In October 2018 Tumblr (may she rest in peace) was swooning over the handsome 20-somethings playing sexy teenagers in the Netflix series Elite. I decided to check it out and ended up binging the 8 episodes over the course of a weekend. The show combined the best elements of Riverdale, How to Get Away with Murder and Cruel Intentions. I adored it but was disappointed when the show was renewed. Can it justify a second season or will it flounder like the recent season of 13 Reasons Why?
First a quick recap. When their public-school collapses, three working class teens win scholarships at a posh private school. They’re soon drawn into pulpy romances and a murder mystery.
- Blandly earnest Samuel was taken under the wing of poor-little-rich-girl Marina. Sam was smitten but Marina was drawn to Sam’s criminal brother Nono.
- Arrogant Christian hoped to sleep his way into upper class society. He was seduced by power couple Carla and Polo. But throuple dynamics are hard to balance and jealousy soon arose.
- Uptight Nadia struggled to maintain her grades and her values despite anti-muslim prejudice from the students and faculty. When mean girl Lu orders bad boy Guzman to seduce her, it goes about how you’d expect.
- Nadia’s brother Omar toils in his controlling father’s store while selling drugs on the side to finance an escape. Grindr leads him to Ander, a popular jock with daddy issues of his own.
We learn in the pilot that one of these students will be murdered, and that the remaining 10 will be suspects.By the end of the season:
[spoiler title=Major-S1-Spoilers] Marina was dead, Nono was in prison, and the real killer was still at large. [/spoiler]
I wrote up my thoughts on Season One here. I’ll be binging Season Two this weekend and sharing my spoiler tagged thoughts in the comments below. I’d love to hear yours.