This post contains spoilers for Season 3 of Netflix's Elite.
Same format as always: we start at the end. There is a body on a nightclub floor and the real question is not just who did it, it is how everyone got pushed far enough to let it happen in the first place. Season 3 is basically a season-long autopsy of a tragedy that was set in motion the moment Marina died back in Season 1. The whole thing has been building to this. Three seasons of secrets, cover-ups, guilt, and grief all colliding at a graduation party in a Madrid nightclub, and only one person left standing when the smoke clears.
Season 3 premiered on Netflix on March 13, 2020, eight episodes, same flash-forward structure as before. It is heavy, claustrophobic, and kind of all over the place. The writers clearly knew where this era of the show needed to land, but getting there meant juggling so many storylines at once that the whole thing kept buckling under its own weight. New characters, new love triangles, new traumas stacked on top of old ones that were never properly dealt with to begin with. And yet, despite all of that, the finale earns everything it asks of you.
Two New Faces, Zero Reasons to Care
We got two new characters this season and neither of them were worth the screen time. Malick showed up, dated Nadia as a cover, and then started something with Omar behind her back. He was not really a character so much as a plot device with a face. Someone the writers dropped in specifically to blow up the one relationship in this show that actually deserved better. That's it. That is his whole personality. He existed to create a specific kind of chaos and disappeared once that chaos was in motion.
And then there was Yeray, who was somehow even more pointless. His entire purpose was to buy Carla's affection on her father's behalf. He was a transaction with a name. The show did not even bother pretending otherwise. If Elite Season 3 has a consistent weakness, it is that every new addition this year came in as a function of the plot rather than as an actual person, and it showed every single episode they were on screen.
What They Did to Carla This Season Was Unforgivable.
Carla spent two full seasons being the most calculating, self-possessed person in any room she walked into. She managed an entire murder cover-up in real time in the Season 1 finale. She ran circles around everyone, including Samuel, while simultaneously keeping Polo from completely falling apart. She was dangerous and controlled and compelling to watch. And then Season 3 took all of that and handed her a controlling father, a transaction dressed up as a boyfriend, and a pill bottle, and called it a character arc.
Watching her get reduced to a business arrangement by her own father, essentially sold off to maintain a family alliance, was so depressing. She had no say in any of it. The Ice Queen, the woman who spent two full seasons playing chess with everyone's feelings, now just a passenger in her own life. What made it worse is that her arc this season did not feel tragic in any meaningful way. It just felt like the writers ran out of ideas for her and decided to strip away everything that made her interesting. Carla deserved a much better send-off than that. She got a plane ticket and a vague sense of freedom. After everything she carried across three seasons, that was the best they could do.
Polo Wanted Out. Cayetana Made Sure He Couldn't Leave.
The throuple situation with Cayetana, Polo, and Valerio had its moments. Three outcasts finding comfort in each other is a compelling idea, and the show almost pulls it off. Polo was ready to go. He wanted out of Las Encinas, away from the guilt and the stares and the crushing weight of everything he had done. He had told his mothers the truth about Marina. He was planning to turn himself in to the police. He was trying, in the only way he could manage, to do the right thing. And Cayetana sabotaged it. She kept him there because she did not want to lose her safety net, then dressed it up as caring about him.
The result was a boy trapped in a building where everyone despised him, cut off from the people who had actually known him the longest, Guzman and Ander, stuck with two people who were at least partly with him for financial reasons. He walked those hallways like a ghost. Drowning in guilt. Nowhere to go. Nobody in his corner. All because Cayetana would not let him leave. The show managed to show how guilt with nowhere to go just starts rotting everything around the person carrying it. Polo at Las Encinas in Season 3 is the saddest the show has ever made a character look, which is remarkable given that he is a murderer. That tension, between what he did and what he became afterwards, is the most interesting thing in the whole season.
Former Enemies Who Chose Each Other. That's the Good Stuff.
In the middle of all that mess, there were two things the writers actually got right this season: the friendship between Nadia and Lu, and the one between Samuel and Guzman.
Think about where Samuel and Guzman started. Guzman actively making Samuel's life miserable, treating him like an outsider who had no business being at Las Encinas. Then Marina died, Nano went to prison for something he did not do, and something shifted between them. Two people with every reason to hate each other ended up becoming each other's most reliable allies. That is the kind of friendship built on shared stubbornness and surviving something awful together, and it is one of the few things this season that actually holds the show up when everything else is falling apart. Their bond was real in a way that most of the relationships in this show are not, because it was not built on attraction or strategy. It was built on grief and mutual respect, which is rarer and harder to fake.
And then there is Nadia and Lu. Two characters who spent two seasons tearing each other apart over the same scholarship, the same boy, the same need to be the best in every room. Watching them actually choose each other this season, not because the plot required it but because they started to see each other clearly, was one of the satisfying things the show has ever done. Their friendship felt earned in a way that a lot of Elite does not, because it was built slowly, on mutual respect, after both of them figured out they had been held back by the same toxic people and the same exhausting expectations. Two former rivals choosing each other.
The Drama for the Sake of Drama
I genuinely cannot get over what the writers did to Omar and Ander this season. Ander is going through a leukemia diagnosis, an actual life-threatening crisis, and Omar is out there sneaking around with Malick. After everything these two survived in Seasons 1 and 2, watching them get dragged through a cheating storyline with no real payoff and no real point was just painful to sit with. It felt like the writers had no idea how to write a couple genuinely supporting each other through something hard, so they went for the cheapest conflict available instead.
Omander were the emotional core of this show for two full seasons. The warmth they brought to a story that was otherwise very cold about human nature was one of the main reasons the show had any heart at all. Treating them like a disposable plot point, manufacturing drama just to create tension in an already overcrowded season, was a betrayal of everything the first two seasons built. I am still annoyed about it. The show eventually walks it back and lets them find their way back to each other, but the damage was already done. You cannot undo eight episodes of watching someone's most important relationship get cheapened for drama.
So, Who Was Murdered and Who Actually Did It?
The graduation party at Teatro Barcelo was basically the point where every unresolved thread from the past three seasons finally collided at once. Lu had lost her scholarship to New York and blamed Polo's mothers for pulling it after Polo confessed to them about Marina. She was drunk, grieving, and furious, holding the broken neck of a champagne bottle, when Polo found her in the bathroom. He had come specifically to tell her that he had managed to get his mothers to reinstate the bursary. He was also planning to turn himself in to the police that same night. He just never got the chance to say any of it. Lu, still holding the bottle, stepped toward him, and the glass went through his chest. He staggered out of the bathroom and fell from a second-floor window. Neither of them could quite believe what had just happened.
Here is the part that actually matters: what happened after. For the first time, instead of protecting themselves at each other's expense, the whole group chose to stand together. Every single one of them put their fingerprints on that bottle and lied to the police to cover for Lu. Each person who was interrogated named a completely different suspect, which made it impossible for the inspector to build a case. Without a strong suspect and with Polo having confessed to Marina's murder to his own mothers the same night, the police ultimately ruled his death a suicide. Think about that for a second. These people spent three seasons at each other's throats. Betrayal after betrayal, cover-up after cover-up, everyone protecting themselves first. And in that moment they finally chose each other. It was the only time their bond felt completely real and unforced, and it was the perfect way to close out this chapter of the show.
Where We Left Everyone.
Polo: Dead. Stabbed by Lu with a broken champagne bottle at the graduation party, then fell from a second-floor window at Teatro Barcelo. He had been planning to turn himself in that same night.
Lu: The scholarship gets reinstated. She and Nadia leave for New York together, former rivals turned genuine friends. She gets away with it because everyone covered for her.
Nadia: Heads to New York on the Columbia scholarship, paid for by Polo's parents. She and Lu leave Las Encinas the same way they never could have imagined: side by side.
Carla: Leaves to study abroad despite finally being free to be with Samuel without anyone holding her cover-up over her head. She gets out, just not with him.
Valerio: Takes over running Carla's family vineyard after she leaves. Still underdressed for every occasion imaginable.
Ander: Enters remission. He and Omar find their way back to each other and prepare to return to Las Encinas together for his graduation year.
Omar: Still standing. Back with Ander. The Malick situation gets left behind.
Samuel and Guzman: Both back at Las Encinas for another year, along with Rebeca. The three of them are the bridge between this chapter and whatever comes next.
Cayetana: Stays at the school, not as a student but as part of the cleaning staff. It mirrors her mother's situation exactly and the show seems to think that is poetic. I am still not sure what to make of it as an ending for her.
Final Verdict and Overall Thoughts.
Looking back at the Season 3 finale, it really does feel like the natural conclusion to the story Elite started with. Marina's death finally got real closure. Most of the main cast actually grew as people. The last scene at the school felt like a genuine goodbye to an era. And the collective cover-up in the finale, the first time these people ever truly chose each other over themselves, was the most satisfying thing the show has ever done. It paid off three seasons of watching people betray each other in one quiet, coordinated act of loyalty.
Honestly, a big part of me thinks the show should have stopped right there. When you have a cast with this much chemistry and a central mystery that kept you genuinely hooked for three seasons, it is almost impossible to recreate that energy once you start swapping people out. Elite was always a three-season story. The original mystery begins with a murder Polo committed and ends with his death. That is a complete arc. Everything after was always going to be chasing something that had already said everything it needed to say.
Did the show lose its soul once the original mystery was solved, or did you stick with it anyway?
Drop your take in the comments. I also want to know if the collective cover-up in the finale made you emotional or if you saw it coming from a mile away.
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