Elite is set at Las Encinas, a fictional elite private school in Spain, and it tells the story through flash forwards that drop you straight into police interrogations before walking you back through everything that led there. You already know someone is dead before you even properly meet them. The whole season feels like watching a car crash happen in slow motion, and you cannot look away.
This post contains spoilers for Season 1 of Netflix's Elite.
Okay so here is the story. Three broke kids get sent to Spain's fanciest private school because a rich man's shoddy construction work literally collapsed their old one. His guilt money becomes their scholarships. Samuel, Nadia, and Christian show up with nothing but good grades and the nerve to exist somewhere that was never built for people like them. And by the end of Season 1? One student is dead, an innocent guy is sitting in prison for it, and the actual killers are walking into school on Monday morning like nothing happened. That is Elite in a nutshell.
How it kicks off
The setup is simple, and the class tension hits you right away. Samuel, Nadia, and Christian are poor kids who earned their spot. Everyone else was just born into theirs. Las Encinas does not need to spell out why the scholarship kids do not belong. The building says it. The uniforms say it. The way the rich kids look right through them on day one says it louder than anything else could.
Samuel is honest and quietly brave, the kind of guy who tries to do the right thing even when it costs him personally. Nadia is sharp and guarded, dealing with both the snobby classmates and her strict, conservative dad at home. Christian is the one who bends. He sees the wealth around him and instantly wants a piece of it, which makes him the most vulnerable of the three right from the start.
The show does not waste time showing you how the class divide actually works at a school like this. It is not just about who has money and who does not. It is about who gets the benefit of the doubt when things go wrong. At Las Encinas, having money means your mistakes get quietly handled. Being poor means you become the scapegoat. Season 1 makes that point by the time it is done. Every story beat is built to make you feel it.
Marina is the first person Samuel connects with, and the show uses her as the bridge between the two worlds. She has money, she is Guzman's sister, she has every material advantage you could ask for, and she is still miserable in ways Las Encinas cannot fix. Marina is HIV positive, diagnosed after a relationship at fourteen with an older boy who did not know he had it. Her parents responded by paying the boy off to disappear and refusing to ever bring it up again. They sent her to therapy and shut down the conversation every single time she tried to talk about it. She has been carrying that weight in a school built entirely on secrets, and it has made her reckless. Samuel likes her right away. She likes Nano.
The twists and the escalation
Nano is Samuel's older brother, just out of prison, and he owes money to people who will not wait around for it. The moment he walks into Marina's life, she stops seeing Samuel entirely, and the show does not pretend that is fair to Samuel. But it also gets why Marina is drawn to Nano. He is chaos in a life that has only ever handed her controlled misery. She has been told what to do and who to be for so long that someone who exists completely outside every system she knows feels like "freedom".
The problem is Nano needs money fast. Marina helps him steal an expensive watch from Carla's dad's collection, telling herself it is fine since he already has too much anyway. What they do not realize until after the theft is that one of the watches has a USB drive hidden inside with documents proving both their fathers were part of the corrupt construction deal that collapsed the public school in the first place, the same collapse that sent Samuel, Nadia, and Christian to Las Encinas. Suddenly a simple robbery turns into blackmail material, and Marina and Nano decide to use it. The plan is to squeeze money out of Carla's dad, grab it, and leave together. Marina is also pregnant at this point. She originally plans to end the pregnancy but changes her mind.
Meanwhile, things between Carla and Polo are quietly falling apart. They pulled Christian into their relationship for fun, dressed it up as open and modern, but it was always really about her keeping control. Christian thought he had won something. He was a toy, and he was the last one to figure that out. Polo knew it too. He was slowly losing Carla and spent the whole season desperately trying to win her back, which meant doing whatever she asked and hoping it would be enough.
The Lu and Guzman thing burns slower, but it does just as much damage. Lu noticed Guzman was into Nadia and set a trap. She dared him to go after Nadia, betting that Nadia would either fall for a fake move or shut him down hard. What she did not plan for was Guzman actually catching real feelings halfway through the bet. Spending time with Nadia changed something in him. She did not perform for him. She did not shrink herself down. She was the most confident, most grounded person in that whole school, and she carried herself that way without even trying. Guzman did not just get a crush, he started respecting her, which was probably new for a guy who had never had to look up to anyone before. By the time Lu blew the bet up in public, Guzman had already become someone worth Nadia's time. The damage from that was real. So was the growth.
Ander and Omar are doing something completely different from everyone else at that school. They are not playing games or running schemes. They are just trying to exist somewhere that has no space for who they are. Ander is being crushed under his father's expectations, playing the perfect son every single day. Omar is Nadia's brother, selling drugs to save up enough to eventually escape a household that will not accept him. They keep sneaking around, stealing small moments together, and those scenes end up being the warmest part of an otherwise pretty cold season. Everyone else is playing chess. These two are just trying to breathe.
How it all wraps up
The night of the end of year party, Marina wins the school's award for best student. She accepts it knowing full well she does not deserve it, in a school full of people who have never really deserved anything they have either. She is waiting by the pool for Nano so they can finally pull off the plan, hand over the evidence, get the money, and leave. Samuel finds her first and tries to get her to stay. She says no. He walks away.
Then Polo shows up.
He is there for the watch. Getting it back is his way of proving himself to Carla, of making himself useful enough that she will want him again. Marina refuses to give it to him. She mocks him, calls him Carla's puppet, tells him she pities him, and turns her back on him. Polo grabs the trophy she just won and hits her over the head with it. He does not plan it. There is no premeditation here. It is one second of rage from a guy who cannot handle being dismissed, and Marina collapses by the pool.
Here is the part that makes it even worse: she did not die right away. If Polo had called an ambulance, she would have made it. He did not call one. He grabbed the watch, grabbed the trophy, and ran straight to Carla. She was in the locker room with Christian. Carla sized up the situation in seconds, cleaned Polo up, and turned a witness into an accomplice before Christian even had time to fully process what had happened. One conversation and she owned him completely. Marina bled out alone by the pool.
Nano had actually come to the school that night for the handover. He found her. He was the last person seen near her, he has a criminal record, and he comes from a poor family. Samuel, just trying to be honest with the police and tell them what he knew, mentioned Marina and Nano's relationship and that he had seen Nano near the pool that night. He handed his own brother a life sentence without even realizing it. Nano got arrested. Carla, Polo, and Christian just went home.
Where We Left Everyone.
Polo: Free. Not a scratch on him. Walking back into school like nothing happened.
Carla: Completely untouchable. She managed an entire murder cover-up in real time and her world is still exactly how she designed it.
Christian: Trapped. He is an accessory now and Carla holds that over him indefinitely.
Nano: In prison for a murder he didn't commit.
Samuel: His crush is dead and his brother is behind bars and he accidentally helped put him there.
Guzman: Grieving and spiralling. He's convinced Nano is guilty and that grief is going to drive everything he does in Season 2.
Nadia and Ander: Still standing, barely. Both are exposed and exhausted in different ways.
Omar: Still surviving at home, but at least he has Ander now. It is the one relationship this season that does not collapse.
What I liked and what I didn't
Omar and Ander were easily my favorite part of the whole season. Their chemistry felt real in a way almost nothing else in this show does, and their scenes together were the only moments where I actually got to giggle and kick my feet. Everyone else is scheming or spiraling, and then you cut to these two just trying to steal a few quiet minutes together. The Carla, Polo, and Christian storyline was also a highlight for me. Watching Carla operate was fascinating, she is terrifying in how calm and calculated she stays while everyone around her falls apart.
On the other side, Samuel just did not do it for me. As the main character he felt kind of flat compared to almost everyone orbiting him. I kept getting way more invested in the side plots than in his actual arc, which is not a great sign for your lead.
The Lu and Guzman bet was one I went in already rolling my eyes at. A bet to take someone's virginity is such a tired, gross setup on paper, and normally I would check out the second a show tries it. But credit where it is due, the show actually pulled it off. It turned something that could have been lazy and mean spirited into an actual redemption arc, so I will let this one slide.
The one thing I could not get past was the whole Nano and Marina relationship. Nano is in his twenties and Marina is sixteen. That was genuinely uncomfortable, and the show treats it like a passionate forbidden romance instead of what it actually is. I get that the plot needs Nano in her orbit for the blackmail storyline to work, but the show never really points out how wrong that dynamic is, and it soured a good chunk of the season for me.
Overall Thoughts
As a whole, Season 1 held up well. The pacing worked, the mystery structure worked, and I was locked in from start to finish. The class divide is not just set dressing here, it is the whole engine. Rich people et away with things because the system is built to believe them, and poor kids become the easy scapegoat.
My Rating: 8.3
Have you seen Elite?
Drop your take in the comments. I also want to know if you think Samuel should have stayed quiet or if the honest thing was still the right thing even knowing what it cost.
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