Skyler White

**Skyler White (née Lambert)**
Skyler White (née Lambert)
Breaking Bad character
	File:Skyler White2.jpg
First appearance	"Pilot"
Created by	Vince Gilligan
Portrayed by	Anna Gunn
In-universe information
Occupation	Accountant, housewife
Children	Walter White Jr; Holly White
Relatives	Marie Schrader (sister); Hank Schrader (brother-in-law)

Skyler White is a fictional character in the American television drama series Breaking Bad on AMC.

Character biography

Over the years, Skyler has had several meager sources of income; writing short stories, selling items on eBay, and eventually working as a certified public accountant for the Albuquerque firm Beneke Fabricators. She and her husband, Walter White, have a son, Walter Jr., and an infant daughter, Holly. She is approximately eleven years younger than Walter, whom she met when she was a hostess at a restaurant near Walt's former place of work near the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Season one

When Walt is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, he initially does not tell his family. When she learns about the diagnosis, Skyler is both devastated by the news and outraged that Walt witheld the information. Their relationship becomes strained, both from Walt's reluctance to seek treatment and from his unexplained abscences following his diagnosis. Skyler figures out Walt's connection to his former student, Jesse Pinkman, and confronts Jesse at his house; when she confronts Walt, he claims that Jesse is his marijuana dealer. Unbeknownst to Skyler, Walt has taken up cooking methamphetamine with Jesse in order to ensure his family's financial security after he dies.

Skyler faces other problems. When Marie offers an expensive diamond tiara as a gift for Holly's baby shower, Skyler attempts to return it to the jewelry store, only to learn that her sister — a kleptomaniac — had stolen the item. Skyler is detained by the store's owner, escaping arrest only after faking labor. The incident causes serious problems in Skyler's relationship with Marie, who pathologically denies that she has done anything wrong.

Season two

When Walt is kidnapped by the Mexican drug kingpin Tuco Salamanca, his family — unaware of the connection to Walt's criminal activities — organize a search for him as a missing person. When Walt escapes, he attributes his disappearance to a non-existent "fugue state." The marriage continues to go downhill thanks to Walt's continued absences, devolving to the point where Skyler refuses to speak with him. Skyler is also perturbed by Walt's resistance to his son's efforts to raise money for him, unaware that most of the donations given to his treatment is drug money laundered by Walt's corrupt lawyer, Saul Goodman.

Her and Walt's relationship continues its downward spiral. Continuing to be unaware of Walter's meth business, she believes that Walter's illness has strained the family's finances and returns to her old job working for Ted Beneke, whose sexual advances had caused her to quit earlier. Skyler increasingly relies on Ted for emotional support as her husband grows distant; she also reluctantly covers up Ted's tax fraud. She leaves Walter at the end of the season after having took the final straw from him in terms of his lying and betrayals.

Season three

In the third season, Walt has moved out of the house. Skyler appears at his apartment, having deduced that he is in the drug trade. When she confronts Walt with her idea that he is selling marijuana, he admits instead that he is a meth manufacturer. Skyler demands a divorce from Walt in exchange for her silence about his criminal activities. Her subsequent cold behavior towards her husband, arouses curiosity by Hank and Marie, as well as anger and rebellion from Walter, Jr. When Walt forcibly moves back into their home, she retaliates by initiating an affair with Ted Beneke and coldly informing her husband. She enjoys her affair with Ted, as they skip work frequently to go to his home.

Even in her anger, Skyler is conflicted; she permits Walt to take care of Holly and defends some of his actions to her lawyer, who advises that she leave him immediately. She later finds that Walter has signed off on their divorce and left the house for good. When Ted arrives at her home and tries to clarify the nature of Skyler's feelings, she refuses to answer and asks him to leave. Following Hank's shooting, Skyler tells Marie that Walter earned millions through card counting at underground blackjack games, and offers to pay for Hank's physical therapy and anything else not covered by insurance. She later admits to Walt that she never filed the divorce papers, slyly beginning to work her way into Walter's criminal activities by reminding him that spouses cannot be forced to testify against each other. She suggests an alternative money-laundering scheme after being thoroughly unimpressed by Saul's plan to launder the money through a laser-tag facility. Skyler suggests Walter instead purchase the car wash facility he worked at in the pilot, and offers to run the business for Walt. She tries to frame these decisions as forced on her by Walt's criminal activities, but she ends up letting Walt spend more time with the kids and having dinners as a family when Walt, sensing an opportunity to regain his place in the family, tells her that's the only way her cover-up can succeed.

Season four

Skyler, through a combination of business planning and underhanded tactics, buys the car wash and begins laundering Walt's drug money. There is a growing perception that Skyler is starting to enjoy her new life as a criminal accomplice, becoming much more confident in her abilities to carry out the money laundering operation and becoming less concerned about his criminal transgressions. She and Walt eventually have their first sexual encounter since the divorce and slowly begin to rebuild their relationship. Her fear of Walt is brought up however, beginning to understand what kind of man he is and what troubles he has gotten himself and their family into. At one point, she's so consumed with panic that she considers fleeing the state with Holly. Later, when Hank and Marie are under witness protection at their house, she, Holly, and Walter Jr join them while Walt deals with Gus.

References

External Links