Control Z Is Basically Gossip Girl Meets Black Mirror

A new Mexican drama series about the horrors of high school has arrived to Netflix. Think Gossip Girl meets Black Mirror: In Netflix's Control Z, Colegio Nacional is a typical high school operated by trope-y social hierarchies. There are the popular kids, the loners, and everyone in between. But someone, most likely a student who attends Nacional (but maybe not) has threatened to shake up this delicate ecosystem by turning students against each other, blackmailing them into handing over their friends’ secrets, and then blasting this information by sending it directly to everyone's phones. The series, which premiered on 22nd May, follows shrewd and observant student Sofia (Ana Valeria Becerril) who teams up with new guy Javier (Michael Ronda) to play detective and find the identity of the person who’s conducting this chilling social experiment. 

First, meet Sofia. She is an outsider, and prefers it this way. Her favourite past time at school is perching herself atop the school's all-glass roof and looking down on her peers, taking in their routines and predictable movements (it's a little on-the-nose, but we'll go with it). The hyper-intelligent and observant young woman is still dealing with major PTSD from losing her father in a horrific death when she was young, a tragedy that impacted her mental health so severely, that she recently spent a month at a psychiatric facility (and the bullies at school won't let her forget this).

Although she has demons of her own, she’s mostly concerned with the hacker infiltrating Colegio Nacional’s servers and students’ psyche. While she may prefer to spend her time solo, for some reason Sofia does care about the well-being of her colleagues — even if they don’t feel the same way about her. When she learns about the possibility of a hacker at Nacional, she’s enlisted to track this person down by one of the popular boys, Raul, who fears his own secrets coming out. 

The hacker’s first casualty is the beautiful and beloved Isabela (Zion Moreno), who’s in a relationship with Pablo (Andres Baida), a vapid student who deeply cares about his reputation above all else. During a school-wide assembly organised by the school principal (Rodrigo Cachero) his projector screen gets hijacked and instead of a presentation about using phones during class, a DIY video outing Isabela as a trans woman, with footage of her presenting as a young boy, her birth certificate, and gender confirmation surgery paperwork. Although Isabela isn’t ashamed of her past (and has only been keeping it a secret to protect Pablo), she’s hurt and understandably traumatised when this private information is blasted to the entire school. It completely obliterated any agency that she had. Worst of all, Pablo betrays her by denying knowing any of this (even though he did) and breaks up with her in front of everyone to save face.

Meanwhile, as the hacker is busy extending his or her offer to the students of Nacional, shy outsider Luis (Luis Curiel) is seen getting cruelly bullied by Gerry (Patricio Gallardo) and his gang of jerks who get a kick out of emotionally and physically abusing anyone who's different. We're led to believe that there is most likely a connection between the way the school turns a blind eye to the abuse happening on campus and the hacker's motives.

Sofia learns early on that the hacker has been reaching out to students individually under the username @allyoursecrets, threatening to reveal their biggest secrets until they give up intel about their friends. One by one, the students of Nacional are exposed. If the hacker’s goal was to create total anarchy and watch the student ecosystem combust, then the mysterious individual is certainly on their way to success. But not if Sofia can help it. Although the hacker doesn't sign off with "You know you love me, xoxo, @allyoursecrets," they might as well.