He had a pistol in his jacket pocket. We saw Walt take it away from him while Mike was dying on that bench- he had the weapon out but didn’t have the energy to shoot (or didn’t see the point).
I have no idea.
True. It doesn’t have to be one or the other, and I’d assume it’s both. We know Walt has a fake ID and switches cars in the parking lot in addition to getting the gun. He’s changed his appearance a bit, too. For one reason or another he didn’t want to look like Heisenberg anymore. I presume he’s been laying low for a while. So he must be concerned that someone is watching him and wants to avoid them, and whatever he’s going to do, he probably wants to be able to disappear afterward. It’s not impossible that everything has fallen apart and he’s on a suicide mission, but I’d tend to think not. We do know that Walt thinks he can plot and scheme his way out of any problem and that refuses to accept the possibility that someone else can dictate the terms of his life. I don’t know what would happen if he were convinced it were game over and that he’d truly lost everything, but so far it’s hard to see him admitting that that has happened. This drug business is a real-life fantasy for him, so he always thinks he can find a way to win.
I was thinking about Walt’s improvised wrist-tie escape again this week and that consciously or unconsciously he picked the most action-movie way to get out because that’s sort of how he sees his life at this point.
[From last week’s thread]