Hey, remember parties? For us normals, a party is this thing when a lot of people come together for general frivolity and merriment, and usually there is music and sometimes cake. For the teens on Elite, Netflix’s Spanish horny, murder-y high school show, parties are a whole other beast.
On Elite, you may think you’re going to a party to blow off some steam after a particularly grueling week trying to be top of the class at Las Encinas High School, or to “help” a “charity,” but really you’re just going to a gathering where secrets are exposed, bad decisions are made, and you literally could be murdered. So, like, maybe parties aren’t so cool after all? Regardless of what you think of parties in general, the parties on Elite are always, at the very least, dramatic. But which party over the course of three seasons is the most dramatic of them all? Let’s find out.
10. The Valentine’s Day Party
“Lu” (Season 3, Episode 4)
Our headband Queen Lu’s “role reversal” Valentine’s Day party, in which all the boys have to dress skimpy and the girls are buttoned up, is surprisingly low on the drama for a party meant to cover up the fact that Lu has been completely cut off from her dad’s fortune. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still lots of drama, but this is from the girl who blackmailed a teacher! Who sent out the video of Nadia and Guzmán doing it in the locker room! Who secretly fucks her brother! You’d just expect more than simply Lu discovering Nadia’s boyfriend Malick making out with Nadia’s brother Omar in the bathroom, and people longingly staring at the people they love but can’t have while dancing with their significant others. Does this signal Lu’s putting all the drama behind her? That would be a real tragedy.
9. The Wine Gala
“Love Is a Drug” (Season 1, Episode 4)
The party Marina and Guzmán’s parents throw in Carla’s mother’s wine cave to rehab their image after that whole “school building collapse” scandal certainly has the most dramatic location of any party on this show. I mean, did you hear? Wine cave! However, the shenanigans going on inside said cave are pretty normal for Elite: You know, most days these kids are dealing with things like Guzmán’s deep hatred for Samu and the working class, Marina using Samu to infuriate her parents, Guzmán walking in on his dad doing lines of coke, Guzmán and Samu discovering their best friends Ander and Omar are hooking up by finding them having sex between wine barrels, and Carla making out with both Polo and Christian in front of her mom and all of her mom’s celebrity friends just to stick it to her. That’s, like, a regular Wednesday morning for these kids.
8. Samuel’s House Party
“Saturday Night” (Season 1, Episode 3)
Really this party could make this list based solely on the fact that at one point brothers Samuel and Nano beatbox and rap together. Truly, a terrifying moment in which one should clutch their pearls. But other big incidents take place, including: Guzmán showing up to “protect” his sister, only to discover his BFF Ander lied to him about coming to this party and then attacking him when he thinks Omar is dealing him drugs; Nadia drinking the spiked punch and then asking Guzmán to take her to his swimming pool; and of course, Marina and Nano hooking up in the bathroom while Samu, very much in love with Marina, is outside. I mean, anytime the host is puking in the sink, you know it’s a halfway decent party.
7. The Blackout Party
“Ander” (Season 3, Episode 5)
The Blackout Party reveal at Teatro Barceló is truly one of the best moments of Elite, full stop. But since it only involves a select few, drama-wise, and no one dies or almost dies, it’s landed back here on the list. You’ll never forget where you were (probably on your couch) when the lights went out at the club and you saw the fluorescent paint Rebe had soaked her purse in to expose Samu as the traitor who let her drug kingpin mother get arrested. It was not just all over Samu’s hands because he had tried to get rid of the “evidence” he thought Rebe had inside of it, but also all over Omar’s hands, because he threw the purse out for Samu, and then, of course, all over Malick’s body, because he and Omar tried to get a secret quickie in behind the bar. And then when Nadia, the smartest of us all, connected the fluorescent dots, she knew once and for all that her boyfriend and her brother were fucking behind her back. That’s a party!
6. Yeray’s Pool Party
“Rebeca” (Season 3, Episode 6)
Aside from the parties where people just straight-up get murdered, our Backward Hat-Loving Tech God’s pool party is probably the saddest event on this list. Well, yes, sure, Rebe ends up selling drugs to Carla after Valerio refuses to because he can see Carla is forming a bad habit and eventually Carla is so high and so drunk that she passes out and falls into the pool, and Polo has to save her. That is, admittedly, rough. BUT ALSO there is so much heartbreak at this party! Guzmán puts his heart out on the line for Nadia, only for her to tell him that she’s truly off to New York City and he’s staying here, how can they be anything? They share a good-bye hug with tears in their eyes, and honestly, why can’t love just be enough? Meanwhile, we got Ander showing up to question Malick about why he’s hooking up with his boyfriend — is it just a physical thing or are there real feelings? When precious angel Ander finds out he and his cancer are too much of a burden for Omar, he decides to let that man go. No wonder Lu is over on a lounge chair sipping gin and tonics from a glass the size of my face. This is stressful!
5. Marina’s Party
“Welcome” (Season 1, Episode 1)
Elite’s first party really gets things kicked off right. It’s Marina’s coming-out party, and her family pulls out all the stops. I mean, do you see the number of outdoor heaters the Nuniers set up for this festivity? This is a serious party. And with an exclusive party like this comes lots of drama — drama that sets up the entire season. There’s Marina’s dad using Samu for photo ops to get good press after his scandal and pissing Marina off in the process. There’s Guzmán threatening to beat up Nano. There’s Lu ordering Guzmán to seduce and humiliate Nadia. There’s rich people hating poor people. There’s Ander getting so drunk he throws up on Lu’s dress. (Okay, that has nothing to do with anything, but puking on another human being is always dramatic.) Most of all, there’s Carla and Polo deciding to spice up their relationship by having Carla fuck Christian while Polo secretly watches. It’s the perfect welcome party.
4. The Fake-Charity Party
“84 Hours Missing” (Season 2, Episode 7)
This is Miss Lucrecia Montesinos at her dirtiest, her bitchiest, her finest. In the middle of this charity party Lu has thrown together in just a day on behalf of her new best friend Cayetana, Lu discovers that Cayetana has been lying to her this entire time. About everything. Cayetana is not some new super-wealthy student — she’s the daughter of the janitor at Las Encinas and she has tricked Lu into helping her throw a “charity” party that is actually scamming rich people out of money to go into Cayetana’s pocket. Lu decides to show her what happens when you mess with the head bitch. She gets up onstage to make a speech and instead outs Cayetana for the fraud she is, outs Guzmán for cheating on her with Nadia, and outs Carla for sleeping with Samuel. The adults at this party are probably very confused, but all the Las Encinas kids in attendance have their jaws on the floor.
3. Rebe’s Halloween Party
“63 Hours Missing” (Season 2, Episode 5)
First of all, Polo and Cayetana show up dressed as “Assination JFK and Jackie O,” and if that isn’t some next-level drama king and queen shit, I don’t know what is. Aside from the fact that this is a Halloween party and everyone feels like they have the license to be dramatic whilst in costume, this banger was bound to be intense simply because of the circumstances surrounding it: Nano, who was wrongly convicted of Marina’s murder in season one, has just been released on bail, and everyone is up in arms about it. So all the drama ensues: Rebe is the first to figure out Cayetana is a fraud and taunts her with that info repeatedly, Omar overhears Ander making fun of him and his Dr. Frank-n-Furter costume, Guzmán dumps Lu while they’re in their Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera costumes, Ander tells Polo he’s tired of keeping his secret about Marina and wants to tell Guzmán, Samuel catches Lu and her half-brother Valerio having sex (!!), Nano shows up in a Michael Myers costume and accosts Carla in the street because he thinks she’s using Samuel to cover up Polo killing Marina, and then Samuel beats his brother senseless for hurting Carla. Anyway, fun-size candy bar, anyone?
2. End-of-School-Year Party
“Assilah” (Season 1, Episode 8)
Well, I mean, while all the other students are attending the End-of-Year party in the gymnasium, Marina’s over in the pool getting slammed in the head with the school trophy she just won by Polo, who is trying to win back Carla, who then helps him cover it all up. All of the other big dramatic moments taking place at this party — Guzmán promising Nadia’s father that he’ll never speak to Nadia again as long as she’s allowed to come back to Las Encinas, Christian standing up to Carla for using him — really pale in comparison with the moment when Nano, who has arrived to take Marina and their yet-to-be-born child away from all the craziness, finds her on the pool deck with a gaping head wound, while teens are just bumping and grinding a few doors down. Truly, World’s Worst Party.
1. The Graduation Party
“Polo” (Season 3, Episode 8)
It’s not that Polo’s death is somehow worse or more emotional than Marina’s, but, hi, hello, literally everyone watches Polo stagger around after being stabbed in the heart and then fall through a plate of glass and onto the dance floor below. That has to be the most dramatic, right? RIGHT? On top of Polo’s actual death, there is both the lead-up to it, in which he and Lu have an extremely heated argument in the bathroom before she accidentally stabs him in the chest with a broken champagne bottle, and the aftermath, in which all of Polo’s classmates enter into a murder pact to make sure Lu never gets caught. It works. Watching these people successfully mislead the detective — who, yes, has repeatedly proved she’s terrible at her job, but still — is truly wild. My greatest wish for these people is that they one day attend a party where they stay for just a few hours, dance a little, drink a little, and then head home thinking the party was fun but mostly forgettable. And not one single person gets accidentally murdered. What a time that would be.
