You can describe Netflix’s long-running original hit Elite as many things. The salacious Spanish teen drama has been, variably, a class commentary, an erotic thriller, a family drama, and quite a bit more besides. But the most compelling aspect of it has always been that it’s a murder mystery. Each season opens with a killing, or at least a death and subsequent episodes then explore it from various perspectives, gradually forming a complete picture. Elite Season 7 drops this device entirely for every episode except its finale, so the obvious question to ask is who, if anyone, actually dies in Season 7?
One wishes this were a more difficult question to answer since the season would have probably been better if it was. Alas, there is only one death in this season – unless you count Isadora’s horse, Amazona – and it’s the guy who most deserved it anyway.
The only character who dies in the seventh season of Elite is Raul, Sara’s abusive boyfriend.
This was inevitable in a way since he had kind of been written into a corner in such a way that his death was the only feasible outcome. He showed no growth of evolution in his relationship with Sara and, when she tried to stand up to him, he simply switched over to Chloe and displayed the exact same behaviors.
Even more sinisterly, Raul was using his relationship with Chloe to get back at Sara, obviously still the object of his obsession. When they have sex, Sara takes the opportunity to record the tryst and shows it to Chloe’s mother, Carmen, who reveals Raul’s indiscretions to Chloe.
When Chloe confronts Raul, he becomes characteristically abusive and eventually violent with her. Carmen arrives and, seeing the tell-tale signs of domestic violence, she lures Raul to the roof and pushes him to his death.
Carmen and Chloe provide alibis for one another and frame Raul’s death as a suicide, consistent with the theme throughout the rest of the season, which is heavily about mental health.
The eighth and final episode of the seventh season is the only one to deploy Elite’s usual season-long trick of beginning with a death and then explaining it later. However, it’s deliberately implied that the death is a suicide, essentially playing off how Carmen and Chloe cover things up, but also filling the audience’s head with doubt, since so many of the characters could have been capable of killing themselves.
One of them is undoubtedly Omar, who actually made an attempt on his own life earlier in the season after catching his boyfriend Joel cheating on him with Ivan. The other is Eric, who had experienced many difficulties throughout the season leading into the finale and was driven to consider suicide after getting high on coke and falling out with his cousin, Nico.
Elite Season 7 essentially uses its mental health themes as a way to trick the audience into believing that a struggling character had committed suicide when in fact a very deserving character had been murdered, which is a little icky, but mostly par for the course in a series like this.
