As Emmy nominations approach, Vanity Fair’s HWD team is diving deep into how some of this season’s greatest scenes and characters came together. You can read more of these close looks here

Kim Wexler, Better Call Saul

The last shot of Better Call Saul’s fourth season shows Rhea Seehorn’s Kim Wexler staring after her boyfriend, Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), who is leaving her behind in more ways than one. The audience knows that Jimmy is going to become Saul Goodman, the lawyer that advised crime lords and laundered drug money in Breaking Bad. But Kim doesn’t know that.

“I have to remind myself as an actor that Kim has not seen Breaking Bad,” Seehorn told me during a recent phone call. Fans—myself included—need to be reminded of that too. Because Kim doesn’t show up in Breaking Bad, which is set after Saul, many viewers have concluded that she doesn’t survive the events of the prequel spin-off, now filming its fifth season in Albuquerque. “Don’t Kill Kim,” implores this headline at the Ringer, while this one at TV Guide avers, “I Love Kim…and She Needs to Die.”

Kim inspires strong feelings all around. Loyal, hardworking, ambitious, and unflaggingly competent, she’s a beacon of moral clarity in the Better Call Saul universe. Her coiled blonde ponytail is a girlish barometer of her stress levels, her dagger-like earrings suggest edge, and her desperation to succeed suggests a long life of feeling inferior to others. In season two, when Kim gets into trouble for one of Jimmy’s stunts, she refuses his offer to help with a sharp line that has become her unofficial motto: “You don’t save me. I save me.” In that same episode, using a cell phone and Post-its on her short lunch break, Kim nabs a new client.

Now the question is whether Kim’s proximity to Jimmy will in fact destroy her life. Following the death of Jimmy’s brother, Chuck, the car accident, and Jimmy’s disbarment in season three, most of season four is spent in a kind of emotional triage. In it, Kim vacillates between considerable success in a new firm and the siren call of running two-bit scams with Jimmy. For the first time, her moral compass appears to be scrambled.

Seehorn said this opens up new avenues to worry about the character: “There’s so many other tragedies for her that aren’t death. What is she going to become? How far will she spin?”

“One of my favorite things about the character is that—thank God, they did not choose to write her obtuse or not very intelligent,” she continued. “She’s not getting snowed. She knew he was a conman of sorts, and liked to cut corners, way back when. In the mail room, she knew that.” Better Call Saul is about Jimmy McGill's fall from grace, but Kim's ethical quandary has become central to the show.

How Kim came to life

This season, Kim’s emotional load has gotten so big that her strong facade has begun to crack. “I love that she has these inappropriate outbursts now,” Seehorn said. “She’s not able to keep the lid on this pot anymore.”

With every new plot twist—which tend to surprise the actress as much as they surprise the audience—Seehorn asks, “What’s the seed that’s now blooming?” The scripts surprise her, but upon reflection—and after watching the story unfold— she realizes that the groundwork for her character’s seemingly surprising actions had been there all along.