Élite's horny teenagers make for a show that's Gossip Girl meets Big Little Lies

Los Angeles Times

The Netflix Spanish teen thriller, now back for Season 3, is "unafraid to embrace its genre trappings and gleefully play with them, to smuggle in heady contemporary issues in stories that are seemingly all driven by hormones; its second season, which offered a twist on the revelations that seemingly tied up Season 1’s central mystery, went even further in exploring the role money and status plays at Las Encinas," says Manuel Betancourt. "Yet every subplot on the show hinges on two staples of the teen drama: sultry sexual urges and shameful, ill-kept secrets, arguably the only two ingredients one needs when telling stories about literate, horny, self-aware teenagers. It explains why so much of the show takes place in locker rooms, pools and house parties, but only rarely an actual classroom: Élite is fascinated by those moments when teenage boys think they’re not being watched, when teenage girls wish they were, and when any one of them is forced to reckon with what it means to always be on display." ALSO: Élite co-showrunner Darío Madrona talks the Rashomon approach in Season 3.