Netflix's ever-horny Elite doesn't quite go out with a bang

The final season of Netflix’s highly addictive and infinitely watchable Spanish series Elite is framed around—what else?—a dead body. The mystery surrounding this latest victim (Who killed them and why?) is absurdly familiar to anyone who’s been watching this show set at a posh private school in Spain. Such mysterious deaths have long haunted the kids at Las Encinas, with those whodunnit plots having driven season-long arcs for eight years running. This sendoff batch feels not so much like a culmination of that well-worn formula as its final limit case, proof, perhaps, that there were only so many more times characters and audiences alike could be so intrigued by another gruesome murder mystery among these horny, moneyed teens.

At the start of the episode that kicks off the last season (which drops July 26) is another hallmark of Elite: a rager. There is nothing the students at Las Encinas love more than a party, one where alcohol, drugs, lustful kisses, and vengeful fights run aplenty. This one, right outside the school’s grounds, is no different. And for good reason: This is the last one before the senior class bids farewell to the place where they’ve spent a better part of their teenage years. It’s no surprise, then, that it ends in bloodshed. That’s par for the course here. And that’s on top of the fact that Raúl’s demise from last season (and Chloe and Iván’s mother’s involvement in it) is still sending ripples through Las Encinas.

The identity of the bloodied (naked!) body that sparks this season’s central mystery is best kept a secret. So much of the salacious fun of Elite is watching its many jigsaw narrative pieces slowly fall in and out of place, so it’s best not to dispel such enjoyment in a review. But, as ever, this crime sits at the center of the many subplots on which the season rests, sometimes handily and at others clumsily, making them intersect to send endless red herrings our way with such brazen abandon you cannot help but be impressed by the series writers’ inventive zeal.

But a new year doesn’t just bring a new body. It also brings fresh blood. Not new students, per se. This year, Elite welcomes a pair of vicious siblings, Emilia and Héctor Krawietz (Ane Rot and Nuno Gallego), who run the aptly named Alumni organization that’s equal parts secret society (despite having its own wing on school grounds), old-school frat (with requisite initiation rites and subsequent hazing), and global-networking club (with astronomical fees and wealthy members to match). In essence, Alumni arrives as a way to further upend allegiances and friendships alike, with everyone from Isadora (Valentina Zenere) to Chloe (Mirela Balic) and Joel (Fernando Líndez) seeing in a possible membership a chance to redress, respectively, their failing club, their social standing, and their money woes.

Soon, though, the Krawietz siblings wreak all kinds of havoc, modeling a kind of willful, privileged impunity that’s long been at the center of Elite. Neither is above playing petty games to get what they want, often one-upping each other like a Spanish riff on the step-siblings from Cruel Intentions. Eventually, the two find in Omar (Omar Ayuso, the one OG character who’s remained throughout the show’s entire run) a foe they assume will be of little consequence. They dismiss and disparage him in social, cultural, and racist terms, setting up the kind of us-versus-them dynamic that’s anchored the show from the beginning, when the arrival of a few public school kids at Las Encinas (Omar included) set off a series of violent events that have led us here.

With its sprawling cast and its many-headed plotlines, there is a bagginess to this final season that can at times feel trying. Sonia, Sara, and Nicolás (Nadia Al Saidi, Carmen Arrufat, and Ander Puig) are adrift and underused throughout, while the much-publicized return of Nadia (Mina El Hammani) feels superfluous to the story at hand which, as ever, is about the lengths people will go to get what they want and the systems and structures in place that will make those same folks feel inviolate and invincible. If the social commentary (about everything from mental health and economic inequality to sexual consent and sex work) ends up feeling rather facile and not particularly insightful, it’s because the show is more intent on relishing the lurid premises those discussions set up than following through with them. This is a show that tackles panic attacks and issues of sexual agency and revenge porn, yes, but it’s more enamored with using them as a plot device for petty interpersonal drama. Just enjoy the pool hangs and the nighttime parties; gaze at gorgeous bodies in locker rooms and the salacious use of social media to settle scores.

For this is binge-watching TV at its best. Every episode returns us to that end-of-year rager to reveal new clues and shed light on new suspects, to muddy past guesses and obscure future ones. This is a well-oiled machine that knows just how fun it can be to see spoiled rich kids be put through the wringer. And, truth be told, this final season is fun. But it’s fun in the predictable way a good game of Clue can be. Perhaps it’s best that it’s finally over; this is a formula that was showing its age, and, as the kids at Las Encinas know, you can’t be young and careless and bold and fearless forever.

Elite season 8 premieres July 26 on Netflix