Season 7 premiered on Netflix on October 20, 2023. Eight episodes. And notably, the first season to drop the flash-forward interrogation structure the show had been using since the very beginning. No cold open dropping you into a crime scene this time. The story just starts and moves forward. That decision alone signals that the writers were trying to do something different.
I went into Season 7 expecting absolutely nothing. After what Seasons 4 through 6 put me through I had basically written this show off and was just watching out of stubbornness at that point. But here is the thing: Season 7 actually has consequences. People carry their baggage from one episode to the next. Decisions actually cost them something. The new characters come with real drama attached instead of just taking up screen time. Is it a full comeback? No. But it is enough to make you sit up and pay attention again, and after the last few seasons, that counts for a lot.
This post contains spoilers for Season 7 of Netflix's Elite.
Omar Is Back and He Is Not Okay
First things first: Omar is back. The last time we saw him was the Season 5 finale, crouched on the floor at Benjamin's house next to Samuel's body, desperately trying to keep him conscious while waiting for police to arrive. He and Rebe sat with Samuel while the blood kept spreading. Benjamin got arrested. Omar and Rebe walked away in the rain. The Season 5 finale deliberately left Samuel's fate ambiguous, but the Season 6 synopsis removed all doubt: Samuel did not survive. Omar lost his best friend. The person he had known longer than anyone else at Las Encinas, the boy who had been there through everything.
So when he shows up in Season 7, still in therapy, still having nightmares, still very much not okay, all of that has a specific and earned weight behind it. He is studying social work and has been given an internship opportunity at Las Encinas running an anonymous self-help app where students can send messages if they are struggling. His therapist keeps telling him to sit with the pain instead of running from it. Omar, shockingly, is terrible at that.
A New Director, a Hidden Agenda, and Sara's Stress Rashes
Back at Las Encinas, the parents are losing their minds over Didac after last season's shooting outside the school. His family's mob connections have everyone spooked and there is a formal push to have him expelled. The new academic director Luis steps in looking calm, measured, and diplomatic. He advocates for Didac to stay, citing his positive influence on Nico. Great energy. Reasonable guy.
Except at the end of Episode 1 we see Luis pinning Didac's photo to an investigation board at his apartment. He is an undercover cop. He was never a school administrator. He came to Las Encinas specifically to build a case against Didac and Isadora's respective families, and he installs spyware on Didac's phone to listen in on conversations. The whole season shifts the second you clock that. Nothing he says or does from that point can be taken at face value. And the show uses that tension well, because Luis is not just collecting evidence: he is actively manipulating people he is supposed to be protecting, which makes him more complicated and more troubling than a straightforward villain would be.
And then there is Sara and Raul, who are uncomfortable to watch from the very first scene and are supposed to be. He controls her money. He tracks her social media. He isolates her from anyone who could actually help her and then plays wounded whenever she tries to breathe on her own. The stress rashes appearing on her arms by Episode 2 are not subtle and they are not meant to be. PE teacher Jessica is the first adult at Las Encinas in the show's entire run who actually looks at a student, sees what is happening, and says it out loud without making it about herself or turning it into a school incident. She tells Sara plainly: Raul knows she is addicted to him and he enjoys it. He will keep toying with her because he will never let her leave. The only way out is to fight back. That quiet, practical act of actually seeing someone is more useful than any dramatic intervention. It is also the kind of writing that Seasons 4 and 5 completely forgot existed.
I Actually Liked The New Characters.
Now let's talk about the new characters, because for once, they actually didn't drop the ball here. We've got four new faces this season and I want to introduce them properly.
Chloe shows up with a leaked sex tape and genuinely does not care. Turns out she leaked it herself, deliberately, before anyone else could use it against her. That one detail tells you immediately that Chloe is not going to be a passive character. Her mother Carmen is a whole other situation: always showing up where she is not supposed to be, competing with her own daughter for attention in ways that are both pathetic and quietly dangerous, and carrying a secret about Ivan that the show peels back slowly across several episodes. Both of them are messy in interesting ways. I was glad they were here.
Joel starts the season as a pizza delivery guy and ends up at Las Encinas because Ivan hands him a scholarship on impulse. He is probably the most grounded and self-aware person to ever set foot in that school, and that is exactly why he works. Watching someone normal try to navigate an environment built entirely on money and performance is quietly refreshing in a show that usually does not know what normal looks like. Omar is currently dating Joel when Ivan arrives, which the show uses to build the most uncomfortable love triangle the season has going.
Eric is Nico's cousin. Loud, restless, always at a protest or actively starting one. He uses activism and noise as armour, and it works until it does not. Rocio notices his semicolon tattoo in Episode 4 and the show does not explain it immediately. The semicolon tattoo has roots in Project Semicolon, a mental health awareness movement started in 2013 by Amy Bleuel, built on the idea that a semicolon is used where an author could have ended a sentence but chose not to. It became a symbol for people who have battled depression, suicidal ideation, and other mental health struggles: a mark of choosing to continue. Eric has one on his left arm. He dismisses the question when Rocio asks about it. The show trusts you to piece together why it matters by the time it does.
And then there is Dalmar, who is criminally underused but whose every single scene is a gift. He lives in the shared flat with Omar and Joel. He is the only person in that entire building willing to say what everyone else is clearly thinking. He tells Omar to his face that he is being manipulative. He tells Joel he is a pushover. He does it without cruelty because he is not trying to wound anyone. He is just tired of watching people perform their feelings instead of dealing with them. I need more Dalmar. The show needed to give us more Dalmar.
The Ivan, Joel, and Omar Situation Is Not a Love Triangle.
Omar is hurting in ways he cannot process and he clings to Joel in ways that feel like love from the inside but function more like a trap from the outside. Joel sticks around partly out of feeling and partly out of guilt, and Omar knows it on some level but cannot stop himself from accepting whatever he can get. Nobody is winning. The cycle keeps going until Dalmar names it out loud and the whole thing finally starts to crack open.
The Ivan and Chloe situation goes better than I expected, and I want to be specific about why. For a few episodes the show is clearly building tension between them in a direction that had me deeply uncomfortable. You can see where it looks like it is heading and it is not good. Then Carmen pulls Chloe aside and drops it: Ivan is her brother. She is his birth mother. The relief is immediate. But what comes after is its own kind of sad. Two siblings who did not ask for any of this, stuck with a mother who cannot be present in either of their lives without making everything about herself. Carmen is not evil exactly. She is relentlessly and exhaustingly self-focused in ways that leave damage wherever she goes.
Eric's Arc Is the Emotional Backbone of the Season
Eric swings between manic energy and crashes that are written and performed with enough specificity that they never feel like a general representation of mental illness. This is a specific person in a specific spiral. He self-harms. He pushes Nico away and then resents him for giving him space. He starts sending increasingly severe anonymous messages on the school's self-help app, the one Omar is supposed to be monitoring, while the whole school assumes the messages are coming from someone else. Sonia figures out the truth. Everything becomes more urgent fast.
The semicolon tattoo makes complete sense by the finale. Eric ends up on a rooftop. He reaches out to the app one more time. Nico gets there. No big speech. No dramatic breakdown. He just shows up and tells Eric directly that losing him would leave a hole that nothing could fill. It works because the show spent seven episodes making you understand exactly who Eric is underneath all the noise. This is what Elite used to do consistently and stopped doing for about three seasons. It is good to see it back.
Sara's Escape Plan, Raul's Escalation, and Carmen's Rooftop
Sara's plan to get out of the situation is not clean and was never going to be. She pulls Chloe in to help bait Raul on camera without being fully honest about what she is doing, and burns that friendship in the process. Jessica told her to fight back. Sara fights dirty.
Raul gets progressively worse as the season moves toward the finale. His pivot to playing the gentle, patient, understanding guy with Chloe after Sara leaves is the most unsettling thing he does all season. Not because it is dramatic. He just runs the exact same playbook on a new person, same control, different target, and Chloe cannot see it because she does not have the context Sara does. Watching it happen in slow motion was difficult.
The rooftop sequence is the season's best set piece. Sara tells Carmen that Raul is dangerous and that Chloe is in his orbit now. Carmen goes to the apartment. Raul is there. He chokes her on the edge of the balcony. She asks him for ice. He loosens his grip, completely thrown by the question, because nothing about that response fits the situation and his brain takes a second to catch up. She pushes him off the roof. Carmen was in control of every single second of it. Raul spent the entire season controlling Sara, controlling Chloe, controlling every situation he walked into. And Carmen walked into his and controlled him right off a building. Both Chloe and Carmen give each other alibis and tell the police he jumped. Good riddance. He was an abuser and a manipulator and the show does not try to give him a complicated, nuanced exit. He does not deserve one.
The only loose thread: Dalmar was outside that building. He caught Carmen on camera, looking down from the rooftop right after Raul fell. He has not decided what to do with it yet. That single unresolved detail going into Season 8 is just enough to keep you curious without feeling cheated.
Isa's Moment and the Corruption Plot
Isa and Didac are the weak link of the season and I will just say it. Their relationship spends too many middle episodes going in circles, having the same version of the same argument about trust and family without actually moving anywhere. The more interesting material around Isa is the corruption angle: her father Martin blackmailing Judge Catalina using evidence that she was running a foundation that trafficked infants, Martin using that leverage to keep his family's criminal business protected. Luis builds his case around all of it. Rocio gets dragged in through her mother Catalina's involvement, which had real potential that the writers consistently sidelined. Rocio deserved significantly more than she got this season.
But Isa's finale moment is the clear highlight of the whole season. She plays along with Martin's plan. Wires herself up. Gets him talking, gets him to say everything out loud and on record. Then hands it straight to the police. Her father spent the entire season moving her around like a chess piece and she let him think she was still on the board right up until the moment she was not. It is the most decisive and self-possessed she has been across two full seasons.
Where We Left Everyone.
Raul: Dead. Pushed off a rooftop by Carmen. The police are calling it suicide for now.
Carmen: Covered by Chloe's alibi. Has Ivan's two million. Has Dalmar's video hanging over her whether she knows it or not.
Sara: Free. It took recording him, baiting him, and watching someone else finish the job, but she got out.
Chloe: Shaken but standing. She lied to the police for her mother. That relationship is unresolved in a way that feels very intentional.
Ivan: On a plane to South Africa. Moving forward the way Patrick asked him to. The Joel chapter is open-ended.
Joel: Stayed. He chose himself over Ivan's cab and went home to people who actually know him. Hurting, but finally making decisions on his own terms.
Omar: Back in therapy and out of Joel's space. A small step in the right direction, but a real one.
Eric: Home and safe, thanks to Nico. The road ahead is still uncertain but he's on it.
Nico: Stumbled a lot this season but showed up when it counted most.
Isa: Father under arrest. Corruption shut down. Steps out of her family's shadow for the first time. She and Didac part ways.
Didac: Still in love with Isa. Still on the outside. His cooperation with Luis paid off but cost him everything else.
Rocio: Her mother was arrested for corruption. She deserved better from the writing this season and I'm still annoyed about it.
Luis: Case closed. Martin and Duran are both in custody. He got what he came for.
Dalmar: Sitting on video evidence of the night Raul died. He knows what it shows. He hasn't decided what to do with it yet. This will absolutely matter in Season 8.
Final Verdict and Overall Thoughts
Not bad. Actually, better than not bad, and I didn't think I'd be saying that after the last few seasons.
Season 7 is the best this show has been since Season 3. Not a full return to form, but a real and visible step back toward what made the early seasons work. The drama hits harder this year because it is grounded in who these people actually are rather than just what scandalous thing happens next. The abuse storyline, Eric's mental health arc, Omar's grief, the toxic family loyalty threading through the corruption plot: all of it lands because the writing gives it room rather than using it as background noise.
The weak spots are still there. Isa and Didac go in circles for too long. The organized crime subplot never ignites the way it clearly wants to. Rocio gets sidelined despite one of the more compelling setups this season. And the show completely drops Omar's role running the student app after using it to build the Eric storyline, which is a frustrating loose end.
One season left. The show set up exactly the right questions to answer. Here is hoping Season 8 actually crosses the finish line properly, because after seven seasons of watching these people hurt each other in increasingly creative ways, they all deserve a clean exit.
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