Eight seasons of secrets, sex scandals, murder, and filthy rich teenagers making the worst decisions imaginable, and this is how we go out.
Look, I've been on this Elite journey longer than I care to admit and the final season had a lot to live up to. Did it deliver? Sort of. Was it frustrating? Absolutely. Was I still glued to my screen? Every single episode.
This post contains spoilers for Season 8 of Netflix's Elite.
How it kicks off
The season opens right where the story ends: graduation night, two drunk girls stumbling across Joel's dead body. Then it rewinds to give us the whole picture.
In the present, Omar's reunited with Nadia, back home for a short stay. At Las Encinas, siblings Hector and Emilia Krawietz have taken over the Alumni club, much to Principal Virginia's displeasure, though there's not much she can do about it given the Krawietzs are one of the wealthiest families in Spain with a hand in nearly everything, legal and otherwise. The siblings frame Alumni as an exclusive club now, sponsorship required to join, and the payoff is real enough that Nadia credits her UN internship entirely to Alumni connections.
Hector's instantly drawn to Joel, hitting on him despite Joel's clear disinterest, still trying and failing to reach Ivan, who's ignoring his calls from South Africa. The rest of the group has its own shifts: Chloe and Eric are happy together, which needles Nico, while Sonia's now with Dalmar. Sara wastes no time publicly accusing Chloe of killing Raul, and she's not entirely off base, since the actual killer, Chloe's mother Carmen, is one of the real suspects. With no money for a lawyer, Carmen pushes Chloe toward Hector for his wealth. Isa's in a similar bind financially, her mother nudging her toward getting in good with the Krawietzs too. Isa's already hired Omar to help rebuild the club's image and attract investors, all while dodging Detective Luis, who keeps pushing for a friendship she clearly doesn't want.
Dalmar's facing deportation, though the notice comes with a loophole: cooperate with police or the government in some way, and documentation becomes possible. Conveniently, he happens to be sitting on a recording of Carmen pushing Raul off that rooftop.
Home life isn't any calmer. Omar comes back to find Joel crashing in his room and throws a fit, not without reason given Joel's history of cheating on him with Ivan. Dalmar tries to smooth things over, but Joel lies about staying at Ivan's instead and sneaks off to crash at the Alumni club, where Hector finds him and makes a move, offering to sponsor him for the club under the guise of just wanting him happy. Joel isn't buying it.
Chloe and Isa both angle for Emilia's sponsorship, hoping to leverage her connections for their own gain, and Isa has the stronger pitch, offering her own club up in service to the Alumni. The group dynamics keep fraying: Nico blames Chloe for being a bad influence on Eric, and when Chloe ends up distraught over it, Sonia tries cheering her up with gossip, revealing that Omar told Dalmar, who told Sonia, that Isa's broke. Chloe uses that information immediately, manipulating Omar and leaking Isa's finances straight to Emilia, winning the sponsorship for herself. Emilia toys with Chloe the whole time, insisting she'd never betray a friend while clearly relishing the chaos she's stirring.
Guilt-ridden, Omar tries checking in on Joel, who brushes him off the moment Ivan returns to Spain. Their reunion doesn't stay happy for long, Ivan still stinging over Joel not joining him abroad. Joel calls him out for being entitled about it and accepts Hector's invitation out of spite. Emilia warns her brother that Alumni's exclusivity depends on every candidate passing a test designed to push them past their limits, and Hector agrees to it without hesitation.
The episode ends back at the graduation party, cutting to a bloodied Ivan and Dalmar being arrested for Joel's murder.
The twists and the escalation
Ivan and Joel wrestle in gym class, Emilia teasing her brother for being visibly jealous watching them, while a flash forward jumps straight to graduation night, Hector waking up next to Joel's body, throat already slit.
Back in the present, Carmen assures a cornered Chloe she'll handle the police herself. Emilia's first real test for Chloe is cruel: she swaps Eric's BPD medication for drugs, sending him into a panic everyone mistakes for a breakdown. Chloe stays behind to take care of him, and Emilia tells her that her priorities disqualify her from sponsorship. Isa, meanwhile, has Omar running errands nonstop, which Nadia calls out, pushing her brother to stand up for himself. Luis keeps circling Isa too, and overhears her and Omar planning a party while worrying about money.
Joel's own first trial is worse. Hector tells him to secretly record girls in the locker room shower, and when Principal Virginia catches him, Hector saves him by threatening to leak the footage if she expels him, then coerces Joel into a sexual act, framing it as simply part of the trial. Elsewhere, Nico helps Sara see clearly for the first time that she's been romanticizing an abusive relationship, taking her to Raul's old place to force the reality of it.
Joel works as a bartender now at Isa's club, Ivan can't stop watching him, and Dalmar nudges Joel to actually give Ivan a chance. Emboldened, Joel blows Hector off entirely, until Ivan ruins the moment by paying Isa to let him take Joel home like a transaction, Joel feels humiliated. On the dance floor, Eric shows up insisting he's fine, but the group blames Chloe for his earlier episode anyway, and she breaks down, ending things with Eric over a voice message out of fear she's bad for him before telling Emilia she's ready to join Alumni. In the chaos, Luis has someone secretly sabotage the party decor, injuring several people including Joel, and uses the resulting liability to extort Isa over her lack of permits. Omar has a panic attack amid it all, and Nadia, planning to leave, decides to stay and look after him instead.
Dalmar's bike gets stolen, and reporting it gets him arrested for lacking ID, forcing Sonia to bail him out. Furious and desperate with his citizenship on the line, he anonymously blackmails Carmen using the footage of her killing Raul, demanding the two million Ivan gave her. Meanwhile, an angry Joel goes straight to Hector and agrees to whatever it takes to get into Alumni, and they hook up.
By episode three, both Chloe and Joel are officially accepted into Alumni. A flash forward shows Joel apologizing to Isa at graduation, her fury barely contained as she warns him he'll regret whatever he's done. In the present, Luis forces Isa into dinner with him in exchange for a visit with her imprisoned father. Hector demands a two thousand euro fee from Joel to stay in the club, and when Joel can't pay, refuses to let Hector cover it for him, insisting he won't be anyone's charity case. Instead, Hector rigs a solution: a race he always wins, letting Joel bet on him and use the winnings to pay off Ivan and fund his own way. Omar warns him it all sounds like a cult. Joel insists he can handle it.
Dalmar's extortion attempt on Carmen backfires badly. She hands over a bag stuffed mostly with paper, tracks him home with a hidden device, and threatens to frame him unless he returns what little real money she gave him, though pity gets him a spare thousand anyway. His deportation notice tightens to just one month left. Isa's own visit to her imprisoned father goes just as poorly, Martin insisting she sell the club to a loan shark named Cibran to clear his debts and bail him out. Furious at his selfishness, she relapses back into drugs. Omar suggests borrowing from Ivan instead, but his doubt over whether they can actually save the club offends her. With no other option, her mother Roberta forces her to approach Cibran anyway, and his offer isn't nearly enough to cover the debt.
At school, Isa overhears Joel and Nico discussing the Alumni race and impulsively bets her own club on it. Chloe, worried, tells Ivan, who arrives just in time to catch Joel and Hector making out and can't stop Isa from entering the race regardless. Mid-race, Isa crashes and Ivan rushes to her, while Joel, heading toward Hector, gets struck by Emilia's car. He calls out for Ivan as Hector and Chloe pull him away instead. Emilia wins the race and gloats to Isa that the club is now hers by forfeit, until Ivan reveals he quietly bought the club the night before, protecting Isa from losing it entirely. Emilia warns that Isa still owes her. That same day, Isa learns her father's been killed by Cibran, and a devastated Roberta blames her daughter for all of it, leaving Luis to comfort a shocked Isa. The episode's graduation-night thread closes with Joel confronting Luis directly, threatening to expose him before dropping a beer bottle on his foot and walking off.
Episode four opens on a wealthy Alumni couple, Pier and Guillermina, offering a huge donation to the club in exchange for time with Joel, something Emilia's thrilled to arrange and Hector flatly refuses. Isa keeps apologizing to Ivan for the chaos with her club, and he stays supportive, promising to help with its reopening. When Ivan runs into Joel and asks directly if he's with Hector, the moment turns awkward fast, interrupted by Hector himself inviting Joel over. Ivan warns him and walks away. Chloe tries reconciling with a heartbroken Eric, who swears to cut her off entirely, a conversation Emilia overhears and uses to invite Eric to a pool party of her own. There, Joel and Hector hook up on one end of the pool while Emilia and Eric do the same on the other, the siblings watching each other the entire time in a way that feels less like coincidence than design.
Carmen and Chloe scheme to isolate Dalmar and then swoop in as his saviors so he won't leak the Raul footage, starting by getting him fired. Chloe, meanwhile, sets Sonia up with a guy and secretly photographs it, visibly conflicted about what she's doing. Sara invites Nico over, and after they sleep together while she's high, she spirals into believing he took advantage of her, hurting him badly before kicking him out. Back at the club, Eric grows friendly with Chloe again now that he's moved on with Emilia, and a furious Chloe retaliates by leaking Sonia's photo online, then seduces and secretly films Dalmar, posting that too. Sonia sees it and is devastated.
Emilia, jealous of how obsessed her brother's become with Joel, secretly arranges the meeting between Joel and Pier and Guillermina herself. Hector rushes to stop it and clashes with a completely oblivious Omar, who ends up throwing him out. Joel initially refuses the couple's advances, until the amount of money on offer changes his mind. A flash forward shows the resulting orgy, Joel occupied with Pier and Guillermina while Chloe pulls Eric into another room, where he produces a knife. In the present, Omar's jumped and beaten badly by a group of Alumni members led by Hector, left bleeding in an alley.
Episode five opens with Omar in a coma, Nico's father treating him and warning the family he needs specialized care they can't afford, until Joel quietly pays for it himself, also bailing Dalmar out of a bad deal with Carmen by covering his rent. Ivan takes over Isadora House and rebrands it Cruz9, and things briefly look up as he and Joel reconcile, even talking about moving in together ahead of a keg party celebrating their early graduation. But the Alumni schedule an orgy for the same night, naming Joel the planner, and Hector, furious watching Joel effectively turn into a sex worker for the club, threatens to tell Ivan himself before Joel beats him to it. Ivan's upset once he learns exactly how Joel's been earning money.
The wider group gives Chloe the cold shoulder over what she did to Sonia, until Eric, pointing out Omar would want everyone united right now, reconciles with her, upsetting Nico further. Dalmar learns of Carmen's plan to buy his silence by taking care of his family financially, and reluctantly agrees to work the orgy for the pay. Behind his back, Joel blackmails Carmen directly for a quarter million euros, giving her two days before he leaks the footage himself. Chloe, panicked, tells Eric, who offers to help scare Joel into backing down.
At the club's reopening, Isa helps broker a real conversation between Ivan and Joel, who admits he needs independence but wants only Ivan's love, promising the blackmail scheme is just temporary. At the hospital, Omar wakes to the Alumni threatening Nadia's internship if he reports his own assault. Luis, meanwhile, gathers evidence of hookups at Isa's club to threaten her with running an unlicensed brothel, and when she refuses whatever deal he's offering, he assaults her. Shaken, Isa turns to Joel, who apologizes and confronts Luis himself, threatening exposure.
At the orgy, Chloe sneaks Eric in and corners Joel alone, Eric pulling the knife on him. Joel fights back, and Dalmar, hearing the struggle, intervenes, forcing Chloe and Eric to flee, Eric dropping the knife in the scramble. Back at the keg party, Sara opens up to Nico about being unable to process feelings for someone who isn't Raul, apologizing for her earlier accusation, and Nico forgives her, right before she notices Carmen, Chloe, and Eric acting suspiciously and starts following them. Hector, still pursuing Joel, gets him to agree to sleep with him one more time in exchange for using his connections to protect Isa from Luis. Outside, a devastated Ivan gets a breakup text from Joel and gets drunk, and while Dalmar helps him wait, someone knocks Dalmar out cold. Inside, after Hector falls asleep, Joel gets up to send Ivan one last message when someone slits his throat.
Episode six picks up with Omar, healed and home, texting a Joel who's already dead. Emilia comforts a distraught Hector, who has no memory of the night and is convinced he killed Joel out of jealousy. Police detain the group, and as accounts get pieced together, suspicion lands on Eric once his knife turns up as the murder weapon, prompting a panicked Nico to backtrack and blame Chloe for manipulating his cousin instead, which only wounds Eric further. Under formal questioning, Dalmar mentions the orgy and Ivan corroborates it. Omar, devastated, confronts Emilia directly, and she deflects everything onto Dalmar, dismissing Joel and the others as simply sex workers, a lie Omar seems to believe in his shock.
The group rallies around Ivan's public popularity to try clearing his name, while Chloe searches for her missing phone, unaware it's still hidden in the Alumni room where she'd left it planning to blackmail Joel herself. The Alumni lean into painting Dalmar as the culprit using overtly racial framing, and Omar's fury only deepens when Principal Virginia, herself Black, stays silent through it. Carmen offers to bail Ivan out but claims she can't afford to do the same for Dalmar, instead pressuring him to sign a false confession in exchange for taking care of his family, using the wave of racist online hate against him as leverage. Dalmar refuses and instead puts the pieces together himself, telling police about Joel's blackmail scheme against Carmen as the real motive, though Detective Luena needs a corroborating witness before she can act on it.
Elsewhere, Sonia recalls drone footage from the keg party and tracks down its owner, finding two figures near the Alumni club carrying a large bag the night of the murder. Hector's doubts about his sister's sudden gentleness deepen into suspicion that she framed him out of jealousy over Joel. Omar and Sonia bring the drone footage to police, convinced it shows Hector and Emilia moving Joel's body, but it's overshadowed entirely when the police reveal Dalmar has already confessed.
By episode seven, Omar and Sonia visit Dalmar to understand why he took the fall, and he explains the online hate campaign and Carmen's deal, while also revealing what he knows about Raul's murder, convinced Carmen killed Joel to protect that secret rather than Eric doing it. Theories splinter across the group: Omar and Sonia suspect the Krawietz siblings, while Ivan and Isa still suspect Chloe and Eric. Nadia, helping Omar move out, learns her father's health is failing and gives up her flight back to New York to stay, and Omar finally admits the real reason he stayed silent about his own assault, the Alumni's threat against her internship. She tells him she doesn't care about losing it, and the two agree to report the Krawietzs together.
At school, Sara and Nico fight over her suspicion that Chloe manipulated Eric into murder, and when Eric overhears, worried Nico told her the truth, Nico gaslights him, denying it and turning the blame back onto Eric for not trusting him. Sara, eavesdropping on Isa and Ivan working through their own theory about Chloe and Eric, fills in gaps for them without them realizing where the information's coming from. Chloe finally finds her dead phone in the Alumni room, unable to see what it recorded until it charges.
Hector, furious with his sister, keeps his distance from her, and the two arrive separately to an Alumni party at Cruz9. Ivan, Sara, and Isa use the opportunity to steal Chloe's phone, Ivan distracting her with a selfie while Sara sends her off checking on Eric, giving Ivan the window to grab it and rush to Isa's suite. Upstairs, Omar tips off Luis and Luena, who confront Hector and Emilia together. Hector accuses his sister outright of killing Joel, and hurt, she admits everything, revealed in flashback cleaning up the crime scene, drugging Ivan and texting from Joel's phone to frame him, knocking out Dalmar when he unexpectedly tags along. Facing arrest, she insists she's only an accomplice, that the real killer is Hector, driven by jealousy over Joel and Ivan. Both siblings are taken into custody, Emilia reminding her brother coldly that he owes her now.
Chloe, finding Eric safe, realizes her phone is missing and that Ivan tricked her, rushing with Eric to the suite only to find Ivan and Isa blocking their way. Behind them, Sara's already found the real footage from the night of the orgy, and together they finally see who actually killed Joel.
How it all wraps up
The finale opens with the truth finally shown in full: Inspector Luis picking up Eric's forgotten knife and slitting Joel's throat, the whole thing caught on Chloe's phone. In the present, Omar's already working an angle to bring down both Luis and the Krawietzs at once.
He first tries striking a deal with Hector and Emilia, offering them the real footage in exchange for a signed confession admitting they assaulted him and left him for dead. Emilia doesn't believe he actually has the video. Hector counters with his own offer instead, promising to shut the Alumni club down completely if Omar hands it over. Torn, since that would let Hector walk away scot-free, Omar hesitates, and Hector doesn't wait for an answer, going straight to Luis and telling him Omar has the footage. Luis tears Omar's apartment apart looking for it, and Nadia, shaken, tells her brother to stop playing games with people this dangerous, insisting the only real move is going straight to the police.
Omar takes her advice and heads to the station, but Luis intercepts him before he can reach Detective Luena and tries to assault him, only stopped when Luena walks in. Omar flees and tells the others what happened. Furious, Isa decides to take matters into her own hands, inviting Luis over that night with a plan to seduce and kill him herself.
Ivan objects to the plan, so Isa drugs him too, just enough to keep him from stopping her. Meanwhile, Nadia plants a different idea in Omar's head, that maybe the only real solution is tearing out the root of the problem entirely. Omar pulls Sara into it and asks her to go live with him. On camera, he lays out everything Las Encinas has buried over the years, from Samuel and Marina's deaths all the way through the accidents that nearly killed him and Ivan, furious that nobody's ever actually been held accountable. Then he has Sara upload the footage of Luis killing Joel, live, for everyone to see.
At the same time, Isa's upstairs flirting with Luis, waiting for her moment to inject him with drugs, but he catches on before she can and a struggle breaks out. Luena, having just watched Omar and Sara's livestream, arrives in time to find a drugged Ivan trying desperately to reach Isa. Police storm in and arrest Luis before he can seriously hurt her. As Ivan and Omar help her up, Isa tells Luis exactly what she thinks of him, that his jealousy over lives he could never have drove him to force his way into theirs by violence. Then, as he's being led out in handcuffs, she quietly injects him one more time. He seizes trying to call for help, and dies before anyone can reach him.
Hector and Emilia are released and decide to leave together, though Hector keeps a cold distance from his sister the whole way out.
With Joel's case resolved, Dalmar's finally set free. Carmen, terrified he'll still release the footage of her killing Raul, plans to flee the country with Chloe, though Chloe wants to stay. Carmen makes one last attempt to buy Dalmar's silence, offering a hundred thousand euros and legal help with his citizenship in exchange for deleting the video. Sara, meanwhile, tries livestreaming the last days of high school but can't push through her own grief over Raul's death, until Nico reminds her plainly that he was abusive and got exactly what he deserved, encouraging her to livestream everyone else preparing to leave instead. Nico himself finally reconciles with Eric, admitting he loves him despite everything between them, while a still-drugged Ivan rambles emotionally about how precious life is during all of it.
After Luis is finally caught, Dalmar hands the footage of Raul's murder over to Sara directly, telling her it's her call what happens with it, and that he doesn't care if it costs him his own citizenship to do the right thing. Sara, in turn, warns Eric that she's coming for Carmen and Chloe no matter what. Eric rushes to stop Chloe from leaving, offering to go with her, but Carmen tells him he belongs with his own family, adding that if it's meant to happen, he and Chloe will find their way back to each other eventually. After a quiet, bittersweet goodbye, Chloe and Carmen leave together.
In the fallout from Omar's livestream, worried parents start protesting outside the school, and Principal Virginia, emboldened rather than defensive, makes the call to shut Las Encinas down for good. The graduating seniors finish their final exams at a public school instead, and the series ends on Ivan, Isa, Eric, Sonia, Nico, and Sara walking through its doors, overdressed and completely out of place, while the other students just stare.
How the show ended
Joel: Dead. Murdered by Luis in the Alumni room on graduation night with Eric's forgotten knife.
Omar: Alive and finally the one who brings everything down. He goes live with Sara, exposes eight seasons' worth of covered-up crimes, and ends the show with Nadia choosing to stay.
Ivan: Cleared of Joel's murder. Still grieving.
Dalmar: Released from custody once Luis is unmasked.
Chloe: Leaves Madrid with Carmen after Sara signals she is not done with them.
Eric: Stays behind. Reconciles with Nico. Heads to the public school with the rest of the group.
Isa: Alive. She killed Luis herself, quietly, as he was being led away by police. Cruz9 is still hers.
Nico and Sara: They find their way to each other. I don't care for them.
Hector and Emilia Krawietz: Arrested, then freed. They vanish. The ending clearly left a door open for something else.
Luis: Dead. Isa injected him mid-arrest. He had a seizure, threw up, and died.
Las Encinas: Shut down permanently, eight seasons of secrets finally catching up to the school itself.
What worked
Nadia showing up again, even briefly, was nice, though it did feel more like a cameo than a real return. Isa and Ivan carried their share of the season fine. And if I'm honest, nothing this season quite matched the emotional weight Eric brought to Season 7, which says something about where the priorities landed this time around.
What didn't
Joel gets treated like the season's real main character, and everyone else pays for it. Sara, Nico, and Eric all get pushed to the background to make room for him, which leaves the ensemble feeling lopsided in a season that should've been giving everyone a proper sendoff instead.
The Krawietz siblings vanish without a trace by the end, it's just another unanswered question dressed up as an ending. The Alumni prostitution ring gets introduced with maximum shock value and then dropped just as fast, like the show forgot it needed to actually do something with it. And then there's the incest angle with Hector and Emilia at the pool, which didn't need to exist in the first place, and matters even less once it turns out Emilia wasn't even the killer. If that storyline isn't building toward her being the culprit, what was the point of making the Krawietzs weirder than they already were?
Speaking of which, Luis as Joel's killer just doesn't work for me. The reasoning behind it isn't strong enough to justify the reveal. The whole season builds Hector's obsessive jealousy and Emilia's cold, calculating streak specifically so one of them can be the answer, and swapping in Luis at the last second feels like a shortcut rather than a real twist. Emilia had the motive, the ruthlessness, and the opportunity sitting right there. She would've been the stronger choice by a mile.
Sara accusing Chloe of killing Raul also felt off, especially coming from the one person who knew exactly what kind of abuser he was. It's one thing to want answers, but going after Chloe with that accusation while sitting on her own history with him feels less like grief and more like deflection. Sara's all over the place this season, and that inconsistency is part of why. There's also the small matter of Sara hitting Ivan with her car back in Season 6 never getting addressed again, not once, not even in passing. I haven't forgotten and I'm not planning to.
And can we talk about how many grown adults are chasing after teenagers this season? Luis pursuing Isa is deeply uncomfortable, and it's not the first time this show has leaned on that exact dynamic. It didn't work then and still doesn't now.
The first half of the season is pretty scattered too, juggling too many threads without much sense of where it's actually headed. And once Luis gets exposed, Isa killing him in full view of arresting officers makes zero sense when you think about it for even a second. No autopsy, no follow-up questions, nothing. Dalmar's arc doesn't hold together either: the same guy who blackmailed Carmen to avoid deportation somehow turns down her payout later, meaning he had two real shots at securing his citizenship and managed to blow both of them.
PS: Nico was completely wasted this season.
My Rating: 6.5
What did you think of the finale?
Did Luis as the killer work for you, or were you also convinced it had to be Emilia? And while we're at it, where do you think the show jumped the shark?
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