Is Maddie's father, David Reyes, the villain of Kiss Me, Captain?

The evidence against him is hard to argue with. The first time David appears on the page, at a lunch Maddie moved off campus, he makes anti-gay remarks. Maddie stays quiet, goes along with him, and tells her parents things with Derek are perfect. Later she breaks down in front of Emily and admits her parents don't know who she really is.

When Maddie finally comes out to him at a park picnic table, he doesn't really argue with her. He explains her away. He says she's confused, blames trauma from the bullying and Emily's influence, and calls the relationship a sin. Then he lays out the choice: her family, her future and her skating, or Emily. He walks to the car and leaves her sitting there alone.

Then he follows through. He calls to say he has withdrawn financial support and gives her two weeks to find another way to pay or leave school. That's the moment he goes from disapproving parent to antagonist. Maddie's first worry is whether she can afford to keep skating at all, which shows how well the threat is aimed. He turned the thing she built herself around into leverage.

He isn't a flat villain, because the book first shows him as a frightened, involved father. When Emily calls about Maddie's fall, David takes the phone, asks detailed questions about her condition, and the family leaves right away. For Emily, hearing the Reyes parents' voices brings back the car rides of their childhood. At the hospital, David and Hanna take the news that Maddie's season is over with real grief. Then they deliberately step out so the two girls can talk.

He's protective in ways that count. When he and Hanna learn that Derek Hastings cornered Emily and about the bullying and sabotage, they ask Emily to look after Maddie's daily care and insist on being told about any more trouble. At the disciplinary hearing, he gets reprimanded for reacting when Jenna's lawyer goes after his daughter's credibility.

That's why the picnic table hurts so much. His care was real, and so were the limits on it, long before the ultimatum. Maddie hid Emily's belongings before her parents' first visit. They didn't even know their daughter's roommate was Emily until the hospital. When she comes out, she admits she has known for years and has been lying the whole time.

After about two months of estrangement, David starts calling. He apologizes for how he reacted to the news about Emily and admits he was wrong. Maddie tells him the calls won't make her forget and lets him call only now and then. In later calls he says Hanna cries about not seeing her. He offers help with travel and money for Regionals. He also tells Maddie he wants a family dinner and a meeting with a coach he knows.

His calls keep pointing the same way. He uses the online backlash against Maddie and Emily as a reason for her to focus only on skating. One timing stands out. The night Maddie fights with Emily and ends up outside the locked rink, she answers his call and tells him about the fight. He brings back the visit he had promised not to push, and she agrees to come home.

The weekend at home shows what reconciliation looks like on his terms. David blames the disownment on how he was raised. Then he offers a middle ground: leave Lakeview and train in Denver under Victoria Hughes. Maddie sees it as a way to leave Emily behind and refuses. Later, when he puts his arm around her during a movie, she realizes how much she has missed exactly that.

Afterward Maddie tells Emily her parents were kind but never said Emily's name, and that her father's hug and pride felt like a way to avoid the relationship. He has apologized in general terms. But he never talks about Emily or the relationship directly, and the ultimatum is never mentioned. Open rejection has turned into polite silence, and Maddie feels that silence as its own message.

Then Victoria Hughes visits the team. She's a former Olympic silver medalist who heads the Regional Selection Committee. When she says the most successful skaters avoid outside distractions, her gaze stays on Maddie and Emily. Soon after, she texts Maddie and says Maddie's father gave her the number. David later tells Maddie that Victoria reached out to him after meeting the team and offered herself as someone Maddie could talk to in confidence.

When Maddie calls him from a library bench and admits she's struggling, he says Victoria has been discussing other programs with him and could make calls to get her a fresh start. Maddie asks him straight out whether he's suggesting a transfer. He says he isn't pushing, but he keeps describing the other options as available.

This pressure is harder to fight than the ultimatum. The ultimatum was loud, and Maddie could refuse it. This version is gentle and easy to deny, and it comes through adults she has reasons to trust. You can see it wearing on her. On the anniversary Emily planned, Maddie keeps checking messages from her parents. She also starts to wonder whether her father and Victoria are steering her rather than just helping.

David's return does its sharpest damage to the couple. Emily warns that these parents disowned Maddie and stopped paying for school. Maddie hears that as Emily trying to control her and storms out. By the last chapters before the limit, Maddie and Emily are fighting each other over David more than either of them is facing him.

He isn't acting entirely alone, either. Hanna says she loves Maddie but can't promise to change his mind. Later she admits she let her husband's opinions guide her, then comes to Regionals without telling him. That makes David the head of a family pattern rather than a lone monster. It also shows that someone in that house can choose differently.

As of chapter 110, David is the clearest antagonist in Maddie's story. No one else's choices put as much pressure on her. Whether he's a villain depends on motives the book hasn't revealed. The apology could be a clumsy but sincere change of heart, or it could be strategy. The last beat before the limit leaves Maddie alone after her argument with Emily, starting to suspect Emily was right about her father and Victoria. Even she doesn't know yet.

There's a fair case against calling him a villain. He admits he was wrong, more than once. The book shows him grieving at his daughter's hospital bed long before she came out. A reader could see him as a devout man stumbling back toward his daughter the only way he knows how. The Denver plan would then show that he hasn't gotten there yet, not that he never meant to.