While the stories and settings of Breaking Bad and Macbeth are drastically different, some of the characters and scenarios are surprisingly similar.
When Macbeth and Walter White are first introduced they don’t seem like they could be very similar at all. One is a brave warrior lauded for his victories in battle. The other is an unappreciated, awkward high school chemistry teacher. But then both of these characters drastically change after a pivotal event. Walt is diagnosed with cancer and Macbeth meets some witches who prophesy that he will become king. Both characters receive “predictions” that are seemingly opposites—death and kingship—that cause them to react very differently. Macbeth doesn’t believe what the witches tell him and Walt assumes that he can’t beat the cancer and is going to die in a few months. Even though these characters seem like opposites, after these substantial events, Macbeth and Walter start to show their similarities.
Walter and Macbeth react in almost the exact same fashion when they are about to commit their first murder. In Act 1, Scene 7, Macbeth is considering assassinating Duncan and he starts to debate the advantages and disadvantages. Walt does the exact same thing before murdering Krazy-8. Later, as Walter and Macbeth continue their journeys, they both start to think they’re invincible. Walt thinks that because he can make the purest meth on the market that everything should be his. When Macbeth finds out that “no man of woman born” can harm him, he thinks it’s impossible for him to be killed even when he learns that Macduff wasn’t born of a woman.
Macbeth and Walt also give similar soliloquies on the pointless nature of life. When Macbeth is told that his wife has died he delivers his famous soliloquy on life: “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” (Macbeth, 5.5.29-31). When Walter talks to another cancer patient in episode 408 (“Hermanos”), he says, “Every single life comes with a death sentence.” Both Walter and Macbeth acknowledge death as inevitable.
The two protagonists’ wives also need to be considered. At first, it isn’t clear how Lady Macbeth and Skyler White are similar except that they both put down their husbands. Lady Macbeth accuses Macbeth of not being a man and Skyler starts to push Walt away when he starts disappearing and acting weird. The difference between the two is that Lady Macbeth helps her husband in his endeavors from the beginning. Skyler, though, doesn’t join Walter in his meth business and doesn’t even know about it for some time. Eventually, Skyler does end up helping Walt by laundering money and becomes more like Lady Macbeth. But Lady Macbeth went to further extents to help her husband in his evil deeds while Skyler was always reluctant. It seems as though Lady Macbeth’s love of her husband outweighed her morals and Skyler’s sense of morality (and also her wanting the best for her children) outweighed her love of Walt. Skyler and Lady Macbeth also share a similarity when both of them, at some point, save their husbands. Lady Macbeth takes the daggers back when Macbeth forgot to leave them and Skyler imagines the cover up story that Walter has a gambling problem. If their wives wouldn’t have acted then Macbeth and Walt would most likely have gotten in a very difficult position.
It turns out that Macbeth and Breaking Bad have surprisingly similar characters and scenarios.
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