Elite Season 7 Review: Boys From Las Encinas Are Back And Are Ready To Shock The Audience
Cast: Omar Ayuso, Omar, Valentina Zenere, André Lamoglia, Carmen Arrufat, Alex Pastrana, Álvaro de Juana, Ander Puig, Ana Bokesa
Created By: Carlos Montero and Darío Madron
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Elite Season 7 premieres on October 20, 2023, and I can tell you that it is already showing symptoms of exhaustion. Plots that, although not repeated, do trace patterns from previous seasons. Characters who return with traumas try to give them a depth that they lack. And once again, an investigation, yes, with an interesting twist that we had not seen in Elite to date. Therefore, we are facing a full-fledged ‘more and equal’, with the danger of it becoming a ‘more is less’ for future seasons. I’m tired of hearing that Elite is trash TV. Many people complain about the renewal of this Netflix series, while the streaming platform cancels other less profitable products. And therein lies the quiz of the question: Elite is profitable and good proof of this is the already confirmed eighth season. Whether we like it or not, Elite is a global phenomenon and must be evaluated objectively to avoid falling into sensationalism and cheap moralism.
Since arriving on Netflix in 2018, Elite has gained a legion of fans who have not abandoned the conflicts of this teen drama throughout the subsequent seasons. Today, the penultimate season of the very successful Spanish TV series arrives on the streaming platform, with new faces in the cast of international actors, playing the new entries of the prestigious private school Las Encinas. In season seven, we will follow the journey of Omar, who decides to leave college for a moment and return to school where he will have to face the ghosts of guilt due to Samuel’s death, among other circumstances. Furthermore, the rest of the students are silently suffering their hell. In its best moments, Elite established itself as a series in which teenage drama, excellent plot twists for a teenage series, engaging suspense, and a curious gallery of characters coexisted. The key to making it all work was knowing how to shake the cocktail well because separately it would always work worse than the sum of its parts. This winning aspect, it should be underlined, began to fade with the departure of Darío Madrona, co-creator of together with Carlos Montero, and has become increasingly worse, an aspect that we analyze in this review of Elite Season 7.
Elite Season 7 Review: The Story Plot
After Samuel’s murder at the hands of Benjamín, Omar tries to get away from Las Encinas by taking refuge in the university environment. However, the character played by Ayuso struggles to free himself from his past. Tormented by guilt, he goes to therapy, where he is advised to return to Las Encinas to deal with his wounds once and for all. The return of this character will allow the viewer to explore the tragedies of the other students at the private school, addressing the topic of mental health in a much broader way. Love is once again one of the central themes of the TV series, carried forward above all by the character of Fernando Lindez, a new student and the axis of the new love triangle of Elite Season 7. He arrives in Las Encinas together with Ivan (André Lamoglia) to leave behind a life full of problems. The Brazilian tries to forget Patrick (Manu Ríos) as he recovers from the accident and his father’s death, unaware that someone from his past will come to upset his world even more.
The relationship between Isadora (Valentina Zenere) and Dídac (Álvaro de Juana) will experience a moment of crisis due to their family problems and Nico’s (Ander Puig) clan will be joined by Cousin Eric, played by another of the newcomers, Gleb Abrosimov. This character is the most vengeful of the new group. Especially in the first three episodes of Elite Season 7, we notice how the fiction tries to return to its origins, or perhaps to plots already seen over the seasons. Some are successful, like the romantic ones – they tell a story very similar to another followed by the public in the past, even if with something different – others are heavier, like those linked to crimes. But they all have a common link: they don’t worry about being as obvious as possible in bringing out their provocative and exaggerated nature.
Elite Season 7 Review and Analysis
Elite is a phenomenon series that seems to have fallen squarely into the biggest trap set by the market for successful series and products in general: the need to reproduce, almost endlessly, that same success. To do this, every possible element is used that keeps interest high and maintains that sort of magical feeling with the audience that made that series iconic. Elite became so right from the start, so much so that it crushed, in terms of the number of streaming and loyal fans all over the world, even the other global phenomenon of the Iberian audiovisual industry, namely La Casa de Carta. The difference between the two products, however, is that the first, spin-off aside, stopped where it would no longer make sense to go further, while Elite undergoes a sort of fury to keep it alive, even when many narrative threads are now, they are sold out and the new ones fail to have the same impact on the audience as in the first three seasons.
And so, we resort to the whirlwind of new characters, in the hope that someone will find their way into the hearts of the public and prove fundamental and memorable, and then we focus on an element that decreed the initial success of Elite, but whose reiteration, after 7 seasons, is no longer as interesting and creative as it might have seemed at the beginning: the excesses. It takes talent to continue generating interest with so little substance at this point because even though the series is aware of the rules of the game, it has also been entertaining enough to hook its audience, who have sworn loyalty to it. over the last five years. In the new installment, Omar (Omar Ayuso) leads a new life at university and away from Las Encinas, but he cannot turn the page. The guilt that he feels for Samuel’s death and the suffering of that stage are still very present and have led him to undergo therapy. Thanks to some internship, he decides to return to the school where everything happened to face his ghosts face to face.
Through the trip and Omar’s eyes, we will discover that the rest of the students are also silently battling with their hells. Season 7 of Elite addresses mental health and how most of us neglect it out of fear or ignorance. Although it is true that the return of Omar Ayuso is interesting for trying to evoke the spirit of the beginning of the series, and that the series seeks to surprise with the very powerful – and bizarre – incorporation of Maribel Verdú to the plot, neither of the two are a reason enough to generate enough curiosity about the plot of this season. They both try and monopolize the attention, or at least in the first three episodes, that they have given us to the media, but they are not enough of a reason, nor do they provide the depth that you would look for to convince you to want to move forward.
Neither does Mirela Balic as Chloe, who although she does fulfill her role by giving life to the most extravagant and captivating character in this installment, ends up staying in an attempt to replicate Lucrecia, living off the memory of the character played by Danna Paola. Although it is worth recognizing that Élite knows how to challenge the viewer with its social themes, even if it does so in broad strokes and goes far beyond them in some cases, it continues to waste the little fresh air that it had let in. Another example of this is the character of Eric, who is a missed opportunity to show that political activism can be something positive and capable of stirring or changing things a little. Something necessary, especially among the younger sector of the population to whom the series is directed, which usually shows disinterest in these types of concerns. In the end, the series has adapted to the changes, being flexible in its story and knowing what kind of product it wants to be, but it has also ended up being like that classmate who sat in the last row and ran out of ideas. to attract the attention of the rest of the students.
Season after season, episode after episode, none of the characters in the series are simply happy, showing no humor or empathy for the suffering of others. The writers aren’t interested in relief. The team’s objectives are clear: they want to shock; and there is no shock possible if there isn’t some naked, injured, or drugged character to put on stage. There is no place of comfort in which the viewer can take refuge, no tender couple, no sincere friendship, no true redemption. At a certain point, everything will be betrayed, hurt, and disrespected. A point in favor of this Elite Season 7 is certainly the fact that the series has progressively matured by touching on important current issues, with more or less force, such as job insecurity, social injustice, gender violence, and mental health. For the rest, everything is played around the nostalgia factor, exemplified by the return of a historical figure like Omar. It is not even an element that adds value to these new episodes but simply reproduces a narrative scheme that the Spanish TV series has already used enough.
In essence, Elite goes round and round the same old mill: despite being a media- and economically profitable production, its objectives – and the general outcome – are more confused than ever, victims of scripts written on autopilot that look askance at the ‘algorithm. This seventh, and penultimate, season won’t change anyone’s mind. If you were going to watch Elite, you would watch it, and if you didn’t, you wouldn’t. The series has played with extremes since its inception and continues to do so. Because this is what it’s all about, rotating the plots in search of a social dialogue – perhaps a heated debate; to make many sighs for fictitious lives that are impossible to follow if one does not deviate from a script; to conquer with dreamlike scenes and endless parties.
Elite Season 7 Review: The Last Words
Everything that happens in Elite Season 7 is a constant rush forward with no explanation or depth. Once again, the new season of the Spanish series is a déjà vu of what has been happening for several seasons now, despite the attempt to conduct a different investigation from the one we were previously used to. Elite Season 7 confirms itself in line with the last seasons of the series: excesses, vulgarity, and the desire to impress the public take precedence over the construction of the characters. In this case, the show loses its main characterization: the mystery side narrated through flashbacks.
Elite Season 7 Review: Boys From Las Encinas Are Back And Are Ready To Shock The Audience - Filmyhype
Director: Carlos Montero and Darío Madron
Date Created: 2023-10-20 15:59
4
Pros
- New cast is refreshing and talented
- Show tackles difficult topics in a meaningful way
- Steamy romance and drama
Cons
- Show can be soapy and unrealistic
- Lack of originality
- Some critics have found the show to be exploitative
