In this op-ed, writer John Paul Brammer explores the nuances of 13 Reasons Why's Tony Padilla, and why his struggle with machismo is a crucial part of his story.

When we first meet Tony Padilla (played by Christian Navarro) in Netflix’s gripping new series 13 Reasons Why, he’s pulling up in his Mustang, wearing a leather jacket and his hair slicked back. He offers Clay a ride, and, wow, does he take Clay on a ride.

It’s clear from the beginning of the story about a school coping from the loss of a student who dies by suicide that Tony is the all-knowing sage. (At one point, Clay refers to him as an “unhelpful Yoda,” an extremely appropriate title.) He’s the keeper of Hannah Baker’s tapes, and of her secrets.

At first, he is more of a force than a person, bailing Clay out of trouble at exactly the right moment, guiding him through his struggles, and nudging him back on the right track when he goes astray. He is advocate number one for “Team Listen to the Tapes Already,” which I loved him for. Seriously. Sit down and listen to the tapes, Clay.

But while this does make Tony seem wise and mysterious, it also made me nervous when I started watching. Too often, characters of color only exist to fulfill the wishes or solve the problems of white characters. Tony, who is Latinx and (as we find out later) gay, was at high risk of being pigeonholed into the role of the diversity friend, a plot device.

To be honest, that’s where I thought Tony would end up. The burden Hannah placed on him in distributing the tapes is immense, but Tony didn’t show any signs of being distressed. He executed Hannah’s wishes faithfully and without complaint.

“Doesn’t this affect you at all?” Clay asks Tony in "Tape 1, Side B," apparently as surprised as I was that Tony could be so cool and collected.

Tony quotes Clay’s own words back to him, something Clay told Tony in the seventh grade after a bully gave him a swirly: “Sometimes a guy’s gotta get through things on his own. This is one of those things.”

Right there, I saw a glimmer of hope for Tony’s character, because it illustrated beautifully a struggle I immediately recognized in Latinx communities: Machismo.

In many Latinx cultures, there is an expectation on men to behave a certain way, a code. In that code, men are conditioned to be stoic and tough. Masculinity is performed through courtship with women, displays of physical strength (Tony beating the crap out of someone comes to mind), and, this above all, keeping your feelings to yourself. This code is called machismo. When we briefly meet Tony’s dad, we get insight into the machismo he was raised with. They are working on a car together when Clay rolls up on his bike. Hannah’s death is brought up, and Tony’s dad says something revealing.

“If you ever do something like that to your mother,” he says, “I’ll kill you.” Any Latinx kid watching the show might laugh at the irony — and familiarity — of that warning.

That’s not how death works, of course. But it’s the perfect encapsulation of machismo. If Tony is going through something, he’s supposed to keep that to himself and be strong for his mother.

It gives necessary context to Tony’s stoicism. It’s not that he’s a dehumanized character who only cares about Hannah’s wishes and with no feelings of his own, it’s that he’s been conditioned to not express those feelings for fear of seeming weak.