Todd/jesse Being Foils Is Something That Will Always Get Me - Tumblr Posts

People who don’t understand why Lydia and Todd were introduced in S5… they’re literally character foils to Walter and Jesse but specifically Walter and Jesse at the end of their respective journeys. Lydia’s most defining characteristics are her greed and her cowardice. As seen when she covers her eyes rather than witness the aftermath of a shootout, Lydia has no interest in facing up to the consequences of her actions. Walter has no problem inflicting death at this point, but is still too cowardly to admit that he is a bad person and that his actions are doing irreparable harm, as seen when he murders Mike for basically just giving to him straight. Even Lydia’s most sympathetic trait, her love for her daughter, parallels Walter’s own one redeeming quality, his love for his family. Jesse and Todd are both written as young and somewhat childlike in manner, but in every other aspect are as different as Walter and Lydia are similar, because Jesse, unlike Walter, has remorse and is not too far gone. Todd is everything Jesse now fears becoming and everything he hates about the criminal underworld: he has no regard for human life or the innocence of children, the two things that Jesse values above all else, and is as detached from his emotions as Jesse is in tune with his. Lydia and Walter are both responsible for Jesse’s imprisonment and exploitation, so when Jesse kills Todd, it is him freeing himself from a prison of both Walt’s making and of his own. And when Walter says “goodbye, Lydia,” what he’s really saying is “goodbye, Heisenberg”. But Walter has to die after he kills Lydia, because he’s so far gone that his Heisenberg identity is inextricably linked to his person. The horrible lengths Todd will go to get Lydia’s attention, and Lydia’s contempt for him and ambivalence toward his efforts, are also significant, even though the abusive, obsessive dynamic has been reversed