There’s a lot of character to keep up with in Breaking Bad, so it’s understandable to forget a face every now and then. If it isn’t Walter White, Jesse Pinkman, or Gus Fring, the cast starts to disperse into all sorts of supporting roles and recurring characters. When you add in spin-offs such as El Camino and Better Call Saul, things get even more confusing. But does it ring any bells when we mention the name Lydia?
Often ranked highly on lists for Breaking Bad‘s most annoying characters, Lydia Rodarte-Quayle is the head of Logistics at Madrigal Electromotive GmbH, based in Houston, Texas. Prior to the collapse of Gus Fring’s drug empire, Lydia was secretly supplying the businessman with methylamine, an organic compound used in the production of methamphetamine to circumvent the need to buy pseudoephedrine.
It might be easier for us to say… “remember that woman Mike almost shot with her daughter in the house? That’s Lydia.” If it’s all flooding back to you now, allow us to elaborate on Lydia’s role within the show.
At some point in time, Lydia was married or in a relationship and had a daughter called Kiira, whom she was forced to raise as a single mother once the father left them. In order to make ends meet for Kiira, Lydia became the business partner of Gus Fring, helping him procure the necessary chemicals, equipment, and resources to aid in his expanding empire.
Lydia also met Mike Ehrmantraut and explained the process of laundering money from his hustle as a hired hitman, giving him the means to transfer his illegally obtained money into a bank account for everyday use. After Gus’ death, Lydia came under suspicion from local authorities for her involvement. Several me were arrested in connection with Gus’ empire and Lydia, afraid that one of them would rat her out, tried to hire Mike to kill them, but he refused.
When Mike turned her down, Lydia instead approached one of Mike’s men, Chris Mara, and offered him a handsome sum to kill Mike and the prisoners. Mike, to save his own skin, reluctantly murders Chris, then goes after Lydia. One night, Mike breaks into Lydia’s home and holds her at gunpoint. Lydia asks him to leave her body in the house so that Kiira didn’t think she abandoned her. Mike reconsiders, convinced that Lydia could still be useful, and kidnaps her instead to aid in Walt’s own drug empire as Heisenberg.
Lydia becomes an associate of Walt, Jesse, and Mike — against the latter’s wishes. All the while, Mike maintains that they should kill Lydia as she’s exhausted her usefulness. Todd becomes infatuated with Lydia once he takes over Walt’s meth production for a short period, but Lydia reprimands him for failing to produce the same purity level as Walt.
One night, when Lydia calls Todd to converse regarding their plot to kill Walt. Instead, Walt answers Todd’s phone and informs Lydia that he had laced her tea with ricin, a poison naturally found in castor beans. It is implied later on that Lydia succumbs to the poison and dies.
She appears in numerous flashbacks during Better Call Saul, during which we see her gradually introduced into Gus’ operation.
