Lisa Williams on ‘House of Cards.’ (Netflix)
In House of Cards’ fifth season, Lisa Williams becomes a major player. This is a character who has not really been relevant since Season 2, so for those who have forgotten the details of the Lisa saga, here’s a quick recap.
Lisa Williams was introduced as a part of Rachel Posner’s storyline. Rachel, of course, is the prostitute who slept with Congressman Peter Russo in Season 1, and Doug Stamper subsequently met with her to pay her off and ensure she wouldn’t blab about Russo hiring a prostitute. However, Stamper ends up hiring her himself.
Not longer after, Rachel Posner contacts Doug Stamper, begging him for help and saying she needs a place to stay; she has a black eye and is clearly in some trouble. So Stamper sets her up in the spare room of a Frank Underwood employee and later gets Rachel her own apartment.
In Season 2, Doug moves Rachel out of Washington, D.C., and he becomes increasingly obsessed with her. Part of the reason he moved her was just because he is so insanely clingy and possessive that he doesn’t want her to form relationships with anyone but him.
But Rachel does so anyway, and she meets a girl in Season 2 named Lisa Williams. They bump into one another on a bus one day and soon form a close bond, which turns into a romantic relationship.
This progresses to the point that Lisa moves into Rachel’s apartment, and they start officially dating. Doug Stamper becomes livid when he finds this out, and he orders Rachel to break up with Lisa. Rachel does what he says, in part because she’s afraid of what Stamper might do to Lisa, and she wants to keep Lisa out of this whole mess.
Later, Doug Stamper picks up Rachel in the middle of the night and starts driving her somewhere mysterious. She escapes from the car at a red light and flees into the woods, trying to kill Stamper with a rock when he gets close to her. In Season 3, Doug desperately tries to track down Rachel, hiring a guy named Gavin to find her. In his search, Gavin crosses paths with Lisa Williams, who is able to get some information from.
Now, in Season 5, Lisa Williams is sharing her story with Tom Hammerschmidt, and she could be the one to finally expose the fact that Frank Underwood’s chief of staff is a murderer.