We are less than a week away from the "Breaking Bad" finale, and mastermind Vince Gilligan has decided to title it "Felina." Gilligan has always used titles to allude to and reveal aspects of the plot (remember "Seven Thirty-Seven" "Down" "Over" "ABQ" from season two, or "Ozymandias" and the fall of Walt's empire), and "Felina" figures to be one of the most complex titles in all of "Breaking Bad". Even armed with hindsight, people will debate and decipher the finale for years, but here's our best attempt at breaking down the clues we have leading to the final episode.

1. 'Felina' = Finale

A good place to start is that Felina is an anagram for finale. Simple enough. Let's get more interesting.

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2. Walt Returns To Save His Feleena

Marty Robbin's "El Paso" won the 1961 Grammy Award for Best Country and Western Recording. The song chronicles the story of a cowboy who falls in love with a woman named Feleena. The cowboy kills a man who hits on Feleena, and the cowboy is forced to flee town out of fear for his life. But while away, the cowboy desires to return to the town and to his love, Feleena.

Upon returning to town, the cowboy is gunned down and dies in Feleena's arms.

This connection aligns with "Breaking Bad's" transformation to a modern western, with scenes like the standoff between Hank and Uncle Jack's nazis defining "Breaking Bad's" descent to unmitigated disaster. 

We already know Walt is returning New Mexico armed with anger and an M60 machine gun, but who is his Feleena? At this point it seems unlikely anyone with a soul would hold a dying Walt, so could his Feleena be his inanimate meth empire? The name suggests Walt will die, but with no one left to hold him, we can't be sure how this will end.

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3. "Felina" = FeLiNa = Iron, Lithium, Sodium = Blood, Meth, Tears

FeLiNa reminds us that Breaking Bad begins and ends with chemistry. It's been a while since we've seen Walt use phosphine gas to escape from Krazy-8 and Emilio, but we know Walt returns for the ricin, and it's safe to bet chemistry will return to the final episode. Fan forums have connected the references to Fe (iron), Li (lithium) and Na (sodium) to blood, methamphetamine and tears respectively. While a clever reference to three key themes of the show, this doesn't provide much insight into what to expect in the finale. Just Gilligan being Gilligan.

4. "Felina" Alludes to Schrödinger's Cat

In "Granite State" we saw the return of Heisenberg, and thus the return of chemistry. But while Walt once chose to allude to Werner Heisenberg for his drug kingpin doppelgänger,  Felina may contain an allusion to another 20th century physicist: Erwin Schrödinger.

Translated from Spanish, "Felina" means feline. Erwin Schrödinger's 1935 Schrödinger's cat paradox presents a scenario where a cat can be both dead and alive, depending on an earlier random event. 

In "Granite State" we saw the return of Grey Matter Technologies, and how Walt's exclusion from the company set the stage for his horrific transformation. Had Walt stayed with Grey Matter Technologies, he would have had millions, if not billions, of dollars and would never have needed to sell meth. He never would have reunited with Jesse Pinkman or become involved with Gus, Mike, Saul, Todd or any of the characters who have contributed to widespread death and destruction across Albuquerque. 

As Walt sits in a depressing New Hampshire bar, he watches Elliott and Gretchen Schwartz describe how "the sweet, kind, brilliant man we once knew long ago," no longer exists. Walt is dead, but Heisenberg lives. Walt will return in the last act of his twisted drama, where Shakespeare meets Spaghetti Western, and no one can leave smiling. Walt needs to find his Feleena, put an end to the madness and supply the certainty Heisenberg could.

READ MORE: Neon Tommy's Breaking Bad coverage

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David Tobia