I Rewatched Breaking Bad, And My Feelings About Skyler White Have Changed Dramatically (2024)

Okay…listen. I actually don’t think Skyler White is the villain you all think she is in Breaking Bad.

I wasn’t the person who was watching Breaking Bad as it was airing. It first came out in 2008, and since I was in the fifth grade, I’m pretty sure my parents would have crucified me if they knew I was watching a show about drugs back then. But of course, college came around, and I decided to binge-watch it.

Hands down, this is one of the best shows to binge-watch on Netflix, even if it hails originally from AMC. The Breaking Bad cast delivers some of the best acting ever on television, and the story is unlike any other. There are still so many Breaking Bad moments that blow my mind now on any rewatch.

But, do you want to know what I started to realize as I rewatched it? That Skyler White really isn’t as horrible as everyone says she is. Maybe I just needed to grow up to understand her truly, but here we are – talking about it, and I’m going to convince you why she’s really not the villain of the show, as much as everyone believes she is.

Let Me Start Off By Saying I Used To Despise Skylar

Let’s get one thing straight — I did not always think like this. In fact, when I first watched this show, I hated Skyler, like most people.

Granted, I was eighteen at the time and sort of a newbie to how the world worked, and I was literally learning how to cook actual food from cooking channels on YouTube. I didn’t really have a right to say how much I hated someone on a TV show that dealt with such adult themes when I was barely an adult myself.

But, even on my second rewatch at twenty and my third at twenty-two, I found myself still not digging into who Skyler was as a person. I always thought that it was so selfish of her to do what she did after she found out what Walt was doing to provide for them. I couldn’t believe that she slept with Ted when Walt was literally risking his life to make sure they were provided for.

That’s the thing, though – I wasn’t paying attention to the female perspective because we really see the show from the perspective of Walt or Jesse. When you take a moment to sit back and really think about Skyler’s reasoning…you start to see that some of her choices are valid.

I Got Why She Kept Walt Jr. Away From His Father At The End, But It Still Didn’t Sit Right

Before I go off on this Skyler renaissance rant, I will say that while I disliked her back then, the one choice I initially agreed with was keeping Walt Jr. away from Walt, as well as Holly.

At a certain point, anyone with a brain could see that Walt was treading a dangerous path, and keeping the kids away from him was the wise decision. I would have done the same. It just makes the most sense.

However, at the time, even if I did agree with that one choice, there were still so many things Skyler did that didn’t sit right with me – until I really started to think more about it as I got older. And, my most recent rewatch shifted everything for me.

Rewatching The Series As An Adult Really Shifted My Perspective

Perhaps I just needed my frontal lobe to fully develop, but when I watched Breaking Bad in 2024, I started to realize that Skyler…is literally just a normal woman who made some pretty bad mistakes but also some good choices.

I want to preface this by saying that only some choices Skyler made were good. The romantic comedy lover in me can’t stand the idea of cheating, so those scenes were always a bit hard to watch. I also still don’t agree with her giving the money to Ted – even if that “Crawl Space” scene still gives me shivers.

What I realized as I rewatched was that I started to agree with her a lot more than I had in the past. Obviously, I still agreed with her about keeping the kids away at a certain point, but I also sided with her kicking Walt out now. I agreed with her trying to find a way to help him do it legally for his safety. I agreed with her decisions in the end because even if Walt is painted as the protagonist of the series, he slowly but surely turns into a morally corrupt protagonist – that’s the whole point of the series.

We see less of Skyler’s backstory. I understand we want to see Walt be a badass and see him cook with Jesse, but the more we see of that, the less we really understand the perspective of the other characters, and I made it a mission this time to sit down and focus on her perspective.

If My Husband Was Running A Freaking Meth Empire Behind My Back, Yeah, I’d Be Mad

A big issue I also see with fans regarding Skyler is that they believe she’s just a bully to Walt. She constantly yells at him, cheats on him, and does plenty more once she realizes what he is doing. In the end, she threatens his life with a knife.

Yeah, my perspective on that has shifted, too. Skyler may not be a good person, but it’s not like she’s not valid in her reasoning to be mad. If I knew my husband was running a freaking meth empire behind my back, with the possibility of us getting shot and killed because he messed up a deal or something, yeah, I’d be pissed.

Let’s not even get into what Skyler doesn’t know. She doesn’t know that Walt literally poisoned a child. She doesn’t know the horrors that Walt has committed aside from the few she found out herself. If anything, Skyler doesn’t even know everything Walt has done, but she’s trusting her gut towards the end, knowing that Walt is heading down a perilous path.

I Don’t Agree With All Her Actions – But I Certainly Don’t Think She’s In The Wrong Anymore

Look, Skyler wasn’t perfect. I don’t agree with everything she did. I definitely disagree with the whole Ted storyline. But nothing she ever did made her deserving of the life that Walt put her through.

At the beginning of the series, right during the “Pilot,” Skyler is simply an older, pregnant woman. She’s going through typical adult things – trying to help her husband provide for their family, worrying about bills, and, on top of that, struggling with a baby that she’s having late in life. Already, that’s a lot to handle, with a lot of risks.

Did she have her moments where she came off as off-putting before she found out? Sure, but literally nothing she ever said or did should have led her to the outcomes of Walt’s decisions. If we’re being honest, Walt made her the way that she is in later seasons – and many of us were just too blinded by the glory of Heisenberg and his empire to realize it truly.

There are plenty of reasons why I love Breaking Bad – it could be about the fantastic villain that is Gus Fring, or perhaps the best partner moments between Jesse and Walt – but now, the show has made me realize another reason why I love it: that even after multiple rewatches, it still finds a way to make viewers shift their perspective on a character.

Whether this makes you think of Skyler in a different light – or maybe hate her even more – I don’t care, but perhaps the next time we accuse a woman of being a bully because her husband is “providing” for her secretly, let’s all take a moment and reflect. I think it’ll do us some good.