Shooting the eighth and final season of Netflix’s teen crime drama “Elite” last November, crew members yelled “silencio” so often it could have been mistaken for a chant.
Dozens of young actors, dressed in black tie, talked and laughed as they milled around a set on the outskirts of Madrid that depicted a nightclub. The Brazilian actor André Lamoglia seemed used to the chaos as he waited, perching on the bar in a black suit with white trim, to lead another of the show’s rowdy party scenes.
After the cameras finally started rolling, and with the extras making much less noise, Lamoglia’s character, Iván, took a seemingly casual selfie with his half sister Chloe (Mirela Balic) that was actually part of a scheme to discover who murdered his friend.
Unruly teenagers, expensive clothes and mysterious dead bodies are all typical for the Spanish-language show which, since its premiere in 2018, has become one of Netflix’s most popular original titles, and one of the longest-running. (The final season is being released Friday.)
In its first season, “Elite” used a setup familiar from other successful teen shows, including “Gossip Girl” and “Beverly Hills, 90210”: inserting beautiful outsiders into an exclusive social setting. In this case, three scholarship students join Las Encinas, an expensive private high school. But at Las Encinas, every year (and season) there is also a murder for students and the police to investigate.
This blending of soapy teen drama and tense murder mystery has helped the show run for eight seasons, and by its fourth, “Elite” was ranking in Netflix’s weekly Top 10 chart in more than 70 countries, according to data from the streamer.
Diego Ávalos, the Netflix vice president for Spain, Portugal and the Nordics, also attributed the show’s success to how it includes L.G.B.T.Q. characters, a range of races and people from different social backgrounds, meaning “different people could see themselves reflected onscreen,” Ávalos said in an interview on set.
For the show’s co-creator, Carlos Montero, “it was important to make an inclusive mainstream show,” he said, adding that as a gay person growing up in Spain, he didn’t see “any representation” on TV. “It’s my small contribution to the mainstream world to depict and include everyone,” he said.
Along the way, “Elite” has featured more over-the-top references to incest and polyamorous throuples than your average teen drama. But the show also hasn’t shied away from exploring complex experiences, including the young Palestinian drug dealer Omar (Omar Ayuso) coming out to his Muslim family as gay, and his sister Nadia (Mina El Hammani) debating whether to wear a hijab.
Over the years, the show’s creators had to decide whether to let the “Elite” characters outgrow their school uniforms, or keep the show set in Las Encinas. “We decided the high school premise was as important as the characters,” Montero said, and so in Season 4 and 6, there were significant changes to the cast, as some new characters aged into the school and others moved into town from abroad.
Ayuso, an original cast member who has made it to the final season, said the early characters “were more charismatic and more extravagant.” Now, “the characters are more like real human beings,” and in recent seasons, they have dealt with heartbreak, domestic violence, sexual assault and grief.
In recent years, Netflix has put more of its $17 billion annual budget behind international content, like “Elite.” In 2019, the company opened its largest European production hub at Tres Cantos, just north of Madrid, where “Elite” is filmed. The show is a great example of the Spanish Netflix team’s dual aims, Ávalos said, to bring Spanish storytelling to a more international audience and to make it more “relatable and contemporary.”
Ávalos also noted that “Elite” benefited from being released a year after the cult-favorite Spanish crime drama “Money Heist” (known as “La Casa de Papel” in Spain), which follows a group of robbers and features three of the same actors as “Elite.”
Much like “Money Heist,” “Elite” has helped open the streaming world to Spanish TV. But when a school has as many murders as Las Encinas, it will inevitably have to shutter.
Montero said it was hard to know when to end the show, especially when “the audience is still there,” but “we got the feeling that we had told everything we wanted to tell and didn’t want to exhaust it.”
In the show’s final season, Las Encinas alumni return to start a new club for current and former students. But, like much in the school, their intentions aren’t as selfless as they might appear.
Ayuso, who plays Omar, believes the end of Las Encinas could have been even more dramatic.
“If it were up to me,” he said, “what I would’ve loved to do is burn the school down.”
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