Jack Welker

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Entertainingly Detestable

Full Name

Jack Welker

Alias

Uncle Jack

Origin

Breaking Bad

Powers / Skills

Leadership

Gun proficiency
Marksmanship
Prison connections

Goals

Kill Gus Fring's enforcers.

Make money in the meth business.
Kill Hank Schrader and Steven Gomez (all succeeded).
Kill Walter White (failed).

Most Entertaining Features

Michael Bowen's intimidating performance.

He's a master gunman.
He cares for his nephew Todd and his gang.
His cunningness, manipulation and faux affably evil nature.

Most Detestable Traits

He's literally a power-hungry Nazi.

His betrayal of Walt and killing of Hank.
His needless brutality, pettiness and hypocrisy.
One of his sources of happiness is hurting and/or killing innocent people.
The trauma he inflicted upon Jesse by enslaving and torturing him for 6 months.

Type of ED

Hypocritical Crime Lord

“	Hey, remember! There's still the kid.	„
	~ Jack to Jesse Pinkman after having Todd kill his girlfriend while he's forced to watch.

“	I'm gonna show you just how wrong you are. Then I'm puttin' that bullet in your head myself.	„
	~ Jack confronting Walter White after being accused of being partners with Jesse.

“	You want your money, right? You want to know where it is? You pull that trigger, you'll never-	„
	~ Jack's last words before his death when Walter White shoots him in the head, thus avenging the deaths of both Walt's brother-in-law Hank Shrader and his DEA partner Steven Gomez in the process.

Jack Welker is the final antagonist of Breaking Bad, serving as the main antagonist of Season 5 and the posthumous overarching antagonist of El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie.

He is the leader of a White Supremacist gang, the uncle of Todd Alquist and the archenemy and former hitman of drug distributor Walter White.

He was portrayed by Michael Bowen.

His Qualities[]

What Makes Him Entertaining?[]

He gives off a very "Evil-is-cool" vibe from his character, ranging from his charm being a stark contrast to his actually ruthless personality to his actor Michael Bowen doing a superb job at portraying him and making him fun and bombastic to watch.
He has a genuine friendship with his gang; He treats Todd more like a son than a nephew as he continues working with Lydia due to his nephew's respect for her and it's implied that Jack would even let Todd be Lydia's boyfriend if he could and he was somewhat distraught while watching Jesse strangle Todd to death in the series finale. As for the rest of his gang, he treats them well and sometimes takes them to restaurants and water skiing.
His design is rather neat, as he has a cool black jacket and some funky attire. He also has a unique supply of resources at his disposal, such as a gang, some guns, his nephew Todd, multiple cigarettes, connections to prisoners and a car, and he makes the most of everything he has to work with.
Under Walt's request, he manages to have 10 prisoners killed within a short timespan of 2 minutes to stop them from testifying against Walt, which is somewhat of a record. It could also be argued that his victims were asshole victims given they were inmates who committed unknown crimes in the past that led to their sentence.
He has a partial sense of honor, as he was okay with sparing Walt and giving him a part of his money to avoid upsetting Todd, suggesting he's aware that his nephew admires the drug lord.
He's a skilled gunslinger, as he was able to skilfully instigate a shoot-out between his gang and the DEA agents Hank Schrader and Steven Gomez, which enabled the latter to be seen as an easy target for Jack's henchman Kenny who would then kill him during the fight. Plus, said shoot-out can be seen as one of the most endearing and thrilling scenes of the entire show given the dramatic music and classic "showdown in the desert" dynamics.
His murder of Hank, while not justified in any way, shape or form, does have a somewhat understandable reason behind it, as Hank and Steven had caught Jack and his Neo-Nazi gang doing bad stuff and would have arrested them if not for Hank and Steven dying in the shoot-out started by Jack himself.
He is shown to have some non-detracting darkly comedic moments here and there such as when Kenny is asking Jack where to kill Walter with Jack saying “Well, gee, I don't know, anywhere but my living room? Take him out back,” and during his final moments when he smokes his final cigarette and tries to offer Walter his stolen money while taunting him that he won’t find it if he kills him in order to try to protect his own life only to get shot by Walter.
He successfully steals $70,000,000 from Walt, showing his thievery skills are chessmaster level.
Thanks to his personal villainy towards Walt, he and his gang managed to take his entire drug empire away from him.
His actions have quite the long-lasting impact on the plot, as him killing Hank led to Walt being exposed as Heisenberg to the public and his family blaming him for the death of Hank, causing Walt to briefly kidnap his infant daughter Holly while ignoring his wife Skyler's pleas not to do it and he had to assume a new identity and stay out of Albuquerque for 6 months. He would later be the indirect cause of Walt's death given the latter had to sacrifice himself to kill Jack and his gang and save Jesse from his slavery. Furthermore, his treatment of Jesse was revealed to leave him severely traumatized for life in El Camino as the latter was suffering from PTSD and even Badger and Skinny Pete were horrified by what their friend had been through. Overall, Jack managed to manipulate and change the storyline of the series without it being made overly obvious to the audience as they couldn't have known what effects Jack's actions may have had on the future of the fifth season of Breaking Bad.
Even if his death isn't played for sympathy given how much he deserved to die for his actions, him being killed by Walt while offering him the last remains of his money in exchange for his life being spared is easily one of the most cathartic defeats in the show alongside those of Hector, Lalo, Bolsa, Gus, and Don Eladio.
Ultimately, while he is Near Pure Evil due to temporarily ruining Walter White's life out of spite for six months, murdering Hank Schrader, a DEA agent trying to uphold the law, in cold blood and betraying Jesse Pinkman by taking him in as an unwilling meth cook with the help of his gang, his cruelty, pettiness and sadism are not the main personality traits of his character but instead his calmness, intimidation and faux affable façade coupled with his intelligence, charisma and manipulation.

What Makes Him Detestable?[]

For starters, he's literally a Neo-Nazi who has presumably committed numerous crimes in the past out of racism.
He is confirmed to have corrupted Todd into the sociopathic monster he is.
Some of his murder methods come across as particularly brutal, such as letting a prisoner be shanked heavily to death and burning another one alive.
On Lydia's orders, he sadistically slaughters Declan's crew in front of him and then personally executes an injured Declan for trying to escape.
While the fight between Hank and Steven was a fun scene, the reason he initiated the shoot-out is because he intentionally ignored Walt's order of not going to the desert since he called off the intended hit on Jesse, showing he's a pretty bad listener.
Even after working with Walt for a while, Jack casually betrays him and fatally shoots Hank in the head while having Kenny restrain Walt and force him to watch his brother-in-law die despite offering Jack $80,000,000 to spare a wounded Hank's life. This left a major emotional effect on Walt as his family would turn against him and he'd leave his home for at least six months before returning to defeat Jack and his gang to help Jesse get his freedom back.
Upon being aware of Todd's murder of the 14 year-old boy Drew Sharp, Jack reacts apathetically and directs his anger at Jesse for snitching on Todd about the deed.
He and his gang betrayed Jesse and let Walt spitefully reveal his role in Jane Margolis's death to him all for the sake of breaking his will for aiding Hank in arresting him, which consequently worsened Jesse's time as an enslaved meth cook as he learnt that Walt indirectly killed his girlfriend in the show's second season. It's also shown that he and his Neo-Nazis tortured Jesse in both physical and psychological ways for their own amusement. He even lets Todd kill Andrea to spite Jesse and threatens to go after Brock, a 6 year-old boy, if he dare tries to flee from the compound a second time.
Despite originally being presented as a calm, stoic and focused man, he is later reduced to a pathetically slimy coward in his last moments as he attempts to tell Walt the location of his remaining amount of money that he stole from him in exchange for his life being spared, which was a dirty tactic that encourages Walt to kill him via shooting him in the head.

Trivia[]

For a long time, he was considered a Hate Sink, but his page was later deleted on the Hate Sink wiki and he was subsequently delegated to Entertainingly Detestable, as he was more of a cool and intimidating antagonist with a sense of charm and faux affability rather than a horrible villain who is not supposed to be liked by people and is instead meant to be booed off the screen whenever he appears.
- Vince Gilligan also says in the episode commentary for "Felina", "You hate the guy, but he's a badass right 'til the end" while also acknowledging his entertaining qualities in his death scene, such as his cough of blood and last cigarette.

According to Vince Gilligan, an early concept in El Camino would have been him returning as a ghost to torment Jesse during his trip to Alaska, but was cut because it would have darkened the film even more and Jesse had suffered enough. Had this concept been retained in the finished film, it would have made Welker a lot worse.