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Elite Season 8 Review

The eighth season of Elite premiered on Netflix in 2024. It’s another lackluster season that closed the entire show on a somewhat diverting, but messy note.

I did not care for the last couple of seasons of this show that was once a lot of fun and competently written, but has long since become a pale imitation of its former self. But unlike the previous season, this one at least had an overarching mystery crime narrative, so it came off as at least slightly better.

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Omar is the protagonist essentially of this season, which was fine for me as he is after all the only OG character who stayed on the show from the beginning to the very end. He is once again a total whiny victim and the show has become quite exploitative toward this character and his suffering. But at least he got a solid farewell where he got what he wanted and the school was closed for good.

That brings me to that final sequence, which was just fantastic. Watching our main characters arrive to a regular public school was fish out of water comedy gold. This scene explored the class divide well and it was so well executed that it left me wanting for more. It’s such a shame that the second half of Elite turned into such a disorganized, lazily written show that forsake strong characterization and storytelling in favor of cheap thrills and twists.

The mystery was brought back this season, which was quite welcome. It made for a more interesting season, especially the guessing game of who the killer is that was introduced toward its end. However, the mystery was resolved in such poor fashion that it left me scratching my head. It made no sense whatsoever that the killer was who he was. It wasn’t in character and his motifs were quite vague. The finale as a result was a giant mess.

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I really disliked Joel last time around and I hated him even more this time as well. Ivan seeing something in him was very out of character for him and quite stupid. It made him look like a fool. Joel is an insufferable, horribly selfish piece of shit who treats all of them badly and yet everybody is quick to feel sorry for him. The season focused so much on the his supposed sex appeal instead of developing him more as a character.

Chloe and Carmen got away, which was fine with me, but the show acting like Raul deserves some kind of redemption when he was an abusive monster was very odd to me. How Carmen tried to manipulate Dalmar was also strange. Dalmar was finally a more utilized character, but the theme of racism and anti-immigration was explored in a very on-the-nose manner. Carmen was memorable as always, but Chloe was sidelined and Eric was definitely underutilized.

Nico was once again just a side character and Isadora got a couple of moments to shine, but not nearly enough for such a crucial Elite personality. The last season brought back Nadia, which was nice, but her role was quite small and she only served as Omar’s support system. As for Hector and Emilia, these two definitely had sort of an incestuous relationship, which was a typically trashy but fun Elite scenario, but they effectively served as villains of the season, so them getting away with their crimes was so frustrating.

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