From Background Player to Co-Protagonist

I came to Better Call Saul on the heels of its parent series, Breaking Bad. I expected the new series to be an origin story for how Jimmy McGill becomes Saul Goodman. And it was. The show absolutely traces Jimmy’s slide into the Saul persona, its own kind of “breaking bad.” But I stayed for Kim Wexler. In a story full of con artists, cartel enforcers, and corrupt businessmen, the person who haunted me most is a woman in a sharp suit, tight ponytail, and quiet smile.

Kim is first introduced in the quiet corners of the law offices of Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill. She is a woman in a sharp suit, hair in a tight ponytail, cigarette in hand, moving through the firm with quiet competence. At first, she appears to be a supporting character, the responsible colleague who cleans up after Jimmy McGill’s chaos. As the series unfolds, though, Kim emerges as a co-protagonist with a backstory and moral struggle that rival Jimmy’s in complexity and depth.

This is a good reminder for us as writers. A character does not have to enter the story with fireworks to become unforgettable. Sometimes the ones who linger most in memory start at the edges of the frame.

The Split Self: Who She Wants to Be vs. Who She Enjoys Being

What makes Kim so compelling to me is the split between who she wants to be and who she likes being when no one is watching.

We learn that she grew up in small-town Nebraska with an alcoholic, neglectful mother who used her in petty theft schemes. Those scenes help the viewer see the origins of her fierce independence and her willingness to bend rules when it feels justified. As she works her way up from the HHM mailroom to become a high-powered lawyer, she keeps a stolen necklace from childhood like a private relic of the girl who learned to survive by outsmarting people.

For character work, this is gold. It is not just a “tragic backstory.” It is a clear line between her past and her present, and it explains why the straight-arrow version of Kim is always living one step away from a con.

Breaking the “Good Woman” Archetype

Kim is introduced as an archetypal steadying influence, the diligent woman who might save the flawed man from himself. On the surface, she fits the trope of the responsible girlfriend, the moral compass for a more chaotic male lead.

But the show slowly subverts that archetype. The bar cons she runs with Jimmy, where they scam arrogant marks out of tequila and money, reveal that she is not just indulging him. She is thrilled by the game. She is equally at home in the conference room and in a long con, and that duality makes her feel disturbingly real.

As writers, we can start with an archetype and then complicate it. Give your “good woman” or “steady friend” a space where they are the one who pushes things too far, and the character steps into three dimensions.

“Let’s Get Married”: When Boundaries Become Entanglement

One of the most revealing moments in Kim’s arc is when she proposes marriage to Jimmy.

On the surface, she frames it as a boundary. She does not want to hear the details of his scams anymore or be dragged into his law-breaking. But her solution — “Let’s get married” — is not a move toward moral distance. It is a move toward legal and emotional entanglement.

As a lawyer, Kim knows marriage gives them spousal privilege and shields her from having to testify against Jimmy later. Instead of stepping away from his behavior, she uses the law to construct a safe harbor for it. This allows her to remain close to him while pretending to be less involved.

That moment captures her core contradiction. She wants to be good, but she also wants the rush of Jimmy’s world, and she is clever enough to build structures that let her live with both, at least for a while.

When you are writing turning points, this is a powerful model. A single decision does more than one thing at once. On paper it looks romantic. Underneath, it deepens her complicity.

When “Sticking It to the Man” Goes Too Far

Her uniqueness lies in that contradiction.

Kim is the lawyer who will stay up all night doing meticulous research for Mesa Verde, then turn around and secretly sabotage court filings so that she, not her former firm, wins the client. She fights passionately for indigent criminal defendants, yet later spends months conspiring with Jimmy to destroy Howard Hamlin’s reputation for strategic gain and, even more, for personal satisfaction.

Their scheme works, but it indirectly leads to Howard’s shocking death, and that is the point where Kim’s arc veers into tragedy. The show does not flip her from good to evil in a single scene. It walks her there in small, plausible steps she can justify to herself.

As writers, we can track those rationalizations in our own characters. “He deserves it.” “The system is rigged.” “I am helping the little guy.” Follow those thoughts honestly and they can carry even a well-intentioned character into dark places.

Confession, Consequence, and a Small Kind of Redemption

In the aftermath, Kim does not double down the way Jimmy does. Instead, she almost takes a page from Crime and Punishment. Like Raskolnikov, she eventually cannot live with the unresolved weight of her crime.

Years later, after retreating to a drab, emotionally numb life in Florida as a document reviewer, she returns to Albuquerque to give a written confession about her role in Howard’s death to his widow and the district attorney, even though the legal consequences are uncertain. Her confession costs her the last of her professional identity. She is disbarred and no longer practices law. Even so, it suggests that some core of her moral self still survives, even if she can never fully go back to who she was.

I love that the show does not reward her confession with a triumphant redemption arc. Her life is smaller and lonelier. Yet she is not hollow in the way Saul Goodman is. Sometimes redemption on the page is not about getting your old life back. It is about finally telling the truth and accepting what that costs.

Kim Wexler and the Art of Character

Kim both adheres to and defies archetypal conventions. She begins as the steadying influence and good woman archetypes, the loyal, competent partner who at times tries, and just might succeed, to rescue the male lead. By the end, however, she has become something closer to a tragic antihero. She is not a femme fatale who uses sex and manipulation for selfish ends. Instead, she is a woman whose intelligence and buried anger lead her to participate in real harm, and who then must decide what to do with that knowledge. Her final choice to confess does not erase the damage, but it keeps her from becoming as hollow as the Saul Goodman persona Jimmy ultimately embraces.

Kim Wexler shows why characterization is so important in storytelling. Because she is written and performed with such nuance — her quiet looks, her tightly wound body language, even the way her ponytail loosens as her life unravels — the moral turns of the plot hit harder. We do not just watch a scam go wrong. We watch a woman who could have been an unambiguous hero choose, step by step, to cross lines she cannot uncross. Her arc makes the show’s questions about morality, complicity, and redemption feel personal rather than abstract, and that lingering impact is, to me, the mark of a truly well-developed character.