Is Samuel Dead? Kidnapped? Vanished? Your Burning Elite Season 2 Question, Answered

From the second Elite season 2 begins, we know one of the Las Encinas students is missing. The only clues we have are that the MIA teen is a boy and he was last seen wearing his school uniform. It’s not until the end of 2019 premiere “20 Hours Missing” that the Netflix teen show levels with us — it’s Samuel (Itzan Escamilla) who has vanished. 

Immediately the question of “Where is Samuel?!” turns into the driving mystery of the season. Has Samuel been murdered? Was Samuel kidnapped? Did he simply stumble and fall in the woods after a drunken evening out? 

Season 2 finale “0 Hours Missing” reveals the answer is none of those. Instead, Samuel is alive, well, and — surprise! — playing a far bigger game with former mortal enemy Guzmán (Miguel Bernardeau). It’s a twist worthy of a show as complicated as Elite — and one in need of explanation. 

To understand the true story of Samuel’s “disappearance,” we first have to look at the three red herrings the series throws at us over season 2’s eight episodes. Prior to “0 Hours,” Elite wants us to believe in one of three plausible causes for Samuel’s vanishing act: he was silenced by Carla’s (Ester Expósito) shady dad Teo (Rubén Martínez), he was murdered by a crime family, or, he was killed by Guzmán over the season 1 death of Marina (Maria Pedraza). 

While none of those theories are exactly what come to pass, they do converge to create Samuel and Guzmán’s cloak and dagger plan. 

The first time we see Samuel tell Guzmán directly that Polo (Álvaro Rico) likely killed Marina is in “66 Hours Missing.” Samuel is correct, but Guzmán refuses to believe him. At the end of the episode Guzmán tries to beat up Samuel because he still thinks Samu’s brother Nano (Jaime Lorente) killed Marina. This time, Samuel plays a recording of Carla telling Samu that if he continues his investigation into Marina’s death he will end up like Christian (Miguel Herrán), who got hit with an SUV at the start of the season and was left on the edge of death. 

This is enough the make Guzmán consider the awful possibility that Samuel is telling the truth. 

These suspicions make Guzmán start asking Ander (Arón Piper), who has been acting odd for months, and Polo himself about the allegations. Guzmán sometimes asks the question as if it’s a joke, but that’s only to make the boys comfortable enough to possibly open up. While Ander — who learned of Polo’s culpability in “34 Hours Missing” — says no each time, he becomes less convincing with every lie. 

However, it’s the threat of Teo that truly makes Guzmán believe Polo, his very best friend, could be the person who killed his sister. At the “84 Hours Missing” fundraiser, Guzmán notices how agitated Polo and Teo look the moment Samuel shows up at the party. Then, directly after Guzmán seriously confronts Ander about the Polo rumor, he observes the shady and stressed conversation Polo and Ander share on a surreptitious street corner. It’s a chat that proves Ander could not respect Guzmán’s one wish: don’t tell Polo about their private conversation. All together, these moments suggest this trio is hiding something huge that they specifically don’t want Guzmán to know — like their part in Marina’s death and the subsequent coverup. 

So, as we find out in the finale, Guzmán texts Samu after the party, “I believe you.” The boys agree to meet at a secret location, which ends up being Guzmán’s grandparent’s country house. The only problem is, a pair of criminal goons are after Samu due to his delivery boy status for Sandra (Eva Llorach), the crime boss mom of new girl Rebeca (Claudia Salas). In retaliation for Sandra’s men hospitalizing one of their own, the goons want to hurt Samuel. They end up chasing Samuel off the road near Guzmán’s country house and following him into the woods. Samuel manages to evade them by climbing a fence on Guzmán’s property. The boys realize hiding out there, in a forest with only one road out, won’t protect Samu for long. 

This is when they agree to fake Samuel’s disappearance and hide him in the country house. So much public interest in Samuel’s whereabouts will keep any criminal organizations away from him. Plus, convincing Carla that she caused Samuel’s death may push her into confessing the full story behind Marina’s death. After Christian’s accident, there is no reason for her not to believe her father eliminated a threat like Samuel. A confession, the boys agree, is the only way to take Polo down without any other evidence tying him to Marina’s murder. 

While Samuel hides out in the abandoned country mansion, Guzmán does his part to move the “disappearance” investigation along in their favor. 

That is why Guzmán seems so suspicious over the course of season 2’s flashbacks. He’s not the murderer — he’s just trying to play everyone. He loudly asks the inspector (Ainhoa Santamaría) if they’re looking for a dead body to make Carla start to feel badly. When Guzmán shows up at the search party, it’s not to mask his criminality as love interest Nadia (Mina El Hammani) worries. Instead, he’s there to drop off the freshly bloodied uniform jacket he made with Samuel. It’s an item that makes the scene of the crime seem so much more gruesome than it actually was. Then, at school, Guzmán brings up the murder-suggesting jacket loudly in front of Carla. 

Piece by piece, Guzmán is chipping away at Carla’s resolve to continue keeping hers and Polo’s secret. First Marina died. Then Christian was paralyzed. And, now, Samuel has probably died died too? How many people must suffer for Polo to be free, the plan asks? 
It works. In the final act of “0 Hours Missing,” Carla confesses all to the inspector, putting Polo in handcuffs and allowing Samuel out of hiding. Now, the only question is, was all of Samuel and Guzmán’s hard work enough to put Marina’s killer away forever? Only another season of Elite can answer that one.