The Final Twist In The Tale?
The Season 2 finale of Elite begins with Samuel managing to evade capture from his two pursuers as he runs through the forest. The next day, the class arrive where Guzman sees the sex tape has circulated and tells them to leave it alone while Carla brings up Samuel’s disappearance. As the teachers scramble to find out what happened, Cayetana is antagonized by Lu at school while Nadia learns that it was Valerio who filmed the incident. It’s at this point where present and future catch up with one another as the Inspector arrives, telling them they’re going to start investigating. This prompts some interesting one on ones between our group as they all discuss the ramifications this has for them all. All the dots join up as the different fragments of the future we’ve seen before come into play and in chronological order, as the Inspector gets closer to figuring out the truth. It turns out Rebecca and her Mother were responsible for Samuel’s disappearance, given he was doing deliveries for them. It’s here she also figures out her father was also “an occupational hazard” and was a casualty of her Mum’s business. In the wake of Lu’s bombshell announcement, Polo arrives at Cayetana’s house and tells them he managed to pull some strings and get them back into school. Grateful, she thanks Polo for his generosity and he gives them a wad of money to help get themselves settled. At the dinner table, while Lu continues to berate her classmates, Valerio shows his Father what’s been happening between him and Lu, prompting dinner to end abruptly and a fight to break out in the other room between their parents. That’s not the only set of parents that are forced with an uncomfortable reality though, as Nadia is forced into admitting the truth to her Father about the sex tape that’s got out. She apologises profusely but having already lost one child, he tells her that it doesn’t matter what happened as they’ll never see it, prompting a touching moment to ensue between them. After her earlier outburst about Samuel being dead, the jacket being found with blood on it prompts Lu to confront Carla and ask how she knows the truth. This connects up the dots with the latest interview with Guzman where another bombshell is revealed. That night, Guzman messaged Samuel and told him he believes him and as he arrives at Marina’s grave, a cut and bruised Samuel appears from the shadows, clearly not dead. That night, Samuel was chased by two figures but managed to meet up with Guzman, chasing after him as retaliation against Rebecca’s Mum. Guzman brought him back to his Grandparents’ house to help patch him up. Figuring Carla needs to suffer in order to try and get the truth out of her, together they planned the entire incident, involving Samuel’s jacket, in order to get a confession from both Polo and Carla. It’s pressure cooker stuff and a little illogical but it serves the purpose of the plot. Given how distant Ander has been with Omar and the lack of compassion shown by his Father, Omar tells his lover he’s leaving as soon as he receives his first paycheck. This prompts Ander to snap, along with Carla too who struggles to deal with the pressure. She heads in to see the Inspector, only to find Ander has already been there and the man arrested is actually Guzman. He’s made to visit their grandparent’s country house and as the police arrive, Samuel sneaks out the back and manages to avoid being seen. Satisfied that their search is fruitless, the Inspector is informed that a student at school wants to speak to her so they head back. It’s here Carla tells the police the truth – Polo killed Marina and Christian knew about it and had to be taken care of. Samuel went missing after learning too much and all of this points to the murder weapon which she knows its true location of. As the students watch on in shock, the police approach Polo and arrest him in the middle of the school hallway. Guzman, in a state of shock, realizes that Ander lied to his face and turns his rage against his former friend. Samuel arrives miraculously at the station soon after and lies, telling them he got caught up at a rave and his phone ran out of signal. Back home, Ander admits the truth to Omar; that he carried a heavy burden in knowing everything. He tells Omar he doesn’t deserve to be happy but his lover forgives him, telling him we all mess up from time to time. As they kiss and make up, they embrace one another before we cut forward 2 weeks to school.
Samuel arrives and shakes hands with Guzman but as the police continue their interrogation, Cayetana gets involved and hides the trophy in her room. No murder weapon means no charges, resulting in Polo being released, as all our characters watch him arrive at school with angry looks. I’m in two minds when it comes to the ending here. On the one hand, it’s great we’ll see more melodramatic shenanigans next year and Cayetana has certainly slot into her role nicely as the new girl in the grounds. However, the contrived, over-the-top manner of Polo arriving and the big cliffhanger does feel a little unnecessary. Infact, the entire epilogue showing everything 2 weeks later could have been cut completely and still held on to the same outcome, perhaps with the final shot of Cayetana hiding the murder weapon in her closet offering up some clues over where the next season will go. I’ve enjoyed watching Elite but the show has not been without its flaws. Some of the subplots haven’t really gone anywhere and although I’ve found this second season to be better than the first, I can’t help but feel that the ending to this hasn’t really resolved anything; everyone is in the exact same position they were at the start of the season, except now the police have no witnesses at all rather than holding Nano in custody. Quite where season 3 goes from here remains to be seen but I hope it’s the final season of the show. The story feels like its being dragged a little thin here and the entire contrived scheme that Samuel concocted with his own disappearance is riddled with inconsistencies and problems. Still, if you’ve made it this far then Elite has certainly been an enjoyable ride and its unashamedly melodramatic tone is partly the reason this show works as well as it does. It’s not perfect, and there are better shows out there, but Elite does enough to keep itself entertaining and interesting, right through to the final scene.
