that early on, the two only had a handful of patents filed, so it seemed as though Gray Matter got off to a slow start. Gretchen, Walt’s female lab assistant, and Walt started dating about this period. Together with Elliott, they formed a close working relationship and, at one point, were engaged.
But as time went on, Walt started to feel inferior to her and her family’s affluence and ultimately made the decision to split up with Gretchen while on vacation in Newport, Rhode Island. Walt sold Elliott his stake in the business after he split from Gretchen for $5,000, which he said was a sizable sum of money at the time. He solely stated “personal” reasons for departing. Gray Matter subsequently became an extremely profitable, multi-billion dollar business, and Gretchen later married Elliott.
Despite his friendship with the two, Walter would privately feel that his work was taken and bitterly blame Gretchen and Elliott for his ultimate financial issues and lot in life, entirely ignoring the reality that he made the decision to quit the company. Walt had a lot of regrets about leaving Gray Matter, despite his refusal to acknowledge them.
Why Did Walter White Leave Gray Matter?
But Why Did Walter White Leave Gray Matter? When Walter and Skyler showed up at Elliot’s birthday celebration in the first season of Breaking Bad, it became clear that Walt’s choice to leave had more to it than he initially revealed. Later in the season, Walt made a brief mention of the personal reasons for his departure from the organization but didn’t go into further detail.
The real reason Walt left Gray Matter behind wasn’t disclosed by Gilligan until three years after the Breaking Bad final episode aired. Gilligan revealed during an interview that Walt departed Gray Matter because of Gretchen’s intimidating fortune:
Gilligan said that he thinks Walter was in a situation where he didn’t know the woman he was about to marry was so very rich and came from such a well-known family, and it sort of blew his head and caused Walter to feel inferior and drove him to overreact. He simply kind of withdrew. Gilligan then added: “I believe that the story has a whole other aspect that can be discovered.
Not so much the CliffsNotes version as this. If you pay close attention to a few of these scenes and view them without having a strong predetermined bias in favor of Walt or against Gretchen or Elliott, you can deduce these truths.” While Gretchen was on vacation with her parents for the Fourth of July, Walt broke up with her.
He then promptly sold his shareholding and went on to teach chemistry at the high school level. Not that being a teacher is a less admirable profession, but Walt was visibly struggling as he watched Gretchen and Elliot take Gray Matter to new heights of achievement. Due to the fact that Gray Matter was built on the foundation of Walt’s earlier scientific studies, he also felt as though Elliot had stolen his work.
It makes it logical that Walt constantly struggled internally because the Gray Matter incident was always on his mind. Later, he struggled to abandon his meth business because he held to the possibility of failing to achieve financial success. Walt’s ego frequently stood in the way of his ability to make decisions, especially while doing the right thing or picking the option that would help him gain confidence.
Walt ultimately decided to prioritize his illegal job over his family and friends in order to get notoriety. However, Breaking Bad wouldn’t have existed if Walter had never left Gray Matter.
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