“Elite” Season 6 Is a Mess — and Not the Fun Kind

Authors Note: The following review of Elite season six contains spoilers from just about every season of Elite

Welcome back to Elite‘s Las Encinas, the private high school with such a high concentration of tragedies and murders that one would think wealthy families would stop sending their children to but alas! I have long loved Elite, a show where teens simply never go to class in favor of having threesomes and hanging out at a nightclub — also run by a teen! — seven days a week. I enjoy its dependable, soapy formula: The first scene of every season teases a Disastrous Event. A hit-and-run, a lifeless body, blood spatter, general murdery vibes. And then the rest of the season alternates between flashbacks and flash-forwards. “How To Get Away With Murder meets Riverdale” is how I usually pitch it before also encouraging English-speaking viewers to change the Netflix settings which for some reason default to a dubbed version to original Spanish audio with English subtitles. It’s a fun and sexy time. It’s a show that will push the limits of your suspension of disbelief but also dazzle you with enough melodrama, slow-motion dancing, and debauchery to make that okay. Most of its seasons are admittedly uneven in terms of plotting and character motivation. But when the twists, betrayals, and reveals hit, they hit good. Season six of Elite though goes off the rails in ways that are not so fun. The Disastrous Event is season six itself.

Things were bound to be wobbly this season given that we had a major character shakeup as a result of some characters finally graduating and heading off. On the one hand, I’m glad Elite didn’t decide to Riverdale things with a time jump or other maneuvers intended to keep following students who are no longer in high school on a show about high school. On the other hand, a major character shakeup is always hard to pull off! No one has ever done it as well as Friday Night Lights did in its fourth season. At the top of season six, Samuel is long-dead, Benjamin is in prison for his murder, and Omar, Rebeka, and Phillipe have all moved away. Benjamin’s kids Ari, Patrick, and Mencía as well as renowned teen DJ Isadora and son of a famous footballer Iván have to repeat their final year, so these season five baddies are back. New students join the mix: Dídac, Rocío, Nico, and TikTok couple Sara and Raúl. New friendships, relationships, nemesis-ships form. You know the Elite drill by now. But while Elite usually includes a lot of queer storylines and manages to say interesting things about sex and desire amid all its steamy, sweaty scenes, it misfires in more than one part of its LGBTQ+ storytelling this season.

Let’s start with Nico. New student Nico is a trans guy, which he discloses to fellow students right away. Nico ends up in a love triangle of sorts (a department this show tends to excel at) with two different girls: One who affirms his gender without even turning it into some big performance and one who is casually transphobic and almost seems to fetishize him. The latter is Ari, and while the ongoing tension between her and Nico is sometimes rooted in more of a misunderstanding than in transphobia, that casual transphobia is still there. Other students make hurtful comments to Nico, too, and his storyline largely hinges on him feeling like others don’t see him as enough of a man because he hasn’t had bottom surgery. At one point, Ari says the only person who cares what’s between Nico’s legs is Nico. But if Elite is trying to make the point that Nico’s genitals shouldn’t be some huge conversation…continually making the characters talk about it certainly does the opposite!

Elite has not followed Riverdale‘s suit in implementing literal time travel, but Nico’s whole storyline makes me feel like we’ve somehow ended up in 2004. This type of trans representation feels dated at best, regressive at worst. There are ways to meaningfully tell a story about a trans person struggling with decisions about surgery, but this wasn’t it. And it’s the only plotline Nico is really given!!! It’s nice to see his parents are very supportive of his transness, but that’s jarringly juxtaposed with the rest of his arc, which hinges so much on how others see Nico rather than how he sees himself. Again, that tension could be explored with nuance and depth, but instead it just comes off as the writers wholly defining Nico by his transness and not allowing him to be complex.

Then there’s Cruz. Iván’s father Cruz starts the season in the closet, but after a series of unfortunate events that includes Cruz making out with HIS SON’S BOYFRIEND, he’s finally outed to the world. He finally embraces this in “Desnudos,” but it comes at a cost. Elite shows the soccer world to be brutally homophobic. He loses sponsors; he receives violent death threats. He tries his best to shield Iván, who is also gay but who has been more accepting of his own sexuality, from the worst of these. Things go to a very dark place.

Now, let me preface this by saying I am not exactly a warrior of the Bury Your Gays cause. It’s not that I don’t care about the history of queer characters disproportionately murdered on-screen and in literature. I care very much about that history and about media analysis that looks at its impact on queer viewers. I do however believe that the usefulness of Bury Your Gays as a tool for media analysis and cultural study ends when it is used to broadly to basically apply to just…any LGBTQ+ character who dies in any narrative. All that said, I do think Cruz’s storyline in season six of Elite is exactly the type of harmful and homophobic storytelling that Bury Your Gays should refer to. Immediately following “Desnudos” is the episode “Guerra,” in which Cruz plays his first match as an openly gay man. Some embrace him, waving rainbow flags at the game. Iván, whose relationship with his father has long been strained, is so proud of him that he gets his kit number tattooed on his hip. Others are not so happy about a gay man’s presence on the pitch. A stadium brawl breaks out and escalates quickly, ending the match early. That in and of itself is tough to watch, but what follows is almost shockingly upsetting. That same evening, Cruz is murdered by a group of men throwing out homophobic slurs. He’s literally gaybashed to death in the same episode in which he first plays soccer as an openly gay man.

This is exactly why the Bury Your Gays trope was given a name, allowing queer readers and viewers to critique the ways LGBTQ characters are brutalized and killed in fiction. To follow such an empowering moment with Cruz’s violent death continues a long legacy of punitive plotting and to excuse it here because it’s a show steeped in violence and death just doesn’t really sit right. It again feels like the kind of queer tragedy spectacle I’d hoped we’d moved past. It feels like Elite is trying to be edgy, but it comes off as backwards and lazy. I don’t think Elite should have shied away from revealing real homophobia embedded in professional sports; I don’t even necessarily think Cruz should have lived — again, this is a show where pretty much anyone could die at any time. But I do think the specific way in which it is plotted and executed here is piss-poor writing that turns queerness into a death sentence — a reality for many but one that ultimately feels out of place and out of touch on this series.

Marginally better but still ultimately frustrating is the season’s only Sapphic storyline. It took Elite a while to write in queer women (other than Polo’s moms, who never really had much of a storyline), but Mencía’s introduction in season four was a welcome presence. Now, in season six, she sets her sights on Sara, one half of a popular TikTok couple. Her other half, Raúl, is physically abusive and manipulative, often making it so that he’s Sara’s entire world and using their TikTok brand as a weapon against her. Mencía quickly picks up on this and spends much of the season trying to get Sara to leave Raúl. She finally does and she and Mencía start hanging and making out, but suddenly at season’s end before anything more can happen, Mencía observes she thinks Sara is actually straight and Sara confirms it. Yet again, this narrative in and of itself isn’t necessarily a problem. I’m interested in the idea of a story about Sara seeing Mencía as a potential way out of her abusive relationship and then confusing some of their intimacy for romantic connection. It isn’t fair to Mencía, but straight women using queer women is a reality. And beyond that, I don’t think Sara really realizes she’s using Mencía or thinks of it like that. There’s a lot to untangle here, and yet Elite chooses not to at all. It all feels like a lot of lead up to nothing.

I know Elite can tell complex stories even as its barreling through all its over-the-top operatics. I even see it in other arcs of this season, like Isadora reckoning with her assault. I’m fine with character motivations changing on a whim, with people turning on each other, with teens and adults alike making contradictory and frustrating choices. I’m fine with the high mortality rate at this high school! I’m not fine with these reductive queer storylines that don’t even get to the heart of things. With these three queer storylines, it’s all missteps and no juiciness. No scintillating stories, just suffering or surface-level conflict.

Elite has already been renewed for a seventh season, and Omar is set to come back! Let’s hope better queer plotlines return with him.

Élite Season 4 Finally Delivers a Sapphic Storyline

This post contains spoilers for the first three seasons of Elite and light spoilers for Season 4.

The first three seasons of Élite delivered a cornucopia of sexual trysts and alternative relationships within its ensemble of oft-homicidal teens: marchioness Carla fucking Christian (the new cocky kid from the wrong side of the tracks) while her semi-sociopathic boyfriend Polo masturbates in the corner; a love triangle between brothers Samu and Nanu and their mutual object of affection Marina, the free-spirited daughter of the ruthless developer who destroyed Samu’s school; a love triangle between rich kid bully Guzman, his sassy oligarch fuck-buddy Lu and reserved Muslim student Nadia (who Lu goaded Guzman into pursuing as part of a bet that he could take her virginity); a secret gay relationship between Nadia’s brooding brother Omar and impeccably-jawed tennis star and principal’s son Ander; a secret sexual relationship between aforementioned Lu and her ACTUAL HALF-BROTHER Valerio that involves an ATTEMPTED TOEING at the DINNER TABLE; furtive bar bathroom sex between Omar and Nadia’s new boyfriend Malick; and last but not least — a three-way relationship between former grifter Caye and alleged murderer Polo and unleashed troublemaker Valerio because nobody else wants to be friends with them.

However, the ever-so-simple arrangement of two girls and one bed (or one club bathroom or one expensive sofa or one swimming pool) somehow consistently eluded this otherwise queer-inclusive television program that I suspect has featured more threesomes involving 2+ boys than anything else on television outside of the “Cast Full of Gay” cannon. Prior to Season Three, the show’s sapphic content was limited to Polo’s corrupt power lesbian Moms and a quick kiss in a Season One game of Spin the Bottle.

In Season Three, we got some hope on the horizon: outspoken motorcycle and silk-boxing-robe enthusiast Rebeka revealed to gay sad boi Ander that “sometimes girls turn me on, too” including, unfortunately for her own sense of inner peace and justice, the elegantly eyelashed Carla. But Rebe’s storylines remained heterosexual until Season Four dropped on Netflix in June to say HAPPY PRIDE!

As in prior seasons, Élite delivers a new scandalous mystery to rewind and build towards, this one involving one of three new students whose arrival, as they say, is destined to “shake things up” at Las Encinas. Although this school is plagued by death and scandal at levels all-too-familiar to alumnus of Rosewood, Constance Billard School for Girls, Harbor, Riverdale and Southside High; Élite’s has always managed its expansive cast and high-concept storylines with a bit more attention to detail and tonal consistency than the American shoes its often compared to. Élite’s fishbowl class war infiltrates, impacts and twists the lives of its characters in unexpected ways, and these seasonal mysteries are as much Whodunits as they are Who-Pays-For-Its.

Four new students join us in Season 4, three of them courtesy of Las Encinas’ enterprising new principal Benjamin, tasked with turning the school around by improving its reputation and position as a comfy place for rich kids to play, like Prince Phillip of France, whose enrollment comes with an entire security system. Two of Benjamin’s children, Patrick and Ari, are seemingly on board with their fathers commitment to keeping working class kids down, despite coming from a working class background himself. His youngest, Mencía, is a tougher nut to crack. She’s eager to reject her family’s bourgeois values with the confidence of a person who has never really had to struggle for anything.

Mencía is immediately drawn to Rebeka and her collection of metallic neck-cuffs and cropped jackets, informing her that she is a fan of her “vibe,” aka her attitude (cynical), expression (alternating between a disappointed frown, a presumptive frown, and a truly charming shit-eating grin) and the way she walks (like a gazelle). Certainly, all three of Benjamin’s children are Rebe’s first solid competition in the school’s long-running but never-mentioned Uniform Alteration Contest. Rebe wearing just a bra and a mesh jacket to school? Mencía will see that and raise you a studded body harness and a straight-up VEST.

Rebe’s got walls up after her heartbreak and massive betrayal vis a vis Samuel last year and is firmly opposed to getting involved with Benjamin’s daughter, despite Mencía’s insistence that she’s just as turned off by his classism as Rebe and her friends are. Mencía pursues Rebe with zeal that often verges on totally inappropriate, and the show (like so many shows before and after it!) portrays this dedicated pursuit like a reasonable method of courtship. Eventually they have a proper date, the kind that happens on an elevated skyway in a glitzy city where everybody is wearing a serious Outfit and the moonlight is beautiful.

Meanwhile Mencía is angling for an escape, like so many rich girls in television shows disillusioned by Late Capitalism, and thus flees home with her duffle bag to strike out on her own, hoping to impress Rebe and gain distance from her family’s whole deal. She pleas for Rebe to meet up where they danced last night, but Rebe ignores her in favor of punching her punching bag, just like Shane!

Thus Mencía stumbles into a clumsy storyline that seems to be framed as her becoming a sex worker with one client, Armando (who is likely twice her age — as the youngest child in her family, Mencia can’t be older than 16, but this element of her work is never addressed) but the LA Times says is a story about the danger of OnlyFans? Armando puts her up in a hotel like a real creep. At least half of Elite’s storylines are about blackmail, which means every child on this program needs to do something blatantly terrible or somewhat illegal as part of their adolescent development, so I guess this is hers! (Prostitution is decriminalized in Spain, but “pimping” is not, which does eventually happen.) Saying any more about this specific story would get into iNTENSE spoiler-ville so I will rest here.

It’s painful to see Rebe on the other end of yet another partner AND her mother actively lying to her, but the messier things get, the more Rebe’s best qualities shine through: loyalty, empathy and a bleeding heart. These are all known chronic conditions of sapphic women. But it also pushes against tropes to have their relationship issues entirely unrelated to their sexual orientation, which neither of them officially label.

But I think they kiss twice before Mencía suggests they move in together? This is gay stuff.

I don’t have any complaints to register about the boy-on-boy sex scenes that have occurred with abandon, but seeing Rebe and Mencía in bed together naked — like the bajillion couples on this show who came before them — was like a long overdue gift. I wasn’t even mad that rubbing chocolate all over your naked body is a one-way ticket to Yeast Infectionville. Actually that’s not true, I was very preoccupied by this possibility.

Élite excels for its character work but also because it is rarely predictable, and not in that Pretty Little Liars way, which kept you on your toes because it was simply too bananas and stupid for anybody to possibly guess what was coming. After three seasons circling the fallout surrounding the first season’s momentous murder, it’s good to see the show maintaining its central conceit without repeating itself. With Rebe and Mencia on the short list of characters returning for Season 5, one can merely hope that more scissoring is in store for us all.