Some Netflix shows have a break of several years between shows, but thankfully, that’s not the case for Elite. 

Note: This review will cover the first three episodes of the brand-new season as they were available to the media in advance. 

Elite Season 5 debuts less than a year after season 4, but there’s just as much angst, drama, sex, sexual fluidity, and, of course, murder, as ever. 

Honestly, have you met a group of teens that endured more death than the student body at Las Encinas?

Much like previous seasons, season 5 opens up with Samu arrested for murder, but we have no idea whose body is floating around in the water. 

The rotation of interviews with the students provides a snippet of insight, and one might narrow down the victim list to Benjamin, Omar, or Ivan. 

9 Best Spanish-Language TV Shows You Have to Binge Watch on Netflix

Rebeka informs the cops that the killer is definitely not Samu as he’d like them to believe, but it’s unclear if she actually knows who the murderer is or if she knows it’s not him because it’s her. 

There’s enough anger directed at Benjamin from literally everyone in school to make his death plausible. Omar is also an outcast who has made an enemy of the few that still loved him and got himself caught up in a dangerous situation. And Ivan, though innocent at first, has a darkness about him; it’s clear he loves to play with fire. But more on that later.

Because aside from the new victim, there’s also the lingering mystery of what happened to Armando, Mencia’s abuser from last season.

Even all these months later, his existence still plagues the Blanco family because they have absolutely no idea he’s dead.

Only Samu, Rebeka, Guzman, and the audience know he’s at the bottom of the lake. There are a few moments where the secret is too much for Rebeka and Samu and they debate coming clean, especially as Ari tries to move on with her near-death experience and embraces a “you only live once” mentality that puts her in all sorts of questionable situations.

Her fervor for living her best life lends itself to a bit of a tug and pull in her relationship with Samu, who finds himself very loyal to Benjamin, a man he considers to be somewhat of a father figure.

ELITE (L to R) ITZAN ESCAMILLA as SAMUEL, OMAR AYUSO as OMAR in episode 03 of ÉLITE. Cr. MATÍAS URIS/NETFLIX © 2021

Benjamin puts his faith in Samu and wants him to rein Ari in, and thus, Samu finds himself torn and in what can only be described as a three-way relationship with a daughter and her father. And trying to please them both means that he’s disappointing everyone.

As detectives swarm in hopes of finding out what really happened to Armando, they begin to point fingers at family members, including Patrick, whose short temper occasionally gets the best of him. In an effort to erase all of the pain she’s caused her family, Mencia decides to come clean about the arrangement she had with Armando. It’s also why she has decided to live a quieter and tamer lifestyle, which doesn’t bode well for her relationship with Rebe. 

Rebe and Mencia skirt the lines of will-they-or-won’t-they, but as Mencia tries to put herself back in the closet, Rebe puts an end to their relationship. 

Many season 4 storylines spill over into the new season, including Phillipe’s confession of abuse. Elodie uses his apology to destroy the royal by announcing that he raped her, which taints his perfect image at the school.

He begs Cayetana to confess what happened in the limo so that Benjamin will stop protecting him and kick him out of the school as it would allow him to seek refuge in his home country. She considers helping him out, but after a little persuasion from the new student, she realizes that’s the easy way out.

Honestly, this might be the most important storyline on the series as it holds Phillipe accountable for his actions. He doesn’t just get to ruin lives, run off to his safe space, and do it again. He has to face the people he hurt and the people who know what he did every single day.  He needs to build himself back up. He needs to earn a second chance. And most importantly, he needs to want to change. Cayetana drags him to therapy and promises that she’ll be by his side, and it’s sweet, but it’s not helping because he’s not the one initiating it. He’s only going so that she takes him back, which is a terrible excuse to go to therapy.

He pretty much throws a tantrum every time because he’s forced to confront the ugly side of himself and dig into why he did what he did. And when it gets tough, he runs away to his “yes girl” who makes him feel safe by throwing on rose-colored glasses, excusing his behavior, and convincing him that he’s not as terrible of a human as they say he is. 

Every new season ushers in a slew of new faces to Las Encinas.

Credit: Netflix

Isadora (Valentina Zenere) joins as an Empress and heiress of a nightlife empire in Ibiza who takes a liking to Phillipe. She’s so adamant about helping him clear his name, in fact, that she suggests they enter into a fake relationship. The logic here is that two pretty and rich people together will make the public forget all about his abuse. And on some level, she likely wants the fake relationship to become real.

We don’t know much about her motivation with Phillipe, but based on a brief heart-t0-heart, it seems as though Isadora is a believer in second chances because she too has paid the price for a mistake in her past. 

The second newcomer is Ivan (André Lamoglia), the son of the greatest soccer player in the world who doesn’t know when to stop the party.

Ivan and Patrick immediately click, and while everyone at the school — and likely many fans at home — assumes Ivan is gay, he assures them that he’s very hetero. 

Patrick, however, thinks he can persuade Ivan into sleeping with him through his good looks and charm, so he concocts a “no rules” party where everyone is basically encouraged to come naked and hook up with anyone and everyone without judgment. 

Unfortunately, the night doesn’t go as planned for Patrick as he doesn’t get to hook up with Ivan.

Samu, however, gets to lock lips with him before Ivan informs Ari that he’s completely smitten with her. She’s kind of into it, but also totally against it. It seems as though she’ll likely give in to temptation by the end of the season given her “live life” attitude.

And as I mentioned before, Ivan’s desire to walk a dangerous path will likely infuriate more than one person, including Samu and Patrick. 

ELITE (L to R) ANDRÉ LAMOGLIA as IVÁN in episode 02 of ÉLITE. Cr. MATÍAS URIS/NETFLIX © 2021

Benjamin sets his sights on the students in hopes of forcing them to finally focus on school and less on partying, drugs, and hooking up, but the harder he pushes, the more they rebel. 

Patrick’s party, during which he encourages everyone to go on airplane mode so that they can’t be tracked by the adults including his father, who is referred to as the “dictator” by some students, is just one example of it. 

Social distancing definitely takes on a whole new meaning on the series as it has nothing to do with COVID. 

At one point, in a fit of revenge, Benjamin forces the class to vote on which student they would like to expel as punishment for the drug-fueled party.

Omar is the deciding vote, and he votes for Samu knowing that the “teacher’s pet” won’t actually get expelled. 

7 Biggest Moments from ‘Elite’ Season 4

Benjamin announces that Samu will be expelled for three days, and the moment is the last straw for Samu and Omar’s already fractured friendship. 

Ever since Ander left and hasn’t been responding to Omar’s messages, Samu has felt suffocated in the friendship. Omar’s parent-like vibe is overbearing. It’s likely something they could’ve come back from, but when, Omar takes pity on a man named Bilal who comes to the restaurant looking for food, gets a job, and then is caught stealing at the end of the shift, it throws their friendship in a new direction.

Samu thinks Omar is too trusting, yet Omar opens up the home he shares with Samu as shelter for Bilal, who reveals that she’s trying to avoid some gangsters that are coming after him.

Bilal once again bites the hand that feeds him when he steals Samu’s laptop, and yet, Omar shrugs it off by defending him and saying that he needs it more than Samu.

There’s definitely too much animosity between these two, which leads me to believe that it might just be Omar who will be the season’s victim, especially as he’s gotten involved in a dangerous situation if Bilal is telling the truth.

He has gotten pretty entwined with the storyline, and while he said that helping people might have illuminated the path to social work for him, maybe he gets in too deep?

Then again, maybe Bilal made it all up to take advantage of Omar? 

Maybe Patrick kills Ivan in one of his uncontrollable fits of rage? 

As the rest of the season unfolds, we’ll get all the pieces to do the puzzle, but until then, what did you think of the first three episodes of Elite season 5?

‘Elite’ Season 4 Review: New Students, New Mystery, Same Scandalous Drama

Another year at Las Encinas brought plenty of drama and a new scandalous mystery. 

As with previous seasons, the students at the elite school show us that there’s much more to them than meets the eye. 

Here are the 7 biggest moments from Elite Season 4!

The Breakup

If you ask Nadia and Guzman, they’ll tell you just how difficult long-distance relationships are. The couple continued their romance despite being an ocean apart but quickly realized that being in two different time zones meant that they were no longer in sync. After Ari caught Guzman’s eye, he decided to end things with Nadia over video chat. It didn’t take long for him to move on either, but his new relationship wasn’t any less complicated.

ÉLITE (L to R) OMAR AYUSO as OMAR, ARÓN PIPER as ANDER in EPISODE 08 of ÉLITE. Cr. NIETE/NETFLIX © 2020

Love Triangles

This was, quite frankly, the season of love triangles and threesomes. It’s not surprising that everyone was sleeping with everyone — it’s what we’ve come to expect from Elite, but the fallout of these complex relationships was pretty substantial. 

Omar and Ander allowed Patrick into their relationship and soon realized that sex isn’t just sex when feelings come into play. Omar got jealous of Ander’s desire to sleep with Patrick. He then developed feelings for Patrick, which led to an intense breakup. Ander found comfort in Patrick, who began to fall hard. When he saw Ander with other men, he was hurt. Omar then found comfort in Patrick, who tried to help him move on from Ander, but in the end, Ander and Omar found their way back to each other much to Patrick’s dismay. 

The other love triangle found Ari, Samu, and Guzman. Ari was torn by the two men. Guzman was the rational choice while Samu was the forbidden lover. She pursued Guzman publicly and Samu privately, that is until he told her to make a choice as he wasn’t comfortable stabbing his friend in the back any longer. Ari couldn’t let either of them go, but Guzman wasn’t going to sit around and be second best. He broke up with Ari and allowed her to follow her heart’s desire, but unfortunately, we never found out if she continued her romance with Samu after the accident. 

‘Elite’ Season 4 Review: New Students, New Mystery, Same Scandalous Drama

Not a Royal Affair

When Prince Phillipe came to Las Encinas, Cayetana was overjoyed. Every girl fantasizes about being with a prince, but those fantasies rarely become reality. However, in Caytena’s case, they did. She quickly caught the eye of the royal who wasn’t turned off by the fact that she was a janitor. But this was far from the fairytale she expected. 

First, Cayetana found out that Phillipe secretly recorded them having sex. When she confronted him about it, he explained that it was a precaution as he was previously accused of sexual assault. 

Unfortunately, those accusations weren’t entirely baseless. Ari tried to warn Cayetana about the rumors floating around — and even explained that it was the reason why he came to study in Spain — but she was hesitant to believe the mean girl at school.

One night after a few drinks, she and Phillipe began hooking up in the limo. When it got too intense for Cayetana, she asked him to stop but found that she couldn’t push him off of her. She bolted from the limo instead. Phillipe attempted to excuse his actions by stating that he “misinterpreted” her signal, while his mother tried to smooth things over by telling Cayetana that Phillipe’s impulses were biologically normal. Cayetana knew better and walked away from the whole situation. 

Phillipe realized that he needed to accept the consequences of his actions and reached out to Elodie to apologize. 

ÉLITE (L to R) GEORGINA AMORÓS as CAYETANA, POL GRANCH as PHILLIPPE in ÉLITE. Cr. NIETE/NETFLIX © 2020

World Class Predator

Phillipe wasn’t the only one with “urges” he couldn’t control. Mencia’s relationship with her father, Benjamin, was fraught, so when Armando offered to be her sugar daddy, she jumped at the opportunity. And when he began paying her to sleep with him, she thought she found an easy way to make money. Armando sent another client her way, which is when things began to get dangerous. 

Rebeka, with whom Mencia entered into a relationship, came to her rescue, and in return, Mencia promised to stop sleeping with strangers for money. Armando stuck around and seemed to be a genuine friend who used his wealth to help Mencia and Rebe when she ran away from home. However, his kindness came at a price, which Mencia found out the hard way when he attempted to blackmail her to her father after she refused to sleep with him. 

Rebe eventually decided to put a stop to it by telling Ari what was going on in hopes that she would help her sister. 

On New Year’s Eve, the night of the accident, Rebe also came to Mencia’s rescue when she saw Armando manhandling her on the dock. 

Ari’s Accident

Ari’s accident was the core mystery of the season and was introduced in the season premiere. By the end of the season, it was revealed that Ari confronted Armando on the dock after seeing him put his hands on her sister. He beat Ari and scurried off when Guzman came to her aide. Ari asked him to go after Armando as she tried to get up. She was so out of it that she lost balance and fell into the water where she was found floating and unconscious. Thankfully, doctors were able to revive her and she was on the road to recovery. 

ÉLITE (L to R) CARLA DÍAZ as ARI in EPISODE 08 of ÉLITE. Cr. NIETE/NETFLIX © 2020

Bury the Body

Guzman pursued Armando and the two came to blows. Guzman fought hard as he defended Ari’s honor. When Armando tried to run away, he grabbed a firework gun and shot it at him. The sparkly death was fitting of the occasion as it was a little past midnight on New Year’s Day.

Guzman then confided in Samu and Rebe, who helped him get rid of the body. They weighed it down, tied him up, and dropped him into the bottom of the lake. He knew that despite being innocent, he would go to jail just like Samu’s brother, Nano, did.

Guzman then lied to Ari and told her that Armando knocked him out so he didn’t know what happened to him. And before telling her father everything, Mencia confirmed that the police weren’t able to find his body.

ÉLITE (L to R) MIGUEL BERNADEU as GUZMÁN, MARTINA CARIDDI as MENCÍA, ARÓN PIPER as ANDER, MANU RÍOS as PATRICK, CLAUDIA SALAS as REBECA, CARLA DÍAZ as ARI in ÉLITE. Cr. NIETE/NETFLIX © 2020

The Departure

Ander and Omar eventually got back together, but Omar knew that he had to set him free if he wanted a lasting relationship. Otherwise, the two of them would grow to resent each other. There was still a lot of love between them, but they agreed on following their dreams and pursuing an open relationship for the time being. 

Ander packed up his things and set off to travel the world just as he planned when they broke up. And this time, he was joined by Guzman, who needed a fresh start following the drama of the current year.

As everyone said their goodbyes, Omar found comfort in Cayetana, while Rebe promised Guzman she wouldn’t say a thing about what he did to anyone else. 

What did you think of Elite Season 4?

The wait is almost over.

On June 18, Elite returns for its fourth season, but aside from a few new faces and a new principal hellbent on making a difference, things at Las Encinas haven’t changed much at all. 

In fact, things are more dramatic than ever. 

The premiere of Elite evokes the same feelings as the start of the school year — there’s a rush of excitement for what’s to come.

The series indulges in more of what has made it such a success: scandal, parties, threesomes, love triangles, intrigue, crime, and sex. So. Much. Sex. 

I always forget just how many vivid sex scenes there are until I get pulled into a new season, but I’m very quickly reminded. 

The first day of school for Guzman (Miguel Bernardeau), Samu (Itzan Escamilla), Ander (Arón Piper), Rebeka (Claudia Salas), Cayetana (Georgina Amorós), and Omar (Omar Ayuso) is bittersweet. While they may be getting another shot at repeating their final year, their classmates Carla, Lu, Nadia, and Valerio have moved on to bigger and better things. It’s a bummer to lose such a great group of characters, but you almost don’t feel their absence when the new crop of students takes their place, flips the world upside down for current students, and simultaneously ushers in a brand new mystery.

ÉLITE (L to R) MIGUEL BERNADEU as GUZMÁN, MARTINA CARIDDI as MENCÍA, ARÓN PIPER as ANDER, MANU RÍOS as PATRICK, CLAUDIA SALAS as REBECA, CARLA DÍAZ as ARI in ÉLITE. Cr. NIETE/NETFLIX © 2020

The new mystery anchors the story, and like in seasons past, it plays out with flashbacks that lead up to the fated moment. 

However, unlike in previous seasons, we find out pretty early on who is at the center of the mystery with the how remaining the big question mark. 

But there’s no question about whether the Blanco family is involved. 

7 Biggest Moments from ‘Elite’ Season 4

As Ander tells the investigator, the toxic family’s arrival “tainted everything.” 

Benjamin (Diego Martin) is the extremely rich new school director. He comes in like a bulldozer with big plans to rehabilitate Las Encinas and its reputation after a tumultuous few years that led to two student deaths. He begins his reign by setting his sights on Samu and Omar, who he doesn’t believe belong at the elite school.

Credit: Elite/ Netflix

It’s honestly surprising anyone wants to send their children to get an education there at this point.

Benjamin doesn’t waste any time making changes, but with his focus solely on “discipline, excellence, and achievement,” he fails to realize that his family’s arrival brings the bulk of the drama.

Immediately, you begin to wonder how Benjamin plans to fix a whole school if he can’t even control his own children — Ari (Carla Diaz), Patrick (Manu Rios), and Mencia (Martina Cariddi). 

Benjamin has a fraught relationship with his youngest, Mencia, who has brought the family pain in the past and continues to rebel and defy her father at every turn.  

Credit: Netflix/ Elite

She has a genuine connection with new girlfriend, Rebeka, but the relationship stirs up even more problems for Mencia as Benjamin disapproves and thinks Rebe is a bad influence considering her mother’s reputation as a drug kingpin. 

Little does he know, Mencia has gotten into a world of trouble all on her own.

While Rebe’s relationship with Mencia grows into one of the purest this season, following Samu’s betrayal last season, she’s understandably closed off and cautious with her heart.

Ander and Omar are still going strong but find their relationship is tested in unexpected ways when they invite Patrick, Benjamin’s son, into the fold.

Patrick knows the power he wields over them and intentionally meddles in their lives, but there’s also much more to him than meets the eye.

Ari is Benjamin’s star child who respects and listens to her father, but to her peers, she’s the resident mean girl who is oftentimes uptight and has a chip on her shoulder.

She catches the eye of both Samu and Guzman, which fractures their budding friendship. These two have always fought over women, but last time, Samu was being protective over his best friend, Nadia, who Guzman is still dating when the season commences. 

ÉLITE (L to R) CARLA DÍAZ as ARI in EPISODE 08 of ÉLITE. Cr. NIETE/NETFLIX © 2020

Nadia appears only via video chat from her New York apartment, and their relationship allows the series to explore the trials and tribulations of a long-distance relationship that’s tested as temptation lurks right around the corner for Guzman.

While Guzman stands a chance with Ari based solely on social class and standing, Ari and Samu connect unexpectedly in an academic setting. 

Who will the love triangle favor in the end?

Additionally, the school has attracted the youngest royal heir in Europe, Prince Philippe (Pol Granch). The series flips the classic “princess and the pauper” narrative to “prince and the pauper” as he connects with the school’s janitor Cayetana, making all of her fantasies come true.

But as the saying goes, “be careful what you wish for” as this fairytale quickly turns into a nightmare when it’s revealed the prince has a dark secret, and Cayetana’s past secrets with the late Polo and Valerio come back to haunt her.

Overall, you know exactly what you’re getting into when you press play on the fourth season. The writers have managed to deliver yet another incredibly intoxicating season about a group of lost souls looking for a purpose and tapping into the extreme lengths they’ll go to numb their pain.

Elite hits Netflix on Friday, June 18 with eight brand-new episodes. 

*This review is based on the first four episodes of season 4 that were available to the press*