Lydia (The Walking Dead)

Lydia is one of the Whisperers to follow Paul "Jesus" Monroe, Darius and two other guards. She is captured by Jesus. She is put in a cell next to Carl's. She tries to get information about the Hilltop community by talking to Carl, and later starts a sexual relationship with him. After the war against his group, Lydia goes to the ranks of Rick's group and survives to the end of the story. Carl's lingering feelings for Sophia finally ends their relationship,[1] although they remain close friends.[2]

Lydia is a survivor who, along with her parents, "Alpha" and Frank, survived the initial stages of the zombie apocalypse. After 23 days of the initial outbreak, Lydia and her parents remained in a moldy basement with a group of survivors. After Frank dies, Alpha raises Lydia with cruelty, treating her more like her servant than her child, to the point of making Lydia call her "Alpha" instead of "momma". After being captured by Daryl Dixon and Michonne, and kept as a prisoner in a cell at the Hilltop, Lydia begins to form a bond with Henry. Lydia and Henry fall in love and begin a relationship, with her ultimately rejecting the Whisperers in favor of the other communities who agree to grant Lydia asylum. Lydia rejects the Whisperers completely and is disowned by her mother. However, her relationship with Henry is cut short when Alpha brutally murders him and several other residents of Hilltop.

In the mid-season premiere "Adaptation", as Daryl, Michonne, and the others return to the Hilltop, they spot six walkers following them and lure the group into a confrontation on a covered bridge. Three of the "walkers" turn out to be more humans in disguise. Daryl and Michonne kill two while the third, a young girl, surrenders and is taken prisoner back to the Hilltop. Eventually, Michonne's group returns to the Hilltop and the new threat of humans disguised as walkers is discussed. The girl is locked up and questioned, but she asserts all the others she knew died at the cemetery and the bridge. Daryl later rushes down to interrogate the girl again in earshot of Henry, who is also still locked up for past transgressions. Daryl finds that the girl's mother may still be out there, leading walkers against the various communities. After Daryl leaves, the girl introduces herself as Lydia to Henry and the two start to get to know each other; Daryl overhears this conversation. In the episode "Omega", Lydia describes her backstory to Henry while both are in the community prison, unaware Daryl is listening in. As Lydia explains, Henry starts to become more compassionate towards Lydia, his own family having gone through similar hardships. Daryl continues to talk to her as well, trying to scope out the size of her group as Lydia claims that they may be coming to save her. He finds her arm covered in marks, which she says came from her mom. Daryl, who had been similarly beaten as a child, displays sympathy for Lydia's abuse, but she proves to still be uncooperative. Lydia's stories are told in flashbacks throughout the episode to the months after the walker outbreak. She and her parents have taken refuge in a Baltimore shelter with others. Lydia's father's sanity starts to unravel and believes the shelter is no longer safe; however, her mother takes more command, willing to kill a survivor sheltering with them who is having a panic attack as she considers him too weak to survive. That night, the survivor turns while Lydia is watching and her father runs to save her, but ends up getting bit. This only serves to harden Lydia's mother, eventually leading them to don the masks made from walkers to survive. In the present, Henry decides to let Lydia out of her cell for a while and discreetly shows her the safety and facilities the Hilltop has to offer. While Lydia has an opportunity to take a hammer and strike Henry with it to escape, the cries of a baby cause her to panic and flashback to her past, and she begs to be returned to her cell. She asks Henry to stay with her through the night. When morning comes, Daryl returns and Lydia states that she doesn't think her mother will be coming, and she was only trying to scope out information for her. Lydia then tells them that her story was a lie, her mother having told her that story to blame her father's death on Lydia. In reality, when the survivor had turned, it wasn't Lydia's father that was bitten, but instead another survivor; her mother took the opportunity to try to make their escape from the shelter, killing Lydia's father when he refused to leave with them. Lydia mentions where her mother and her people may be camped, but notes that they frequently move about.

In the episode "Bounty", Alpha demands that the Hilltop community residents turn over her daughter Lydia. Inside the Hilltop, Daryl discovers that Henry and Lydia escaped. Addy tells him that she knows where they went; she and Enid head out to find them while Daryl stalls. Soon after, Enid and Addy are able to track down Henry and Lydia to an abandoned house near the Hilltop, where Henry has provided Lydia a new set of clothes. Lydia opts to leave on her own accord and is traded for Alden and Luke. Reunited, Lydia apologizes to her mother, but is smacked by Alpha across the face, ordering her to address her as "Alpha" like everyone else. In the episode "Guardians", As Alpha leads her group back to camp, she questions Lydia about her time at the Hilltop and to reveal any intel she learned while held captive, but her daughter claims that there was little of interest. Henry eventually catches up with Lydia and the Whisperers, and watches them from a close distance as they rest, but is found and grabbed by Beta, Alpha's second-in-command. Henry reveals that he came alone to get Lydia; Alpha decides that Henry is coming with them. On their way back to camp, Alpha asks Lydia why she didn't mention Henry. Lydia explains that he wasn't worth mentioning, but Alpha reminds her that he just risked his life to save her, so she must be lying. The Whisperers soon arrive back at their camp. At night, Beta takes Henry to Alpha. Unmasked, Alpha drops her knife and makes Lydia pick it up, commanding her to kill Henry with it so that she can prove what side she's on; Lydia picks up the knife and begins to cry. Her mother warns her not to be weak and that Beta will kill them both if she doesn't kill Henry. Suddenly, a small horde of walkers show up and begin eating the unmasked Whisperers, creating mass confusion. Alpha and the others quickly put on their masks so that they can try to lure the herd away. Moments later, Daryl and Connie arrive disguised as Whisperers to free and rescue Henry; they prepare to retreat. Daryl grabs Henry, who grabs Lydia, and together the four escape.

In the episode "Chokepoint", Daryl and Connie flee with Henry and Lydia from a group of Whisperers led by Beta within a horde of walkers. Connie directs them to an uncompleted high-rise that her group had taken shelter in before, where she shows to Daryl that they could isolate the Whisperers by laying an ambush on the upper floors. Unsure about Lydia's trustworthiness, Daryl locks her in a closet with Dog while they prepare for Beta's group to arrive. Lydia, fearing for Henry's safety, breaks out of the closet, in time for Dog to attack a Whisperer that was about to kill Henry, though Henry still ends up injuring his leg. With the Whisperers subdued, the group work to lure the walkers out of the ground floor so that they can escape, unaware that Beta is still alive at the bottom of the elevator shaft. In the episode "Scars", Aaron alerts Michonne of Daryl's presence at the Alexandria gates, including Connie, Henry and Lydia. Daryl vouches for Lydia to convince Michonne to let them take shelter. They stay long enough for Henry to get the medical care he needs, but Michonne refuses to provide them an escort to the Kingdom. That evening, Daryl, Connie, Henry and Lydia take off to return to the Kingdom, with Michonne seeing them off.

In the episode "The Calm Before", as the fair at the Kingdom begins, Daryl and Michonne arrive with Judith, Henry, Lydia, and Connie, reuniting with Carol and Ezekiel. Michonne brings all the leaders from the communities to apologize for Alexandria forgoing its relationships, that Alexandria will give asylum to Lydia, and to establish a mutual protection pact knowing that Alpha will likely retaliate. As the fair continues, Alpha has snuck into the fair, posing as one of the Alexandria fairgoers from the caravan and gathers intel. That night, as most of the fairgoers gather for the film, Lydia is saving a seat for Henry when Alpha quietly sits next to her and gestures for her to stay quiet. Outside the theater, Alpha tries to convince Lydia to come with her, but Lydia rejects her. Alpha tells her she is not strong and no longer part of her group, and departs. Daryl's group finds a line of ten decapitated heads on pikes, one of which is Henry, meant to signify Alpha's territory boundary. Sometime later, Daryl and Lydia return to the border. Lydia leaves the necklace Henry made for her on the ground by the pike that once held Henry's head. As the two walk away, snow flurries begin to fall.

In the season finale "The Storm", Ezekiel makes the decision to abandon the Kingdom, assembling a large caravan of the remaining survivors to seek out better shelter at the Hilltop; Daryl, Michonne, and Yumiko help to escort them. Lydia wanders into the forest and finds a walker half-buried in the snow. She takes off her glove while crying and offers her hand to the walker to commit suicide, but stops when Carol appears and follows her back to the group. Using the cover of the storm, the Kingdom's group passes the pikes into Alpha's territory, finding only frozen walkers along the way, and arrive at a river that has been frozen over. Carol goes looking for Lydia, who has disappeared, while the rest deal with rising walkers buried in the snow. She eventually catches up to Lydia, who realizes she's to blame for their situation and feels she can't stay with them. Since she can't go back to her mother, Lydia asks Carol to kill her, but Carol refuses Lydia's request and tells her that she is not weak. The group eventually make it to the waypoint and soon reach the Hilltop the next day. Daryl, Michonne, Carol, Lydia, and a few others prepare to depart and continue on to Alexandria.