Lydia Rodarte-Quayle

Lydia Rodarte-Quayle
Portrayed by	Laura Fraser
Character information
Age	Mid-30's
Fate
Status	Deceased
Date of death	7th September 2011
Social life
Occupation	Executive at Madrigal Electromotive GmbH's Houston office
Residence	Lydia's Apartment, Houston, TX
Family	Kiira Rodarte-Quayle - Daughter
Relationships	Gustavo Fring - Business associate Peter Schuler - Madrigal superior
Appearances in Breaking Bad
First	"Madrigal"
Last	"Felina"
Appearances in Better Call Saul
First	——
Last	——
Appearance in El Camino
✘ No

"We're going to make a lot of money together."

―Lydia after closing a deal with Walter White

Lydia Rodarte-Quayle (pronunciation of last name: /roʊdɑrt kweɪl/) was the Head of Logistics at Madrigal Electromotive GmbH, and was based at their office in Houston, Texas. She supplied methylamine to Gustavo Fring prior to the collapse of Gus' Drug Empire, and later aligned herself with Walt's Drug Empire and later Jack's White Supremacist Gang. She was also a single mother, raising a young daughter named Kiira Rodarte-Quayle. She is the tertiary antagonist of the second half of Season 5.

Biography

Early career

At some point in her career, Lydia joined the German manufacturing and shipping conglomerate Madrigal Electromotive, working out of their office in Houston, Texas. She became an executive in the company and was awarded the Platinum Award in recognition of "Outstanding Leadership in Business."

Season 5

After attending a meeting between Madrigal's board of directors and the DEA, Lydia met with Mike Ehrmantraut at a diner. She gives him a list of eleven men who were on Gus's payroll and suggests Mike kill them before they can implicate either of them following the fall of Gus' Drug Empire. Mike shoots down the idea, vouching for his men and leaving Lydia panic-stricken. Unbeknownst to Mike, Lydia had hedged her bets beforehand by making the same pitch to another man, Chris Mara. Chris admits that Lydia was going to pay him $30,000 to kill Mike and $10,000 for each man on the list. Mike reluctantly kills Chris.

Later, Mike travels to Houston and sneaks into Lydia's house (also occupied by her daughter Kiira and hired nanny) to kill her for mandating the deaths of Chris and Duane Chow. Lydia begs him to leave her body in the house so that her daughter won't think she was abandoned. On the verge of shooting her, he hesitates and asks if she can still get her hands on methylamine.("Madrigal")

Lydia giving the 11 names to Mike at the diner ("Madrigal").

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Mike threatening to kill Lydia ("Madrigal").

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Lydia giving Ron Forenall to the DEA ("Fifty-One").

After she provides Walt, Mike, and Jesse with their first shipment of methylamine for free, Lydia receives a call from Mike at her office in Houston, who warns her that the police are about to arrive. Hank Schrader and Steven Gomez enter with officers in tow, and Lydia escorts them to the Madrigal warehouse and points out Ron Forenall, the warehouse supervisor who Hank and Gomez appear to be after, and he is arrested. Lydia then calls Mike, hysterical about Ron's arrest and tells him she cannot continue to supply methylamine without someone in the warehouse. On a later evening, Lydia opens a loading bay door to find Jesse outside, and she interrogates him before she lets him into the warehouse. Jesse uses a forklift to grab a barrel of methylamine that Lydia has erased from inventory off the shelf, but she notices a GPS tracker affixed to the bottom of the barrel ("Fifty-One").

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Jesse meeting Lydia in the warehouse ("Fifty-One").

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Lydia and Jesse look at the GPS tracker on the methylamine barrel ("Fifty-One").

Back in Albuquerque, Mike learns that Lydia was the one who spotted it and concludes she planted it to extricate herself from the meth business. Mike wants to kill her, but Jesse and Walt conclude she must be spared so as to not slow down their meth distribution ("Fifty-One").

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Mike threatening Lydia ("Dead Freight").

Mike, Walt, and Jesse soon kidnap Lydia and bring her to an abandoned warehouse. At Mike's orders, she calls Hank to report that she spotted what looked like a GPS device on one of Madrigal's methylamine barrels, and to ask how she should handle that development. On a laptop, Jesse taps into a bug Walt planted in Hank's office, and they listen as Hank and Gomez puzzle over who planted the GPS device - supporting Mike's belief that it was Lydia who did it. As Lydia protests her innocence, the group listens as Hank calls the Houston DEA office and learns that his colleagues in Texas did indeed tag the methylamine barrels, not just the one that Lydia spotted, but all of them. Still, Mike maintains they should kill Lydia. Desperate, Lydia blurts out that she can direct them to "an ocean" of methylamine in exchange for her safety ("Dead Freight").

Lydia telling Mike, Jesse, and Walt how to pull off the train heist ("Dead Freight").

Lydia lays down a map revealing the route for a train carrying a tanker car full of methylamine. She zeroes in on a three-mile stretch of "dark territory" - a dead zone for all lines of communication - and suggests they rob the train there. Mike, Walt, Jesse and Todd Alquist successfully pull off the train heist, stealing 1,000 gallons of methylamine. Following the heist, Todd shoots a young boy named Drew Sharp, whom he believed saw too much, resulting in Mike and Jesse wanting out of the meth business ("Dead Freight").

Later at a coffee shop, Walt asks Lydia for the names of Mike's men. Concerned that Walt will kill her once she gives up the list, Lydia argues for her continued usefulness by proposing he use Madrigal's resources to expand the business into the Czech Republic. Walt hears her out, and agrees to a trial run of her plan. Pleased, she shakes his hand and gives him the names. After she exits, Walt uncovers the ricin vial that he'd intended to poison her with: she'd been right about his intentions after all. As Walt and Todd cook batch after batch, Lydia ships the meth to the Czech Republic in oil drums using her Madrigal connections ("Gliding Over All").

Walt meeting Lydia in the coffee shop ("Gliding Over All")

Lydia with a barrel in the warehouse ("Gliding Over All")

Lydia discusses with Walt about the falling quality of the meth being produced ("Blood Money")

A few months later, Walt retires from the meth business and leaves all the cooking to Todd, which results in a severe drop in the meth purity percentage. Lydia visits him at the A1A Car Wash, begging him to come back. Walt declines and confesses to Skyler White that she was one of his former business associates. Skyler angrily approaches Lydia and kicks her out ("Blood Money").

Lydia inside Declan's meth lab ("Buried")

Lydia meets with Declan in the desert to discuss the falling standards of their business operation since Walt retired. She finds the lab incredibly dirty and is upset over the falling quality. She suggests that Declan use Todd as a meth cook, pointing out that Todd's first cook without Heisenberg was 74% pure. Declan, refuses, much to Lydia's disappointment. At this point, Declan is called to investigate a disturbance outside, and orders Lydia to stay in the lab. Knowing what is to come next, Lydia cowers in the bus and covers her ears: shooting is heard outside, and when Todd opens the hatch to the lab, it is revealed that Todd, his uncle Jack Welker, and Jack's White Supremacist Gang have killed Declan and his men. Lydia does not wish to see the carnage left by the coup she engineered, so she covers her eyes as Todd escorts her to the car ("Buried"). Following the heist of Declan's equipment and methylamine, she is present for Todd's first solo cook. She is upset at the poor quality of his meth, as well as the lack of blue color, and demands him to do better in future cooks ("To'hajiilee").

After Walt is exposed as Heisenberg and flees to New Hampshire, Lydia and Todd meet at the The Grove to talk about the future of their deal and their freedom. Lydia hints that she thinks Skyler should be killed, but Todd insists they have intimidated her enough. As Lydia tries to call off their partnership, Todd informs her the quality of meth has improved and the color is once again blue, and she reconsiders ("Granite State"). At this point, Todd is infatuated with Lydia, but she does not reciprocate his feelings.

Lydia, sick from the ricin, which leads to her demise.

Several months later, Lydia meets Todd at the cafe, where they are confronted by a returning Walt, who offers to show them how to cook meth without the methylamine in exchange for $1 million. Lydia feigns interest, and arranges for Walt to meet with Jack's group that evening. Once Walt is gone, she informs Todd that they will not be doing a deal with Walt, but killing him. That night, a visibly under the weather Lydia calls Todd to confirm that the task has been carried out, not knowing that all of Jack's neo-Nazis have just been killed by Walt and Jesse. Walt answers and reveals that he replaced the "Stevia crap" that she always puts in her tea with ricin, leaving Lydia to comprehend her fate as he hangs up on her ("Felina"). It is assumed that Lydia died shortly afterwards.

Personality and traits

Lydia talking to Mike ("Madrigal")

"You are tying up loose ends, and I don't want to be one of them. Once I give you that list, I've served my purpose, and then maybe I'm just one more person who knows too much."

―Lydia shrewd comment to Walter White.

Lydia is a very high-strung and nervous character, and displays these characteristics even more so 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, 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 causes her to go to lengths to make an 11-person kill list of everyone 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.

Lydia Rodarte-Quayle, Madrigal executive.

Despite her uptightness 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 very much in control of her destiny: she chooses time and again to pursue the lucrative meth business, completely insensitive to 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 unless she suggests a grand theft from a train 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 a child than seeing her mother dead, showing possible hints to abandonment in her or her daughter's past. It is possible that the father walked out on them.

Lydia is, in many, ways, very much similar to Gus: Both are consummate business people, who dress perfectly and try to approach the meth trade with a degree of professionalism not normally seen in the "game". However, personalitywise, they are complete polar opposites: Gus is calm, unflinching and relatively reasonable, 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 vs. her using Jack Welker's gang to dispose of Declan and his crew - Gus moves between bodies without fear while taunting the remains of his enemies, while Lydia plugs her ears not to hear gunshots and later has to literally be guided by hand with her eyes closed through the carnage.

Personalitywise, Lydia is also very much similar to Walter's own during the first season: She dispatched others to do her dirty work for her, and is a constant nervous wreck of her criminal life affecting her personal life. Just like Walter, Lydia is also obsessed with cutting off any loose ends that may implicate her. This eventually includes Walter himself. The big difference between the two is that Walt has no qualms with getting his own hands dirty, and has become hardened by his experiences while Lydia still depends on others to do dirty work for her.

Appearances

Breaking Bad

Season 5

• "Madrigal"
• "Fifty-One"
• "Dead Freight"
• "Gliding Over All"
• "Blood Money"
• "Buried"
• "To'hajiilee"
• "Granite State"
• "Felina"

Trivia

• Lydia is the final character to be killed both in the show and by Walter.
• Lydia is fluent in German and possibly other languages.
• 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 also 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 amateurs.
• Lydia is seen driving several rental cars, including:
  • 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.

Quotes

Lydia sitting in her Madrigal office in Houston, TX

Lydia standing with Jesse in the warehouse

"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.

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Murders connected to Lydia

• Duane Chow: Shot by Chris Mara on orders from Lydia. ("Madrigal")
• Gus's 10 former employees: Murdered by Jack's White Supremacist Gang on Walt's orders, with Lydia collaborating. ("Gliding Over All")
  • Dan Wachsberger
  • Jack McGann
  • Andrew Holt
  • Anthony Perez
  • Isaac Conley
  • William Moniz
  • Harris Boivin
  • Raymond Martinez
  • Ron Forenall
  • Dennis Markowski
• Declan: Shot by Jack Welker under Lydia's orders. ("Buried")
• Declan's Cook: Shot by Todd Alquist and Jack and his white supremacist group. ("Buried")
• Eight of Declan's men: Shot by Todd, Jack and his white supremacist group, along with Declan. ("Buried")