Bad is bro­ken once again in the trail­er for El Camino

A fun­ny thing, time — it may seem like just yes­ter­day that chem­istry whiz-turned-meth king­pin Wal­ter White (Bryan Cranston) was mak­ing his last stand in a hail of auto­mat­ed machine-gun fire. In actu­al­i­ty, TV’s Break­ing Bad wound up its run six years ago, which means enough years have elapsed to place the prop­er­ty in reboot ter­ri­to­ry — recent enough to still be pop­u­lar, old enough for the pub­lic to crave more.

Hence the arrival of El Camino, a new fea­ture-length fol­low-up to Break­ing Bad com­ing to us by way of Net­flix. Last night dur­ing the Emmys, Net­flix gave up the first look at the film pri­or to its release online and in select the­aters next month, and Walt’s nowhere to be seen.

He was pre­sum­ably left dead at the finale ​“Feli­na,” with his accomplice/​frenemy Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) the chief sur­vivor of the blood­bath that closed out their show. The new trail­er joins him as he lights up a cig­a­rette in the epony­mous hot rod, parked out in the blue night of the desert. His face has been lat­ticed with scars, he looks haunt­ed; this guy’s been through it.

In keep­ing with his habits dur­ing the show’s orig­i­nal run, Vince Gilli­gan — showrun­ner, now turned direc­tor of the film — has kept mum about even the most innocu­ous details of the script or even its premise. All that’s known at present is that the film revolves around Jesse’s efforts to stay one step ahead of the law and the crim­i­nal ele­ment hot on his tail, and that his pals Bad­ger and Skin­ny Pete (Matt Jones and Charles Bak­er, respec­tive­ly) will reap­pear on the scene.

The offi­cial cast list also names enforcer Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks), which rais­es some ques­tions, as Ehrmantraut was last seen dead. Rea­son would sug­gest that a flash­back may bring him back onscreen, though that rais­es the addi­tion­al ques­tion as to whether Wal­ter White may show up in a sim­i­lar­ly spec­tral capacity.

Either way, after five sea­sons, fans know what they can expect beyond the machi­na­tions of plot: snatch­es of vio­lent dark com­e­dy, creep­ing cin­e­matog­ra­phy in the tra­di­tion of Roger Deakins, lots of panoram­ic views of the Amer­i­can South­west. Which clar­i­fies the real appeal of this project, the warm­ing feel­ing that yes, it is indeed good to be back.

El Camino: A Break­ing Bad Movie comes to Net­flix on 11 October.