My thoughts on Gus’s “No more children" have changed over the course of the series. I used to believe that the order really was a veiled command to murder Tomas. But over the years, particularly after watching season four a few more times, and in the details surfacing after his demise in season five, it became apparent that Gus didn’t always have everything go the way he wanted. He had a tendency to micromanage in his restaurant, yet was unable to manage Walter for very long. His Achilles Heel in the form of Hector Salamanca became his undoing. Gus was so meticulous and fastidious in the way that he presented himself to the outside world, his interest in some low-level hood dealers seemed disingenuous at best, and while he clearly states that he only intervened into Jesse’s poisoning attempt due to his relationship with Walter (rather than flat out killing Jesse, as is heavily implied), one wonders if he’d even ever talked to those two dealers ("my men") before, or if, like Walter, he considered a certain branch of the business beneath him. Would there really be an understanding between these three, that a phrase like ‘no more children’ would be taken as code for murder? Or was it entirely possible that the meaning was misconstrued? Perhaps, much like Todd in a later scene, there was only one interpretation for these two men, and force was the only language they knew; that in their reality, letting an 11 year old go who knew too much about their business was best dealt with in a ‘final’ way. When Walter suggests that Gus had full knowledge of how the dealers would carry out their instruction, Gus hisses back in cold outrage, "Are you asking me if I ordered the murder of a child?". "I would never ask you that," Walt concedes, but we, as the viewer, are left in doubt as to Gus’s true intentions.
He tells Walter that he has children, and speaks as a father would when he coaxes Walter back into the meth trade with his ‘a man provides’ speech. We even see evidence that young children live in Gus’s house, with toys strewn about the place. Would this same man, one who bears a specific integrity in his role as drug kingpin, who refuses to deal with an ‘unprofessional’ junkie like Jesse, really call for the death of a child?
We learn in ‘Hermanos' that Gus is beset by tragedy, living with harsh memories of seeing his partner murdered before him. His partner was killed because Gus's tactic to gain an introduction to Don Eladio by supplying his men with their product backfired on him. Max was sacrificed because Gus was an untouchable, marked by his past, but he is clearly haunted by this choice. With this new lens, Gus becomes something of a tragic figure, and it makes his urging of 'no more children', only to have it end in another unwitting murder, all the more stark. And taken in this context, it becomes a direct parallel to season five's 'Dead Freight’, where another child is murdered when a direct order is received in a disturbing way. It also becomes all the more ironic that the order of ‘No more children’ also contributes to Gus’s downfall. If we believe that Gus did not actually call for Tomas’ murder, then it becomes a rather sick joke that Walter is able to best him through endangering the life of a child. Walter has become more ruthless than even the box-cutter wielding, poison-happy murderer. (And when Walter pleads to Jesse, ‘who do you know who’s okay with using children, Jesse? Who do you know who has allowed children to be murdered?”, we believe in Walter’s innocence just as Jesse does because Gus’s scruples are still a mystery to us).
As noted above, in Dead Freight, Jesse explicitly states to Todd, their new hand, that “no one can ever know about this" while discussing their train heist, only to have his words mock him when Todd takes them at complete face value, murdering 14 year old Drew Sharp after the boy comes across them stealing meth from the train. Jesse unwittingly contributed to the boy’s death by assuming that both he and Todd were on the same page: that even in the drug business, harm to children was off-limits.
While there are many discussions focusing on the parallels between Walter and Gus, I liked the more subtle connections made between Gus and Jesse, the most visual being that each man paid for their sins in the right side of their face.
And there seems to be an understanding between them that Walter doesn’t quite catch. Jesse is able to see Gus clearly, while Gus likes to think “he sees things in people”, namely Jesse, once he realizes that Walter’s arrogance and self-worth have proven to be unstable variables that Gus doesn’t desire in his organization. The look between them after Gus slits Victor’s throat suggests that Jesse ‘gets’ Gus on a level that evades Walter, that he can look him in the eye without fear (a moment that recalls Jesse’s quiet “No” to Gus after he’s demanded to give up his retaliation on the men responsible for his friend’s murder).
So while we never really find out whether Gus’s decree was a call to end an 11 year-old’s life, perhaps how we choose to see the meaning of that order is indicative of how we choose to see Gus. Was he really that infallible? Ten steps ahead of everyone else and in command of every little thing that happened in his organization? Or was he as flawed as Walter, brought down by his arrogance and an unwavering need for retribution on those who had wronged him?
A question that keeps the mystery and the relevance of Gustavo Fring alive.
(Thank you to heisenbergchronicles for the Original Post, that I conveniently hijacked so I could prattle on. The OP deserved more notes, anyway.)
