like walt obviously never wanted to or tried to focus on his cancer as a disease, it just became a nebulous entity that was in turns an impetus to Get what he Wanted and an exit sign, and thus was never a huge component of his jesse/business-facing identity, but it’s so excruciatingly clear that the cancer as a disease WAS a big part of his identity to jesse. walt worried about people perceiving him as withered and diseased, but jesse perceived him the complete opposite way and transitioned to that “digital short about making a meth comic” hero worship state of walt partially because of his cancer. jesse not only has a well documented affinity for protecting the vulnerable (and like it or not, cancer is an inherently vulnerable disease), he has an early established personal connection with cancer thru his late aunt ginny. his and ginny’s relationship is a story told almost exclusively through offscreen events and visual or conversational cues, but that just makes it all the more wrenching because this story falls into place in near perfect tandem with the show’s deepening and softening of jesse’s character. we realize that he’s a loving, insecure, vulnerable person just as we’re also piecing together that he lived for years with this woman who loved him as he Was and who he cared for devotedly until she died. her things remain in her house untouched; when he invokes her name, there’s an unusual degree of reverence to it that we don’t typically see with jesse. he clearly still reveres ginny and those emotions transfer to walt as soon as jesse learns about his cancer diagnosis. that protective instinct emerges, that sense of urgency returns. when walt says that his cancer is stage 3a, jesse unconsciously mumbles “in ur lymph nodes”—not a fact u would expect him to just know offhand. jesse knows this from his time with ginny and in that line—the quietness of it, the impulsivity of it—we see that jesse is thinking about Time. realizing how little of it walt must have left if it’s in his lymph nodes. and so he submits. jesse submits and follows his protective instinct despite the harm it leads him to because he wants to buy walt more time. walt and ginny have become inextricably linked in his mind and when walt dispenses those rare bits of affection and approval, those links only grow stronger. we see all these newly uncovered parts of jesse—the part of him that cares deeply for the vulnerable, the part of him that needs validation from a parental figure, the part of him that is no longer there following ginny’s death—bending to accommodate a generous perspective of walt as a sort of hero who is fighting cancer and graciously allowing jesse to fight by his side for a greater good. and if jesse can reach the bar that walt has set for him, if he can just do what he’s told and chase walt’s approval, maybe he can earn them that victory and save walt from what happened to ginny. i just think that if ginny weren’t a part of this equation, we wouldn’t have gotten the walt and jesse relationship we got. in any case, we certainly wouldn’t have gotten jesse lovingly drawing and inking a literal comic book superhero version of walt and their adventures.
