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“ | If you wanna change the world, you have to find a way to live in it first. | „ |
~ Lydia |
Lydia is a major character in the AMC series Into the Badlands.
She is the Baroness of Baron Quinn, the most feared Baron in all of the Badlands. After he betrays their family by killing her son Ryder, she turns against him and begins fighting for a better world in the Badlands. Despite her goals being noble, she is willing to go to extreme lengths to achieve them, and her ultimate intentions and loyalties are often morally ambiguous.
She was portrayed by Orla Brady.
Her Good Ranking[]
What Makes Her Admirable?[]
- She loves Ryder dearly and spends most of her time as Baroness trying to protect him, going as far as to tell him that he cannot rule to try and demotivate him from challenging Quinn since she knows he will die if he tries to fight him.
- While she initially has a prejudice against Cogs, after the Cogs abandon the Armadillo Territory and Quinn has Jade and his Clippers work in the fields, Lydia decides to help despite her being a Baroness who nobody expects to work. The difficulty of the work has her finally realize how harsh the conditions are for the Cogs, and she loses her prejudice entirely.
- When she first meets Quinn's second wife Jade she is hotile towards her out of jealousy, but eventually relents and apologizes to Jade as she recognizes that Quinn is the one she should actually be angry with.
- She is exiled from the Armadillo Territory after Jade makes it look like Lydia tried to poison her, at which point she returns to her father's religious Totemist settlement. However, after she learns that Ryder was killed by Quinn, she returns to the Badlands to take him down and get justice for her son's murder.
- When Quinn forcefully marries Veil and tries to sleep with her, Lydia interrupts with the news of Sunny being alive in order to stop Quinn from abusing Veil.
- After Quinn is killed by Sunny, the Badlands goes into a state of war between the Widow and Baron Chau, with the Widow trying to take down Chau in order to put an end to the Cog slave trade. Lydia helps to run a refugee camp for those hurt by the war, but is later offered the position of Viceroy by the Widow, who will give Lydia control of the Armadillo Territory should she help to take down Chau. Lydia accepts this offer since she recognizes that it will allow her to help the refugees even further.
- Despite becoming the Widow's Viceroy, she still will work against the Widow if she feels that the Widow is going too far, such as when she warns Tilda that the Widow is planning to apprehend her for acting as a Vigilante.
- She rekindles an old romance with Nathaniel Moon, and together they lead the invasion of Chau's territory, allowing the Widow to break into Chau's mansion and face her directly. With Chau defeated, Lydia works by her side to take down the false messiah Pilgrim and eventually dies trying to kill a blood witch named Cressida who is an ally of Pilgrim.
What Makes Her Inconsistent?[]
- She can be extremely jerkish at times, such as her initial prejudice towards Cogs, and while she mostly subverts this as the series goes on, she still has many unsubverted moments such as when she belittles Tilda over her acting as an outlaw simply due to her being younger.
- For many years she served as the Baroness to Quinn, and was willing to stand by his heinous actions up until he murdered Ryder.
- She is very lethal at times, and while it's usually in self defense, there are unnecessary moments such as during the coup of the Widow's territory by Arthur and Wren; Lydia finds a treasonous Clipper and stabs him in the stomach with the promise that she will let him live if he tells her where the Widow is being held prisoner, but even after he gives her the Widow's location she pulls the blade out anyways and lets him bleed to death.
- At one point Ryder is injured by a group of nomad scavengers, and Veil is brought in to treat him, but Lydia initially tries to turn her away, saying that she doesn't want a Cog doctor operating on her son, and only relents when it is made clear that he will die without immediate treatment.
- Following Ryder's murder Quinn actually gives Lydia a chance to kill him, but she can't overcome her previous love for him and doesn't take the opportunity, this is reinforced by her admitting in season one that she fell in love with Quinn after seeing him fight in battle, suggesting she has an attraction to killers.
- While she does go against the Widow at times, as Tilda and Odessa point out the Widow is an extremist and the fact that Lydia is working with her means that she is an accessory to many of the Widow's villainous acts.
- Lydia states late in the series that she has no loyalties, and that she goes wherever she feels that she is the most useful, essentially admitting she doesn't care about the Widow.
- While her warning Tilda of the Widow's attack is a heroic action, the fact that she plays both sides of the war proves she is willing to betray her allies, and overall her intentions are morally ambiguous.
External Links[]
- Lydia on the Heroes Wiki
- Lydia on the Villains Wiki
- Lydia on the Into the Badlands Wiki
- Lydia on the Villainous Benchmark Wiki
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Armadillo Territory Butterfly Territory |