Ninian Lyne

Laura Fraser (Lydia Rodarte-Quayle)

**Lydia Rodarte-Quayle** is a business executive and the head of Logistics at Madrigal Electromotive GmbH, and is based at their office in Houston, Texas. She secretly supplied methylamine to Gustavo Fring prior to the collapse of Gus' Drug Empire, and later aligned herself with Walt's Drug Empire and eventually with Jack Welker's Gang. She is also a single mother, raising a young daughter named Kiira Rodarte-Quayle.

Show spoilers**Warning, the following may contain spoilers.**

## Contents

* 1Biography
	+ 1.1Early career
	+ 1.2Better Call Saul
		- 1.2.1Season 3
		- 1.2.2Season 4
		- 1.2.3Season 5
	+ 1.3Breaking Bad
		- 1.3.1Season 5
	+ 1.4After Breaking Bad
* 2Personality and traits
* 3Deaths
	+ 3.1Murders Connected to Lydia
* 4Appearances
	+ 4.1Breaking Bad
	+ 4.2Better Call Saul
* 5Quotes
* 6Trivia
* 7See also

## Biography

### Early career

Lydia is a long-time employee of the German manufacturing and shipping conglomerate Madrigal Electromotive GmbH, operating out of their office in Houston, Texas. She was eventually promoted to Head of Logistics and awarded a Platinum Award in recognition of "Outstanding Leadership in Business." She was at one point married or in a relationship, and eventually had a daughter named Kiira. However, it appears that Lydia's partner or husband left the both of them, leaving Lydia to raise her daughter alone.

At some point she became a partner to Gustavo Fring and Peter Schuler in their secret meth operation, assisting Gus in his distribution network and helping him procure necessary chemicals, equipment, and resources to aid in his expanding empire.

## Personality and traits

>
> "*It's that Lydia woman, you're sweet on her, you little bastard. Hey, Kenny, you believe this? Come on, you can do better! I mean, that one's so uptight she's probably got a wood-chipper for a coochie. Stick in down there you're pulling back a stump. Aw, what the hell. The heart wants what the heart wants, right?*"
> ―Jack Welker teasing his nephew over his feelings for Lydia
>

Lydia is a very high-strung and nervous character, and displays these characteristics even more when she is under stress. She seems to suffer from panic attacks based on the fact that she will sometimes breathe quickly and lightly from her upper-chest, rather than taking deep breaths from her diaphragm. Lydia may have abetted Gus' criminal activities (de-listing methylamine barrels as they arrive, which Ron Forenall then ships to Golden Moth Chemical, which Duane Chow then ships to the lab), but it is clear that she is much more concerned about the blowback from Gus' death landing on her. This fear drives her to make an 11-person hit list of anyone who might tie her to the superlab and Gus's drug empire, and asks Mike to take care of them all.

Right before Hank and the other agents show up at the Houston office, Lydia realizes that she has put on two different shoes, and after the DEA leaves she screams into a throw pillow. It is revealed that Hank did not miss that clue to Lydia's possible involvement as a link between "Burgermeister Meisterburger" in the German home office of Madrigal and Ron in the warehouse. Lydia is also prone to exaggeration, telling Mike that 14 DEA agents were screaming and yelling at her, and swarming all over the warehouse.

Ultimately, Lydia's neuroticism is her fatal flaw. Walt poisoned the tea she obsessively drinks to ease her anxiety. He relies on the fact that she will use the Stevia, as her perfectionism and compulsivity will not allow her to enjoy the tea in any other way.

Despite her neuroticism and energy, she can be cunning and quite ruthless when it comes to eliminating (such as Chow) or ratting out (such as Ron) other members of the organization to save herself. She is cold and calculating, and seems much in control of her destiny; she chooses time and time again to pursue the lucrative meth business, completely unperturbed by the human cost. She gets lucky, though, when implacable, unstoppable Mike chooses to let her live instead of leaving her dead in a ditch somewhere. Now bartering methylamine for her life, Lydia gets lucky once again when she and Jesse discover DEA trackers attached to the barrels of methylamine they're about to steal, saving them all from prison.

However, since that means she's no longer useful to the meth operation, her life is forfeit until she suggests a heist on a train which is carrying a tanker of methylamine, to fulfill all their precursor needs. Even when she is terrified and backed into a corner, Lydia has the audacity to ask for a cut of the money from the train heist.

In addition, when Mike was ready to kill her in her own home after she ordered the hit on him, she pleaded to Mike not to make her "disappear," even if her daughter saw the body. She wanted her daughter to see the body if Mike killed her so she would know her mother hadn't abandoned her. She seemed to see abandonment as far worse to scar for a child than seeing her mother dead, showing possible hints to abandonment in her past. It is possible that the father walked out on them.

The paranoiac and anxious nature of her personality is contrasted in *Better Call Saul*. In the early days of her involvement in the drug trade, she seems much more confident and collected. This distinction indicates that her demeanor greatly changed as her involvement with Gus Fring and the drug trade grew deeper.

Lydia is in many ways similar to Gus. Both are consummate business people, who dress perfectly and try to approach their operations with a degree of professionalism unusual for the meth trade. However, personality-wise, they are polar opposites: Gus is calm, calculated, and unflinching, while Lydia is paranoid, unpredictable, and unwilling to accept the brutality of the drug world. The contrast is best illustrated in Gus' massacre of the cartel as opposed to Lydia's using Jack Welker's gang to dispose of Declan and his crew. Gus composedly steps over bodies, reveling in exacting his violent revenge. Adversely, Lydia plugs her ears so as not to hear gunshots, and covers her eyes as she is guided through the carnage.

Lydia also shares traits with Walter. She dispatches others to do her dirty work for her, resulting in mental anguish as she struggles to maintain a separation between her personal life and criminal activity. Just like Walter, Lydia is obsessed with cutting off any loose ends that may implicate her, and even displays some of Walt's cold arrogance when she orders the death of Walter himself. To both characters, the ends always justify the means. The difference between the two is that Walt has no qualms with getting his hands dirty, and has become hardened by his experiences. Lydia, however, is totally dependent on others to carry out her nefarious deeds, and is often reluctant to look upon death, particularly that which she had caused.

## Quotes

>
> "*Sorry, but I'm not gonna apologize for being careful - with all that's been happening, for all I knew you were one of those undercover people they send into high schools, so, yeah, I'll take paranoid any day over getting gang-raped by prison guards.*"
> ―Lydia talking to Jesse Pinkman.[src]
>

>
> **Mike**: "*You don't know this woman like I do. I had a chance to deal with this before, and I gave her a pass. That's what I get for being sexist. Now if you'll excuse me...*"
> **Jesse**: "*Mike, you can't, just—Look, that's our precursor. We need her.*"
> **Mike**: "*Kid, if we have to ramp down for a while, so be it. It beats working with a lunatic who's gonna get us arrested or killed.*"
> **Jesse**: "*Look, she didn't seem crazy to me, you know? She just seemed, like, uptight.*"
> **Mike**: "*And now you're being sexist. Trust me, this woman deserves to die as much as any man I've ever met.*"
> ―Jesse and Mike discussing Mike's plan to kill Lydia.[src]
>

>
> **Lydia**: "*Hey! You still need methylamine, don't you? Right? You wanna talk methylamine? Then tell your partner to stop threatening me, and let's talk.*"
> **Walter**: "*Talk about what? You heard. You can't even get us a single barrel.*"
> **Lydia**: "*Who said anything about barrels? I'm talking about an ocean of the stuff.*"
> ―Lydia bartering with methylamine for her life.[src]
>

>
> **Walt**: "*Hello?*"
> **Lydia**: "*Is it done? Is he gone?*"
> **Walt**: "*Yeah, it's done. He's gone. They're all gone.*"
> **Lydia**: "*Todd? Who is this?*"
> **Walt**: "*It's Walt. How are you feeling? Kind of under the weather? Like you've got the flu? That would be the ricin I gave you. I slipped it into that Stevia crap that you're always putting in your tea.*"
> **Lydia**: "*Oh my god.*"
> **Walt**: "*Well, goodbye Lydia.*"
> ―Walt reveals to Lydia that he has poisoned her.[src]
>

## Trivia

* Lydia is the final character to be killed both in the show and by Walter.
* Lydia is the sixth main character in *Breaking Bad* to die, as well as the tenth and final main character to die in *Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul* overall.
* Lydia's fate is foreshadowed by Walt's aborted decision to poison her with ricin at The Grove in "Gliding Over All". He later fatally poisons her in the same place, using the behavior he noticed during their earlier meetings there.
* Lydia is fluent in German and possibly other languages. However, her pronunciation appears to be very poor. Actress Laura Fraser claims to have gotten the role after lying about her ability to speak German.
* Lydia is technically still alive at the end of the series, but it is assumed she died from the ricin shortly after. While some believe that Lydia did survive, it must be noted that the ricin Walt gave her was weapons-grade ricin extracted by a master chemist, not stuff made in a basement by an amateur. In *El Camino*, it is stated that she is in critical condition and not expected to survive.
	+ In real life, if Lydia sought emergency care immediately after learning she had been poisoned, it is likely she would have survived. According to Dave Trumbore, co-author of "The Science of Breaking Bad": since Walt told her the exact manner of her poisoning and she had been exposed to the ricin about 12 hours earlier, giving her plenty of time to seek medical attention, she could have survived anywhere from 36 to 72 hours without treatment.
* It is Todd's fixation on Lydia that causes Jack not to kill Jesse in "Granite State", because if the gang quit making meth, there would be no reason to continue doing business with Lydia. This results in Jesse's imprisonment in a cage, until he is rescued by Walt in "Felina"
* Lydia is seen driving several rental cars, including:
	+ Mercedes-Benz S-Class (W220) ("Off Brand")
	+ 2010 Nissan Sentra ("Blood Money")
	+ 2012 Toyota Prius ("To'hajiilee")
* Both Tuco and Lydia have said the sentence "We're going to make a lot of money together" to Walt.
* Lydia's name is the last word Walt says before dying, and to an extent, the last word in the entire series.
* Lydia is the only female character among the additional main cast in *Breaking Bad*.
* Lydia enjoys wearing red-soled Louboutin high heels.
* In *Breaking Bad*, Lydia never meets Walter Jr. and Marie. Lydia is never seen on screen with Gus, but it is clear that they did know each other.
	+ In *Better Call Saul*, Lydia and Gus are shown together in a couple of episodes.
* Laura Fraser confirmed after the announcement of the premiere date of the sixth and final season of *Better Call Saul* that she was unable to reprise her role as Lydia for the final season. This was due to COVID-19 restrictions preventing travel between the United States and Scotland, where she lived when the final season began filming.