I have watched this show turn from a sharp, cold class thriller into a full telenovela in a designer school uniform.
I am not pretending I am above any of it. But this season tested me in specific ways. This is the first season with zero cast members from Seasons 1 through 3. Samuel, Omar, Rebe, and Cayetana fan favorites who have been here since the very beginning, are all gone.
And here's the part that actually threw me: apparently Samuel died. Season 6 just tells you this, somewhere in the background, like it's old news. Except the last time we saw him, he was conscious, bleeding by the pool, and lucid enough to name Benjamín as the one who put him there. There was no further explanation, or proper send-off, just a retcon dropped in passing for a character who anchored this entire show for five seasons. This show is just all over the place.
This post contains spoilers for Season 6 of Netflix's Elite.
How it kicks off
The season opens with a hit and run. Ivan gets struck by a car, and whoever's driving only stops long enough to check the damage before taking off.
From there it cuts to Ari visiting her father in prison. Benjamín's still trying to justify what he did last season, desperate enough to get out that he's pushing Ari to act normal, go back to school, keep up appearances, warning her that his lawyers have orders to cut her off completely if she doesn't play along.
There's a new headmaster, Virginia, who trades Benjamín's authoritarian streak for something far more welcoming, and Ivan and Patrick can finally be open about their relationship in the halls without hiding it. Ari, meanwhile, starts wondering if she's interested in a guy named Nico. And Isadora's opening her own club, Isadora House, determined to move forward after everything that happened to her last season and pulling all her friends in for the grand opening.
The party itself is a lot. Isadora makes a big entrance announcement on the projector screens, name-drops a guest list that includes Cruz, and takes over the DJ booth herself. In the crowd, Mencia has an icy run-in with a girl named Sara, and gets introduced to Sara's boyfriend, Raul, who wastes no time pointing out that he knows Mencia has feelings for his girlfriend.
At the DJ booth, someone kisses Isadora out of nowhere, and it sends her spiraling straight back to what happened to her last season. She ends up in the bathroom trying to breathe through it. Ivan follows to check on her, and then her mother barges in too, offering her pills like they're the solution, promising they'll make her "a brand new woman in no time."
Ari makes a move on Nico, pushing him to get "plenty of practice" being a straight man, and it lands badly. Nico calls her out for it, calling her a transphobe, and walks off while she watches, stunned.
Isadora's mother, completely unbothered by the video still circulating from last season, decides to head back to Ibiza rather than stay even one more night with her daughter. When Isadora tries to actually talk to her, her mother brushes her off, annoyed by the "negative energy" of the conversation. It sends Isadora into a full panic attack, and she relapses, back on the pills again.
Elsewhere, Raul invites Mencia back to his place, but Sara's clearly not thrilled when he shows up loud and messy. Back at the party, Cruz gets predictably out of control on drugs, and things between him and Ivan are already tense before Patrick tries to smooth things over by talking to Cruz directly. Drunk, Cruz makes a move on Patrick, telling him they had real chemistry, and leans in to kiss him right as Ivan walks back into the room. Ivan reads it wrong and storms off, furious.
Isadora's found passed out from an overdose, and Bilal, thinking fast, dunks her in an ice bath to bring her back. She's not grateful for it, telling him to keep quiet and clean up the mess before he's sent away. Left alone with her, a guy named Didac calls her a spoiled princess and, when things escalate, accuses her of making up her assault entirely, which gets him fired on the spot.
The episode closes with a video of Cruz and Patrick kissing at the club going viral, while a furious, newly fired Didac storms out into the night.
The twists and the escalation
Nico's parents start worrying about him almost immediately, and a strange flash shows Ari driving near the club the night Ivan got hit, though whether that means anything yet is anyone's guess. In the present, Ari keeps chasing Nico and finally gets a real date with him. Meanwhile, the school splits over what happened to Isadora, the boys responsible corroborating each other's story well enough that Sara, of all people, sides with them over her. The Cruz and Patrick kiss video is still spreading too, and Patrick tries to protect Cruz by going live and taking the blame himself, claiming he was the one who pursued Cruz out of starstruck obsession. He tells Ivan afterward that he knows he's ruined things between them, but at least Cruz's name is safer for it. Cruz later tells Ivan the truth, that Patrick sacrificed his own reputation purely out of love for him. Ivan doesn't want to hear it, telling his father all he ever wanted was a real, present father instead.
Didac shows up at Isadora's club with the boys who assaulted her, all of them acting like free men with nothing to hide. Isadora, cornered and desperate, makes the mistake of airing her frustration on social media, which brings out a wave of vile comments telling her to kill herself. Didac, working an angle of his own, secretly records one of the boys, Javi, incriminating himself in the bathroom, and brings the recording straight to Isadora along with an apology for ever doubting her. Around the same time, Ari and Nico's night together falls apart when she hesitates undressing him, and he storms out convinced she's not as accepting as she claims to be. Sara publicly apologizes for siding with the accused boys, loses over a million followers for it, and fights hard with Raul over the fallout. Cruz, trying to control the narrative around the kiss, holds a press conference and publicly claims responsibility himself.
Isadora's recording turns out to be useless in court since it was captured illegally, and Didac keeps trying to make himself useful to her anyway, mostly getting shut out for his trouble. Sara's video apology mysteriously disappears after another blowup with Raul, throwing Ari into a spiral trying to figure out what's actually true. Mencia senses Sara secretly believes Isadora but can't break free of Raul's control, and steps in enough times to buy her small windows of freedom. Cruz, meanwhile, gets sent a chilling message: a mannequin strung up outside his house with "queer" scrawled across it. He tells Patrick to keep it from Ivan entirely. That night, Isadora's friends gather to unwind, drinking and smoking together with Bilal reluctantly pulled into the circle. Ari flirts openly with Bilal, which sends Nico storming out jealous, and when Ari follows, he finally admits he's fallen for her despite everything, torn up by her earlier transphobic comment. They fight it out, and Ari ends up going straight to Bilal instead. Mencia notices a bruise on Sara's arm that doesn't match her explanation, and when Raul crashes the party furious, Sara bolts, souring the whole night. A fight breaks out on the dance floor between Ivan and Javi, and once the chaos clears, Isadora finally puts her revenge plan into motion, spiking the drinks of the boys who assaulted her in full view of the club.
The next stretch opens on a funeral that looks like it might be Ivan's, though the show holds the reveal for later. Virginia investigates the assault claims directly, and the boys try shifting all the blame onto Ivan. At a football match where Cruz plays, tensions boil over: Nico throws a cruel jab at Ari about Bilal, gets a drink thrown in his face for it, and then real violence erupts in the crowd once Cruz scores, spilling out into a riot with flares and Molotov cocktails outside the stadium. Bilal takes a bottle to the face in the chaos. That same day, Sara finally leaves Raul for good, packing her things and running straight to Mencia, one of the few unambiguously good moments the season gives itself.
The good moment doesn't last. Cruz is jumped by a group of men outside and beaten to death, a hate crime with no ambiguity about the motive behind it. The funeral from earlier turns out to be his, not Ivan's, and the show pulls the rug out from under everyone who assumed otherwise.
In the aftermath, Javi finally cracks and tells Isadora that Ivan was actually one of the ones who instigated the assault against her, information that sends her pulling away from him entirely, distancing herself even as Cruz's funeral passes without her there. Weeks later, still grieving, the group organizes a memorial for Cruz at the club, and Patrick manages to coax Ivan back to school in the meantime. Didac keeps pushing Javi to fully come clean, and Javi eventually does, this time clearing Ivan completely and confirming he had nothing to do with what happened to Isadora. Isadora, wracked with guilt over turning on him, rushes to Ivan's place to apologize and promise she won't abandon him again.
Raul, meanwhile, starts manipulating his way back into Sara's life with a public livestream vowing to change, guilt-tripping her hard enough that she goes back to him despite everything Mencia's tried to warn her about. Nico, denied surgery access by his father until after graduation, starts dealing hormones on the side to fund it himself, striking a deal with two of the boys involved in Isadora's assault. At Cruz's memorial, Ivan finally breaks down mid-speech, and right after, ends up sleeping with Ari in the club bathroom. Patrick finds them together as they leave the stall, and it destroys him. The season then jumps forward to Patrick sitting in a hospital waiting room, having just learned Ivan survived the hit and run, though barely.
Further along, a flash shows Ari pouring gasoline over the car involved in the accident, seemingly trying to cover something up. In the present, Benjamín pushes Ari to get the family to testify on his behalf ahead of his trial, and Mencia refuses outright, telling her sister to stop protecting a man who doesn't deserve it. Ivan, spiraling through grief, ends up at a drugged-out hookup party and nearly sleeps with a masked stranger before realizing it's Patrick, and furiously blames him for Cruz's death before throwing him out. Nico keeps dealing on the side, and Isadora buys dangerous drugs off him specifically to use against one of her attackers as revenge. Raul's true colors resurface fast, controlling and possessive as ever, until Sara starts filming him mid-outburst to protect herself. Ari finally visits her father in prison and tells him that he let Samuel die and she hopes he rots there.
A flash-forward shows Ari at the hospital after the car's been burned, finding Patrick devastated and terrified he'll never see Ivan again. Back in the present, a masquerade party at the club brings everyone together, Patrick showing up despite warnings that Ivan needs space, and Ivan recognizing him instantly even behind a mask before walking away. Ari takes a pregnancy test in the club bathroom and finds out she's pregnant with Ivan's baby, and rather than deal with it, drowns the news in alcohol instead. Raul sneaks into the club in disguise hunting for Sara, drugs Mencia's drink to get her out of the way, and corners Sara alone, trying to guilt her one more time about Mencia's "manipulation." Sara finally stands her ground, telling him he has no power over her anymore and revealing she and Mencia have already kissed. Ivan and Patrick try to talk things out, but Ivan makes clear he only wants comfort, not commitment, and a heartbroken Patrick walks away wanting more than Ivan's willing to give.
Blind drunk, Ari decides to drive herself home. Others notice and alert Mencia, still groggy from the drugged drink, while Isadora pushes Ivan to go find Patrick and finally be honest about his feelings. In the scramble of everyone trying to stop Ari, it's Mencia who ends up grabbing her own keys instead, and the episode cuts straight to the aftermath of the hit and run: Mencia behind the wheel, waking up dazed with the windshield shattered in front of her.
How it all wraps up
Mencia wakes up to ten missed calls, a smashed windshield, and no clear memory of what actually happened, only the sick certainty that she's the one who hit Ivan. She calls Ari sobbing, and Ari rushes over to find her sister drugged and barely coherent, though Ari's hardly in a position to judge given her own history with drinking and driving. Thinking fast, Ari douses the car in gasoline and burns it to the ground, destroying the evidence. The two of them walk away from the wreckage swearing to keep the whole thing buried.
Ari sets the rest of her plan in motion, sending Mencia to sit with Patrick at the hospital while she heads to the prison to see Benjamín. She tells him everything, the hit and run, the cover-up, all of it. He offers to help make it disappear, but only if she convinces her siblings to testify on his behalf in court. In the middle of all this, Ari's also decided to end her pregnancy, with Sonia offering to be there for her through it.
Things sour between Isadora and Didac once it comes out his family works in the same industry as hers, and it dawns on him that his firing had nothing to do with performance and everything to do with his family trying to muscle into the Spanish market. He tries proving his loyalty to her, but Isadora's exhausted with men entirely at this point and pulls away. Didac, meanwhile, tells Javi he regrets ever staying quiet about what happened to Isadora and should've gone to the police from the start. Hugo's guilt is eating him alive too, admitting to Alex that the drugs from earlier left him unable to perform with anyone, the last time he actually felt aroused being during the assault itself, a detail that says everything about how little remorse he actually carries. Javi, isolated and unforgiven by the others, watches as Hugo and Alex try to do the same thing to another girl at the club. This time the police catch them in the act before it goes any further. As Javi's taken away too, he tells Isadora to trust Didac, and hopes that someday she can trust men again at all.
At school, Nico starts second-guessing his surgery, and Sonia, fresh off helping Ari through her abortion, shows up to support him through his own decision too. At the hospital, Ari convinces Patrick to give Ivan space rather than be there when he wakes up, and Patrick leaves him a heartfelt voice message instead. Benjamín's plan works exactly as intended: the kids testify, he walks free, and the family leaves Spain.
But the truth about that night isn't what anyone thinks. It turns out Sara was actually the one driving, having taken the wheel from a drugged, spiraling Mencia. She took her eyes off the road for a second, Mencia passed out beside her, and the car hit Ivan by accident. Panicked, Sara called Raul for help, and rather than protect her, he saw an opportunity, wiping the car down and letting the blame fall entirely on Mencia instead.
The season closes with Raul holding that secret over Sara like a leash, while Ivan finally wakes up in the hospital, the first word out of his mouth being "Patrick", too late for that now. As everyone drives off trying to move forward from everything that just happened, another car speeds toward the school, an arm hanging out the back window with a gun firing wildly.
sigh
Where we left everyone:
Ivan: Alive in hospital. Patrick left him a voicemail while he was unconscious. He wakes up not knowing who to be angry at or how to grieve.
Patrick: Stepped back to give Ivan space. Still in love with him. Gets no credit for any of it. Leaves Madrid with his family.
Ari: Ends her pregnancy, burns the car to protect Mencia, and helps get her father out of prison, all in the same handful of days. Leaves with the family.
Mencia: Fully believes she hit Ivan. Doesn't know Sara and Raul set her up entirely. Leaves Madrid.
Benjamin: Released from prison after his children testify for him. The most complete ending any character gets this season: he gets exactly what he manipulated everyone for, and the cost is written on all three of his children's faces.
Sara: Still in Raul's orbit heading into Season 7. She got close to leaving and couldn't finish it.
Raul: Back in full control with brand new blackmail material over Sara. The most dangerous person heading into Season 7.
Nico: Surgery arc rushed into the final episodes. Gets a tender moment with Sonia by his side in recovery. Deserved significantly more runway than he got.
Isadora: Hugo and Alex are arrested. She and Didac end the season cautiously finding their way back to each other, only for someone to open fire outside the school right as they get there. Happy for approximately ninety seconds.
Rocio: Kissed Bilal. Lives in a mansion. Did nothing else of note. Somehow still here for Season 7.
Didac: Did the right thing all season and it cost him nearly everything.
What worked
The Cruz storyline. I hate that he and Patrick kissed again in the first episode, so unnecessary, and it feels like the show added that just for the sake of drama. But I'll set that aside, because everything after it is the best arc of the season. The backlash Cruz faces after coming out publicly felt real, and the show doesn't shy away from showing what it actually costs to be a gay professional athlete in a homophobic environment. Kudos for that.
Sara and Mencia. This one was buried under everything else happening this season, which is a shame, because it's genuinely good work. The show gives a realistic, nuanced portrayal of a toxic, controlling relationship, and does a solid job showing how abuse can be subtle and insidious rather than obvious from the outside.
Where Season 6 lost me
Five new characters at once. Five! I'm tired of complaining about this, but the show keeps doing it, and it's a real problem. There's only so much runtime to go around, and the show's already stretched thin with returning characters. Adding five new people at once means none of them get the attention they deserve, and the choices this season made about who to focus on left some characters underdeveloped and others shoehorned into storylines that never quite fit them. Rocio gets nothing meaningful to do with any of her setup. Didac is decent and grounded, and the show has never known what to do with decent, grounded characters. Nico is Elite's first transgender main character, played by a transgender actor, and his storyline about his surgery and navigating identity had real potential. The show seemed to remember it had committed to that arc about three episodes too late, compressing everything into the final stretch when it deserved room to breathe from episode one. And Sara and Raul's relationship starts uncomfortable and gets dangerous fast, Raul spending eight episodes finding new ways to escalate. That's a lot of new people to care about all at once, and the show doesn't always have the bandwidth to make it work.
Ari, Patrick, and Ivan. I don't know what the writers were smoking when they wrote this. Ari was a mess last season too, but this season she's a mess with no redeeming qualities attached to it. Ivan is terrible at communicating and uses Patrick as a crutch to avoid dealing with his own feelings. I hated it. This whole triangle was a disaster start to finish.
Isadora's storyline felt half baked. The show's been building to this moment for a long time, and it's a shame the execution didn't match the buildup. The aftermath of her assault feels rushed and underdeveloped, without enough space for Isadora to actually process what happened or for the audience to understand her journey through it. The revenge plot is satisfying in the moment, but it doesn't feel deserved or realistic within the story the show actually told. This needed more time spent on her trauma and how it reshaped her relationships and her sense of self, not less.
The finale's twist works in the moment. It falls apart the second you think about it. Isadora House is a professional venue with a staffed car park and visible security. Not one camera catches who got into which car. Raul supposedly bleaches an entire car interior, and nobody, including Mencia waking up inside it, notices the smell? The club's spent the whole season being trivially easy to drug people in with apparently zero surveillance, and that same convenient blind spot just happens to reappear right when the plot needs it most. Elite has always asked for some suspension of disbelief. The finale asks for a little too much.
PS: I still have no idea what Bilal's role was supposed to be this season. Genuinely useless.
Overall thoughts
Season 6 is soapy enough to stay watchable, stretched too thin in the right places to frustrate anyone paying close attention, but with enough moments of quality scattered through it to confirm the show still has a pulse.
My Rating: 5.8
Will I be watching Season 7?
Of course I will. I have absolutely no self-control, and neither do you if you made it this far.
More reviews and takes at The Watchlist Chronicles.