Kim Wexler has emerged as the real hero of Better Call Saul

Slate

Better Call Saul's final season feels even less about the evolution of Bob Odenkirk's Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman and more about its enigmatic leading lady’s trajectory, says Flannery Dean of Rhea Seehorn's character. "Kim Wexler is an almost universally beloved figure, which is no small victory for a leading lady in the antihero-centric universe of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul—or for Seehorn, who plays Kim with a remarkable combination of tenderness and steel," says Dean. "But it’s not just because Kim Wexler has single-handedly reinvented the ponytail that she’s won hearts. Like Jimmy, she’s an underdog who worked her way up through law school by hustling in HHM’s mailroom, and who has had to rely on the grace and favor of the firm’s little prince, Howard, with his local anchorman charisma and rich kid’s petulance, to move up in the world. That work ethic defines the character in the present tense, too. She works harder and later than everyone else; she sleeps at the office and showers at the gym. But she’s always impeccably turned out, with that shimmering Nellie Oleson–style coil at the end of her ponytail and her signature shardlike gold earrings neatly in place. That ponytail may be business casual, but it also suggests this is a tomboy who’s always ready to play."