This season was such a slog to get through.
Somewhere underneath all the chaos there's an actual plot this time, one that finally circles back to something that's been buried since Season 4: Armando's body. So before we get into what worked and what absolutely did not, let's walk through how we get from a fundraiser party to a man in handcuffs by a swimming pool.This post contains spoilers for Season 5 of Netflix's Elite.
How it kicks off
The season opens mid-apology. Phillipe's trying to make things right with Cayetana after everything from last season, when the lights suddenly cut out and a video starts playing. It's Elodie, the girl he confessed to abusing in a voice message back in Season 4, and this time she's not keeping it quiet. She tells everyone watching that Phillipe raped her.
Then the show jumps straight to the police station, where Samuel sits across from the Inspector and confesses to murder. Real this time, or so it seems, with a body already shown floating face-down in a swimming pool before the show even explains whose it is.
From there it rewinds to the start of the school year, just after Elodie's video goes public. Las Encinas responds by locking phones away and enforcing strict distance between students, though none of it does much to contain the fallout. Phillipe becomes public enemy number one overnight. Someone slips a pair of scissors into his bag with a note telling him to castrate himself. He's technically been cleared of charges before, and Benjamín goes as far as addressing the school directly, calling the treatment against him unacceptable. Phillipe, desperate, asks Cayetana to publicly vouch for him, hoping her word might cool things down. The one person on his side without being asked is a new student, Isadora.
Patrick's dealing with his own mess at home, a blowup with his father sends him straight to Omar for comfort, the two of them sleeping together that same afternoon while Ander, off on the other side of the world, stays silent and unreachable. Patrick also starts circling a new guy, Ivan, who insists he's not gay while stripping down in front of him in the locker room, which is about as convincing as it sounds. Ivan's home life isn't easy either, his father Cruz constantly out partying instead of around. One afternoon at Ivan's place, things get physical between the two boys, and when Patrick ends up frustrated and slips off to the bathroom alone, it's Cruz who catches him there and, instead of looking away, gives him an encouraging thumbs up. It's exactly as uncomfortable as it sounds, and it's only episode one.
Back at school, Mencia tells the Inspector she was assaulted, on top of everything already unraveling around Ari. It's too much for Benjamín, who blames himself for not watching Armando closely enough, Samuel assures him that Armando isn't coming back. Cayetana, nudged along by Isadora, goes on camera and publicly stands by Phillipe, telling everyone she doesn't want him thrown out of school.
The episode closes back where it started, in that interview room, where Samuel admits that he killed someone.
The twists and the escalation
Back in the interview room, Rebe tells the Inspector that Samuel didn't actually kill anyone, though whether that holds up is anyone's guess at this point. Meanwhile Benjamín's grip on the school tightens fast: strict rules, phones locked away, and it comes out that he's tracking students' locations through the school app. When they push back, he threatens to tank their grades if they keep resisting. Patrick leads the pushback, throwing a party partly just to get a moment with Ivan, while Cayetana and Phillipe stay out of it entirely. Cayetana's also pushing Phillipe to see the school counselor, Greta, who bans him from drinking and calls him a predator.
Benjamín walks in on Ari and Samuel having sex and drag both into his office separately, Samuel's scholarship suddenly on the line again. Meanwhile Omar takes in a homeless teenager named Bilal, offering him a dishwashing job out of pity, only for Bilal to try stealing the tip jar the same day. Omar throws him out, unmoved by his claims that dangerous people are after him.
At Patrick's party, things spiral fast. Rebe and Ivan kiss on the dance floor, caught on video and sent straight to Mencia. Patrick, already crushed watching that unfold, gets Ari to try drugs, and when he confronts Ivan about hiding who he really is, Ivan responds by kissing Samuel in front of him, pure spite dressed up as flirting.
Benjamín escalates the war on his students by handing out drug tests tied to grades, positive results meaning expulsion. The students revolt, tossing the tests out entirely, so Benjamín turns them against each other with an anonymous vote to expel one of their own. It comes down to Samuel and Omar, and Omar votes for Samuel out loud, getting him kicked out for three days and shattering whatever trust was left between them. Samuel throws him out of the house that night.
Bilal keeps circling back, and during a lakeside fundraiser Samuel catches him pick pocketing a guest and kicks him out again, right as Omar, following Samuel outside, spots a body floating in the lake and dives in convinced it's Bilal. It isn't. It's Armando, who was killed and dumped at the end of last season, finally surfacing. Bilal shows up to help pull the body out. Rebe, Omar, and Bilal end up disposing of it together on the beach, Omar furious nobody told him the truth sooner. Eventually Samuel calls the police himself, and the flashforward the season opened comes with a shocking twist: the body in the pool everyone's been building toward. It's Samuel.
While that unfolds, Phillipe drifts further from Cayetana and toward Isadora, eventually breaking things off with Cayetana entirely and kissing Isadora in full view of everyone. Patrick, meanwhile, catches Ari and Ivan having sex out on the water and falls apart over it, and it's Cruz, of all people, who comforts him. The two end up kissing. Rebe and Mencia's relationship keeps fracturing too, worsened when Mencia sees Rebe with another girl, Jess, at a drive-in. In the chaos of the fundraiser, Mencia finds a second SIM card hidden in her own phone, planted there by Armando, and traces the number on it straight back to her father.
Ivan and Patrick, bonding over shared father issues, finally sleep together. Cruz tried to pull Patrick into his room, gets stood up, as Patrick chose Ivan instead. Benjamín, meanwhile, gets pressed by the Inspector over the very investigation Mencia's SIM card ties into, and has Mencia hide a second phone for him, unaware the Inspector's watching it all on camera. Isadora's drinking spirals hard enough that Cayetana ends up taking her home, and later, finding her stash laid out and Isadora finally sober enough to talk, gets a rare honest glimpse into how lonely Isadora's life actually is underneath the chaos.
Cruz confronts Patrick in front of Benjamín with a line that lands like a threat (to me) dressed as heartbreak: I waited for you. Before it can go further, police arrive to search Benjamín's office. In the scramble, Mencia's caught stashing his second phone, and just before she can say anything to the investigator, Samuel bursts in and confesses to Armando's murder himself. It comes out that Benjamín had already offered him a deal beforehand: take the fall, and Benjamín would make sure his life afterward was taken care of completely.
Samuel plays along at first, coached by Benjamín to stay calm while bail gets arranged. The group scrambles to raise the twenty-five thousand euros needed to get him out, and it's revealed the SIM card was never Benjamín's to begin with, Armando had hidden it in Mencia's phone specifically because it was the last place anyone would think to check. Mencia's already made her own copy of everything incriminating, not fully trusting her father either. Ivan, moved by how much Ari clearly cares about Samuel, decides to help raise the bail money, especially once Cruz, learning Ivan slept with Patrick, refuses to contribute out of spite.
The group throws a charity auction to cover the rest, "Buy Your Valentine," which pairs Ivan with Ari and Patrick with Cruz, the two couples splitting off privately. Ivan and Ari end up kissing. Patrick and Cruz end up in a bathtub together, and later, a pool, which Ivan catches sight of and sends Ari away. Samuel finally walks free, thanking Benjamín warmly for coming through, until Ari tells him that it wasn't Benjamín's money that got him out. It was Ivan's. The episode flashforwards and shows Patrick standing over samuel, covered in blood.
By episode seven, the investigator's pushing Samuel harder, laying out evidence that Benjamín and Armando had been trafficking blackmail material on powerful people. He offers Samuel a way out: help build the case against Benjamín in exchange for his own freedom. Whether he takes it stays hanging. Ivan, furious over what happened with Patrick, confronts both his father and Patrick directly, calling Patrick manipulative and demanding he stay out of his life entirely, a claim that lands a little rich given Ivan's own behavior. A flash cuts back to that bloody night: Samuel crawling away while an injured Patrick calls out for help.
Back at school, Rebe learns about the SIM card and convinces both Cayetana and Mencia to help track it down as the evidence that could finally clear Samuel and take Benjamín down for good. Cayetana breaks into the school at night to search Benjamín's office while Rebe searches his home, and it's ultimately Mencia who hands it over, telling Rebe she loves her and refuses to let an innocent man go to prison over her father's secrets. Benjamín gets tipped off that Cayetana was caught snooping around his office the same night.
Phillipe, meanwhile, tells Isadora that no amount of glitter and money fills the emptiness underneath, refusing to date her while she's still spiraling. She responds by flying out to a party in Ibiza via helicopter. Worried, Phillipe follows her out there. During a dinner at Benjamín's house, Patrick shoves him in a moment of rage over everything with Ivan and Cruz, and later admits to Cruz just how conflicted falling for him has left him. They kiss again. In the middle of it all, a drunk Ivan leaves a voicemail confessing his real feelings for Patrick, and by mistake, sends it straight to Ari's phone instead.
In Ibiza, Isadora collapses at the party, unconscious. Phillipe, barely conscious himself, is slumped against a wall nearby when three men at the party notice she's out cold and decide to take advantage of the situation, locking the door behind them.
How it all wraps up
Ari shows up late one night to see Rebe and Samuel, and pulls Samuel aside privately. With the SIM card now in his hands, enough to bury her father for good, she tells him it's his call what to do with it, kisses him on the cheek, and leaves him to sit with the decision alone. Rebe reminds him afterward that Benjamín's never really valued him, just tolerated him, right up until he was ready to shake him off.
At school, Ivan and Phillipe both claim to remember only pieces of what happened in Ibiza, though Isadora's visibly traumatized, and Phillipe, given his own history, is terrified he might have been part of whatever happened to her. Ivan tells Patrick he's moving to Qatar with his father, and Patrick retreats into the showers alone. Isadora ends up there too, and when she starts bleeding, it becomes clear something far worse happened that night.
Cayetana finds her there and talks to her through the shower wall, no longer even employed at the school after getting caught snooping through Benjamín's office. Isadora breaks down the second she's alone.
The truth comes out through a video. One of the boys from that night filmed the whole thing and shows it off to Phillipe and Ivan. In it, Ivan tries to stop the three of them and collapses before he can. Phillipe crawls toward Isadora and passes out too. The boys assault her while both of them are down, and when Phillipe manages to lash out afterward, one of them mocks him over his own assault allegations, which is enough to make Phillipe hit him.
That night, Phillipe finally tells Isadora the truth, that he actually cares about her, and the two kiss as thunder rolls overhead. Around the same time, Cruz (remember he's Ivan's father), sits Patrick and Ivan down together and admits he can't keep doing this to either of them. He decides against Qatar entirely, telling Ivan to go be happy and chase what he actually wants with Patrick.
Samuel heads to the police station with the SIM card, but Benjamín calls first, begging to talk in person given everything between them. Samuel agrees. That night, Benjamín tries to buy him off completely: an Oxford business scholarship, tuition, housing, three thousand euros a month, in exchange for the SIM card and his silence about Armando. Samuel turns it down and tries to leave. Benjamín grabs for the bag, and in the struggle Samuel goes down hard, cracking his head against the edge of the pool and slipping into the water, blood spreading out around him while Benjamín just watches, frozen.
Patrick finds them and pulls Samuel out and calls everyone to tell them what's happened. Benjamín tries to stop them from calling the police.
Samuel survives. Barely conscious, he still manages to tell everyone the truth. The SIM card ends up lost in the pool water, and once Rebe realizes what happened, she goes after Benjamín herself, knocking him down before Mencia steps in to pull her off.
The police finally arrive and arrest Benjamín, leading him away in handcuffs while Patrick watches, Ivan standing beside him. Patrick and Ari break down sobbing, while Omar and Rebe quietly walk away from the wreckage of it all.
Where we left everyone:
Samuel: Pushed into the pool by Benjamin, hits his head, and nearly drowns, but survives, conscious enough to name Benjamin as the one responsible. After five seasons of this show using him as a punching bag, at least this time he lives to say so.
Benjamin: Arrested. Handcuffed in front of his three children by a swimming pool.
Patrick: Pulls Samuel out of the pool and watches his father get taken away.
Ivan: Stays in Spain instead of going to Qatar because Cruz tells him to follow his heart. After all the back and forth this season, I'd stopped caring.
Cruz: Steps aside. After spending the entire season pursuing his son's classmate. Sure.
Rebe and Mencia: Pulled apart and pushed back together so many times this season that the emotional whiplash became its own subplot.
Ari: Her love story with Samuel was one of the flattest things this season produced, which is a shame because these are two characters who should work together on paper and simply don't on screen.
Omar: Walks away from the finale with Rebe. His whole Bilal subplot goes essentially nowhere. Omar's been coasting on the goodwill of his earlier seasons for two years now and the writers genuinely owe him a real storyline.
Cayetana: Fired from the school partway through the season and still hanging around anyway. I don't know what else she's here for and based on the evidence, neither do the writers.
Isadora: Survives an assault the season never gives proper weight to. Season 6 has a chance to actually do something with her. Whether it will is a different question.
What worked and what didn't
I can see what the writers were going for with Isadora: a wealthy, untethered girl who uses parties and chaos as a substitute for a life her absent parents never bothered to give her. The problem is the show skips the part where you actually build investment in her before piling on the trauma, and having her show up defending Phillipe within her first few episodes, acting like she'd been there the whole time, just felt gross.
The Benjamin and Samuel dynamic was a little interesting, and credit where it's due, there's something almost poignant about Samuel who's never had a reliable father figure gravitate towards Benjamin over and over, even knowing it would end badly. The reveal that he's the body in the pool at the end of episode four was the one moment this season actually shocked me.
The Patrick, Ivan, and Cruz subplot. I can't believe this storyline made it through a room full of adults, got pitched, approved, shot, edited, and released onto Netflix. I was rooting for Patrick and Ivan. Then Cruz happened, and it's the same predatory, completely inappropriate dynamic between a grown man and a teenager the show's leaned on before. The resolution, where he graciously steps aside and urges his own son to chase down the boy he'd been pursuing all season, gets played as redemptive, even touching. It pissed me off. I hated it.
Rebe and Mencía ended Season 4 in a good place, so naturally Season 5 spends its entire runtime dismantling that, pulled apart and pushed back together so many times across eight episodes that by the finale I was just exhausted.
I wrote in my Season 4 post that the writers have never figured out what to do with Cayetana. Updated assessment: it's now Season 5 and they still haven't. I hope I don't see her in Season 6.
Overall thoughts
This season was a mess, and not in the fun, chaotic way earlier seasons managed to pull off. Isadora spending part of the season defending Phillipe against assault allegations, only for the show to turn around and put her through an assault of her own, felt less like irony and more like the writers not thinking through what they were doing. Ivan flip-flopping between Ari and Patrick for eight straight episodes, Ari, doing the same thing on her end, bouncing between feelings for Samuel and Ivan with no real throughline connecting any of it.
And then there's Cruz. A grown man pursuing his own son's teenage classmate all season, and the show wraps it up by having him step aside like it's a gracious, mature decision instead of the bare minimum. That's a man stopping something he never should have started, and the show treats it like growth. Sick work by the writers, honestly.
Season 5 isn't the disaster Season 4 was, but it's forgettable. This season made me tired.
The pieces are there for Season 6 to do something interesting. Benjamin is in handcuffs. The Blanco Commerford era is officially over. In theory that clears the stage for a proper reset. Whether the show has the discipline to actually use that space is the only question I have going into the next season. And yes, before you ask: I'll be watching. Against all available evidence and better judgment. Because apparently this is just who I am now.
My Rating: 6.0
What are your thoughts on this season?
Drop it in the comments. I need to know I wasn't alone in this. Also if you somehow enjoyed the Cruz storyline unironically, I really want to understand your reasoning.
More reviews and takes at The Watchlist Chronicles.