Walter White is an abuser. We know he is a grade-A emotional manipulator, yes, but what has become increasingly evident over the last several seasons is that he's something far more dangerous and terrible, all the more so when we haven't known exactly what to what to call him. Abuse, at its core, is about dominance; it's about control, which has always been the watchword of Heisenberg.
The coercive tactics Walt employs with systematic regularity are well-documented not only in domestic violence situations but also other forms of coercion, like the so-called Stockholm Syndrome that hostages experience, the brainwashing method of cults, or even the torture perpetrated on prisoners of war. Yes, Walt's abuse is not physical, but therein lies the trick: He destroys the people around him in a way that leaves no marks, no evidence. (Remember the way Walt forced his way back into his home in Season 3, and Skyler finally called the police to remove him? They asked if he'd hit her, and when she said no, they shrugged and left.)
Consider also the "confessions" we've seen Walt make over the years -- most of them lies, and all of them designed to conceal even bigger deceptions. But the most important one, at least until now, was the first one: the opening scene of the pilot episode, where a shaking, desperate Walt looked into a video camera and insisted that he did it all for his family. The confession we see in the latest episode (aptly named "Confessions") is a dark mirror of that initial moment, a blackmail video that begins with the same line ("My name is Walter Hartwell White") before showing us another terrified, weeping man -- one who falsely implicates Hank as the true Heisenberg. The differences between the two videos are a measure of both what Walt has gained and what he has lost: the genuine love, humility, and fear we saw in those truly desperate moments replaced by egotism and manipulation.
The horror of this video comes not only from realization that Walt has plausibly implicated Hank in nearly every one of his crimes, but the contrast between the fragile desperation of the man who appears in the video and the calculation of mastermind who created it. We don't actually see Walt in the confession that he records for Hank: we see Heisenberg, wearing Walt's skin like Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs.
That's the man who shows up for the world's most awkward double date at a local Mexican restaurant as well, asking Hank why he wants to "tear this family apart." True to form, Walt plays the Think of the Children card so hard that it somehow makes Hank revealing Walt's horrific crimes seem like the true moral lapse: "Junior just found out that my cancer is back. He's already facing the idea of living without his father. To put this on top of that -- it's just not right."
If this shift in responsibility seems familiar, that's because we've seen Walt do this before in order to divide and conquer his foes, turning the enormity of his actions into a mandate for concealing them. The first step for the abuser is a simple one: Isolating the victim, particlarly from any support systems they may have. When Walt finally revealed the secret of his meth manufacturing to Skyler, he created a separate world, layered on top of the existing one and nearly identical except for one crucial detail: this one contained the truth. And it was a world where he convinced her – slowly and successfully, using their children as collateral – that they had to live alone, unless she wanted to ruin everything. If she told anyone, even her closest family members, then it wouldn't be his crimes that destroyed their family, but rather her – and her failure to conceal them.
