13 Years Later, Breaking Bad's Best Episode Is Still Nearly Impossible To Top
13 years after "Ozymandias" first aired on September 15, 2013, its status as the best "Breaking Bad" episode remains hard to dispute. The third-to-last episode of the series is so acclaimed that it held a 10/10 rating on IMDb for years. Earlier in 2026, it lost that perfect score amid a review-bombing battle between "Breaking Bad" fans and "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" fans.
Why does "Ozymandias" score so highly? The episode serves as the climax of the entire series. It features the final confrontation between Walt (Bryan Cranston) and Hank (Dean Norris), the dissolution of Walt's family, the final rupture of Jesse (Aaron Paul) and Walt's relationship, and so much more. Everything Walt has built over the course of the series comes crashing down in the most devastating way possible, brought to life by an enormously talented cast and crew. TV doesn't get better than this.
The famous phone call scene was the hardest to write
Creator Vince Gilligan also considers "Ozymandias" one of the show's best episodes, although the script itself wasn't actually written by him. It was written by Moira Walley-Beckett, co-writer of the Season 3 episode "Fly."
Walley-Beckett revealed to The Hollywood Reporter the hardest scene of the episode to write: "If I had to pick, [it] would be the phone call with Walt and Skyler," she said. "He's vile. He says these heinous things and it's hard to know what's true and what isn't."
The conversation, which sparked debate among fans over how much of Walt's rage toward Skyler (Anna Gunn) was genuine, is perhaps one of the most heartbreaking sequences in the entire show. Walt lets his son and his sister-in-law think the absolute worst of him while trying to clear Skyler's name. "He's using secret language, really," Walley-Beckett said. "That was very complicated to navigate ... Some of what he was saying is true, and then he crosses a line that he has never crossed before with the insult. That's the tell for Skyler."
Ozymandias was directed by Rian Johnson
When Moira Walley-Beckett was assigned to write the episode, she requested Rian Johnson as its director. She wanted Johnson because the two had already worked together on "Fly." That pairing is especially interesting because, despite ranking high on TVLine's list of best-ever "Breaking Bad" episodes, "Fly" is one of the show's most controversial episodes. It's set almost entirely in one room, and its plot is deliberately minimal, making it a striking contrast to an episode where the story is barreling full-speed ahead.
There is one clear connection, however, between "Fly" and "Ozymandias": both episodes revisit Walt's role in Jane's (Krysten Ritter's) death in Season 2. In the Season 3 episode, Walt almost confesses to Jesse out of guilt, and in the Season 5 episode, he confesses out of rage.
"I'm also really grateful that I got to work with Moira on these specific episodes," Johnson told Vulture. "The place Walt was in when he was about to spill it the first time ... the fact that when he does actually spill it it's from such the opposite place, it was incredible to see that arc play out between these two very different episodes."