This post contains spoilers for Season 6 of Netflix's Elite.
Episode one of Season 6 and we already have a footballer's son getting hit by a car, a girl still dealing with the aftermath of a sexual assault whose perpetrators are walking free at the same school she attends, a viral kissing scandal nearly destroying a celebrity's career, and Benjamin running his children's lives from a prison cell. All before the opening credits finish rolling. That is Season 6 in one breath.
I have been watching this show since the very beginning. I have watched it turn from a sharp, cold class thriller into a full telenovela in a designer school uniform, and I am not pretending I am above any of it. But this season tested me in specific ways. The production is still slick. But the whole thing is running on autopilot more than it ever has, and when you have been paying close attention this long, the cracks are really hard to ignore.
Season 6 premiered on Netflix on November 18, 2022. Eight episodes. It is also the first season with zero cast members from Seasons 1 through 3. Samuel, Omar, Rebe, and Cayetana are all gone. Fan favourites who have been here since the very beginning, now just absent. Las Encinas without them is a noticeably colder place. And the show knows it, because the Season 6 synopsis does the one thing the Season 5 finale refused to do: it confirms Samuel is dead.
Five New Characters at Once. Five.
So we have five new faces this season. For a cast that was already stretched thin after losing four main characters simultaneously. Let me run through them.
Rocio is vibrant, confident, and lives in a mansion. I wish I could tell you she does something meaningful with any of those qualities. She does not. Didac is Javier's childhood friend, which puts him at the center of the Isadora assault storyline whether he wants to be or not. He starts the season working at Isadora House, gets fired after an altercation with the owner, and spends most of the season trying to figure out what is actually true about the night in Ibiza. He is decent and grounded and we know the show does not know what to do with decent and grounded characters.
Nico is a trans student and the most significant introduction the show has made in recent seasons from a representation standpoint. He is Elite's first transgender main character, played by a transgender actor. His storyline about his surgery and navigating identity and attraction had real potential. The show remembered it had committed to this arc about three episodes too late and compressed everything into the final stretch when it deserved room to breathe from episode one. Sara is the new girl in a relationship that starts off uncomfortable and gets dangerous. And Raul is her boyfriend, a controlling and abusive partner. He spends eight episodes finding creative new ways to escalate. That is a lot of new people to care about simultaneously, and the show does not always have the bandwidth to make it work. Some of them worked, some did not.
Meanwhile the returning characters are carrying on. Ari is visiting Benjamin in prison, where he is quietly leveraging his children into performing normality for his lawyers. The Blanco Commerford siblings are back at Las Encinas, fielding stares and loaded comments while trying to figure out who they are now that their father is in handcuffs and Samuel is dead. And Las Encinas has a new headmistress called Virginia, who seems to genuinely want things to be better. You already know how that goes at this school.
The Cruz Storyline.
Credit where it is due. The Cruz arc is one of the most emotionally effective things the show has produced since the original cast left.
It starts with a video of Cruz and Patrick kissing going viral. Patrick immediately takes the blame publicly, uploading a video claiming he initiated the kiss so that Cruz, a famous professional footballer, does not have to face consequences for it. Patrick's lie ends up doing the opposite of what he intended. Cruz, moved by the gesture and done hiding, publicly comes out as gay on his own terms. And then the show makes you sit with what that actually costs him in the real world. Death threats arrive. A dummy is hung outside his front door with "Queer" written across it. Objects are hurled through his window at night with his jersey, his name crossed out and replaced with slurs. He loses sponsorships. Contracts disappear. The football stadium during his first match as an openly gay player becomes a war zone: fans fighting in the stands, flares going off, the match abandoned. Ivan gets Cruz's jersey number tattooed on his hip that week, so proud of his father he cannot contain it. What happened between that moment and the next is devastating.
Cruz had spent that night drinking and doing drugs, processing everything alone. He drove anyway. His car clipped another vehicle on the road. When he stepped out to deal with it, the men in the other car recognized him. They beat him to death on the street for being gay. That is Episode 4, and the show disguises what is coming by opening with what looks like Ivan's funeral: Patrick and Ari watching a coffin from a distance, the family wanting to begin the service. The reveal that it is Cruz in that coffin, not Ivan, is winding. It was the best episode this season.
Ivan's grief afterward is the most emotional work the season does. He blames Patrick, convinced that Patrick's public video is what pushed Cruz to come out and therefore is ultimately responsible for what happened. He breaks up with Patrick over it. He shuts down, lashes out, destroys the best relationship he has had. His guilt spirals into recklessness. The sex with Ari at Cruz's own memorial is ugly and deliberate and the show does not pretend otherwise. If the whole season had been written with this much intention, Season 6 would be a real return to form. It is not. But those four episodes are a reminder of what the show is still capable of.
Isadora: A Storyline That Deserved Better Handling
Isadora spent the back end of Season 5 filing a police report against Hugo, Alex, and Javier, the three classmates who assaulted her at a party in Ibiza while she was unconscious. Season 6 opens with the charges dropped due to insufficient evidence. The three of them are back at Las Encinas, declared innocent, walking the same corridors as her, and the school is treating Isadora like an attention-seeking girl with a history of drama rather than a victim the system just failed.
The show's response to this is kind of uncomfortable. Isadora, Mencia, and Ari drug Javier and Alex and tattoo the word "rapist" across their backs. As revenge fantasies go it was satisfying to watch. As a narrative choice it is more complicated, because the show keeps pulling between framing Isadora's anger as justified and framing her methods as going too far, without ever fully committing to either reading. Hugo and Alex then try to deflect attention by planting a story through Javier that Ivan was also involved in the assault. Isadora stupidly believes it, at least partially, which damages her relationship with one of the few people who actually tried to stop what happened to her that night. Didac eventually gets Javier to tell the truth on record. The recording is inadmissible because consent was not given. The legal system fails her twice.
The finale gives her some closure. Javier turns himself in to the police before Hugo and Alex can assault another girl who has passed out at Isadora House. Hugo and Alex get arrested. Isadora gets at least a fragment of the justice the earlier episodes refused to deliver. The shower scene where Cayetana sits with her through a bathroom wall is the one moment the whole storyline actually breathes properly: no dramatic music, no speeches, just one person being quietly present for another in a way that costs them nothing and means everything. It is the best scene Cayetana has had in two seasons. But one good scene does not make a fully formed arc. The potential was real. The patience to develop it properly was not always there.
Sara and Mencia: Sharp Writing Buried Under Everything Else
This is the other thing the season gets right, and it is frustrating because it keeps getting pushed to the margins by louder storylines.
Raul's control over Sara escalates slowly and believably. The demands, the financial control, the social media tracking, the isolation from anyone who could help, the bruises she quietly explains away. Mencia notices every single sign almost immediately. She shows up at Sara and Raul's home to keep Sara company. She pre-dials emergency services before Raul comes to the school looking for Sara. That specific detail, having the number ready before anything has happened yet, is the kind of practical, quiet care that feels real. The show is being accurate about how people who recognize abuse actually respond to it: not with dramatic confrontations but with preparation and presence.
Sara kisses Mencia at a party. She then tells Mencia honestly that she is not attracted to women, that the kiss came from gratitude and not desire. Mencia handles that gracefully. Their dynamic this season is not a romance, it is a friendship built in crisis, and the show is better for treating it that way rather than forcing it into something it is not. Sara eventually starts to gather the courage to leave. She records a video apology to Mencia and Isa, then deletes it under pressure from Raul. She takes two steps forward and one step back across the entire season, which is exactly how leaving an abusive relationship actually works.
The Hit-and-Run: What Actually Happened
The central mystery of the season is who hit Ivan after he left the memorial party. The show spends several episodes making you think it was Isadora, dropping flash-forwards of her getting into the car right after Javier tells her the false story about Ivan's involvement in her assault. She had motive and the right vehicle.
Here is what actually happened. Ivan walked out of the club and tried to hail a cab on the street. Mencia, who had been drugged earlier that evening by Raul to prevent her from interfering with Sara, grabbed the wheel of Patrick's car to stop a drunk Ari from driving. Sara, also in the car, took over from Mencia and then passed out behind the wheel herself, hitting Ivan. Raul received Sara's panicked call immediately after. He bleached the entire car interior to destroy the evidence and set the scene so Mencia would wake up in the driver's seat with no memory of what happened.
Ari burns the car when she finds out, assuming Mencia is responsible and protecting her. Benjamin, still in prison, uses the situation to pressure his children into testifying in his favour in court. He gets himself released. The whole family leaves Madrid. Ivan wakes up. Patrick had left him a voice message while he was unconscious, raw and honest and completely finished pretending he was okay with the distance between them. Then a black SUV pulls up outside Las Encinas and someone fires a gun from the window. Season 7 bait. Obviously.
The Twist Is Good. The Logic Behind It Is Not.
The twist works in the moment. The problem is what happens when you think about it for thirty seconds. Isadora House is a professional venue with a staffed car park and security presence. Not one camera caught who got into which car. Raul bleaches an entire car interior and nobody, including Mencia waking up inside it, smells the bleach? The club has spent the whole season being trivially easy to drug people in with apparently no bar surveillance whatsoever, but that same infrastructure conveniently disappears when it would actually matter to the plot. Elite has always required suspended disbelief. The finale asks for a little too much.
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. Not returning for Season 7.
Ari: Burned the car to protect Mencia, and helped get her father out of prison. Leaves with the family. Also gone from Season 7.
Mencia: Fully believes she hit Ivan. Does not know Sara and Raul set her up entirely. Leaves Madrid. Not returning for Season 7.
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 could not 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. Then someone shoots at them outside the school. 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. Still here.
Final Verdict and Overall Thoughts
Season 6 is not the unhinged disaster that Season 4 was. It is also not the damp, forgettable slog that Season 5 turned into. It sits somewhere in the middle: soapy enough to stay watchable, stretched too thin in the right places to frustrate anyone paying close attention, but with enough moments of genuine quality scattered through it to confirm the show still has a pulse.
The Cruz storyline is some of the best television this show has produced in years. Episode 4 specifically is excellent. And the Sara and Mencia dynamic has more honest, careful writing in it than anything the show attempted across the entire Season 4 to 5 stretch.
But five new characters was too many again. Rocio is the proof. Nico's arc deserved to be the backbone of his first season and was treated like a subplot. The Isadora storyline kept losing focus when it needed the opposite. And the hit-and-run mystery, while not badly constructed, collapses if you look at the logistics for more than thirty seconds.
Will I watch Season 7? Of course I will. I have absolutely no self-control, and neither do you if you made it this far.
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