Elle Season 1 Ending Explained: Does Elle End Up With Miles or Dustin?

The ‘Legally Blonde’ prequel series, ‘Elle,’ takes the viewers back to the late 90s, when the fabulous future lawyer is only 16, navigating the stormy waters of high school. Elle Woods has her life figured out in LA. She has a close-knit group of friends, a dreamy crush, and a three-point plan for how exactly she’s going to dominate her junior year of high school. Therefore, everything goes drastically south when her parents inform her that an unfortunate turn of events has compelled the family to pack their bags and move to Seattle for the future. Thus, Californian Elle, with her blonde hair and luxuriously pink wardrobe, goes from a promised ascent to popularity and into a steep decline in the social ladder. In her new school, where non-conformity is the norm, the teenager finds herself wondering if she’ll ever fit in. SPOILERS AHEAD!

Elle Season 1 Recap

As it turns out, in Elle Woods’ life, Stanford isn’t the first time she has stuck out like a sore thumb in a brand-new place. In 1997, soon after she turned 16, her parents informed her that due to a blunder in her father’s plastic surgery profession, the family has to move temporarily to Seattle. However, the few years that the Woods have to lay low until Wyatt’s scandal dies down promise to rob their young daughter of the best years of her teenage life. In an effort to cheer her daughter up, Eva rescues an adorable chihuahua, Bruser, hoping a companion will help with the transition. Nonetheless, Elle’s first day at Rainier West High School swiftly proves that notion wrong. The kids in this new school entirely throw off everything the teenager knows about social hierarchies. There’s no varsity sports team, and the cheerleading team is the opposite of a surefire channel to popularity.

Instead, the popular girls, like Kimberly, value individualism and activism and look down on Elle, deeming her too shallow. When the latter attempts to hold onto her go-lucky attitude and get involved in a student effort to raise money for the school’s support staff, she ends up inadvertently getting the school secretary, Donna, fired. As such, she goes from the unpopular new kid at school to public enemy number one. However, Shannon’s entrance into her life brings a reprieve from perpetual social ostracization. The senior, who is into fashion and feminism, becomes Elle’s first friend despite Kimberly’s clear distaste for her. Therefore, things grow complicated when the blonde realizes that Shannon is dating Miles, the school’s track star, who has steadily become her new crush. In an effort to prove she harbors no feelings for the athlete, the new student ends up in a fake relationship with Dustin, an anti-establishment rebel.

Around the same time, Elle also befriends Liz, a loner student who works at the record store and also happens to be Donna’s daughter. The two girls eventually get involved with Dustin’s efforts to prove that something untoward is afoot on Rainier West’s administrative side. However, on the other hand, the blonde also works on winning a Cosmopolitan internship, which will give her an excuse to move back to LA and return to her old life. In order to achieve this, she tries to hold a homecoming at her new school, full of pep rallies, winter formals, and more. Yet, just when things begin to look up, tragedy strikes. Shannon’s mother, Robin, dies in an unfortunate car accident. Besides the fact that this is the first time Elle is dealing with loss, the situation is made all the more complicated by the fact that hours before the accident, the blonde kissed Shannon’s ex-boyfriend, Miles.

At first, Elle tries to be there for her friend by planning a memorial for her mother and keeping the new development between her and the track runner a secret from her. Nonetheless, a drunken and grieving Miles ends up blurting out the truth to Shannon. In the aftermath, the latter moves away to Denver. Shortly afterward, Elle and her friends realize that Principal Anderson’s embezzlement may have created the circumstances that led to Robin’s death. As a result, Kimberly and Miles join the trio in their attempts to expose the corruption at the high school. Somehow, in the middle of this, Donna ends up getting framed for the embezzlement and theft. The attempts to clear her name bring Elle even closer to her friends and help her find her footing at the school. Unfortunately, a long-kept secret unraveled, turning her back into a social pariah. In the end, torn between LA and Seattle, the blonde teenager must make her choice.

Elle Season 1 Ending: Does Elle End Up With Miles or Dustin?

Even though fans of Elle Woods know where the beloved blonde’s love life ultimately leads, her momentary move to Seattle brings up the yet unexplored story of her teenage romances. At the start of the series, the 16-year-old has a clear vision for how her future might unravel. She has a crush on Josh, the most popular and charming boy in school. That quickly becomes an unrealistic prospect when she has to move to Seattle with her family. Nonetheless, early into her arrival at the new school, she bumps into another boy, who might just be the one. Miles is the cross-country track star, which makes him the closest thing to a quarterback that Rainier High has. However, what could’ve been an uncomplicated romance turns into anything but that.

As it turns out, Miles is in a relationship with Shannon, who is the first person to take a liking to Elle in Seattle. Therefore, the blonde makes up her mind: she can’t ever pursue her feelings for the athlete out of respect for her friendship with his girlfriend. Yet, her resolve only remains strong for so long. The couple breaks up, and a heated argument with her mother compels Elle to make an ill-advised decision, namely, kissing a newly single Miles. However, this betrayal is made worse by the fact that hours later, Shannon’s mother dies in a car accident. Therefore, the grief of the situation prevents Elle from coming clean to her friend until the choice is inevitably taken out of her hands. This clumsy and unpleasant start goes on to influence the blonde’s seemingly doomed romance with Miles.

On the other hand, a different relationship blossoms between Elle and Dustin. The dynamic between the two remains eclectic from the beginning. Dustin is a troublemaker who hates authority, especially Principal Anderson. He’s convinced that the latter is involved in some shady corruption, embezzling funds from the high school. Once his theory turns out to be true, it plunges him into an explosive adventure, which Elle and her friends inevitably join. Throughout it all, her relationship with the other teen is defined by banter, sarcasm, and never really saying what the other person means. This is how she ends up asking him to the Winter Formal dance by playing a game of chicken.

Thus, by the end, Elle finds herself at a proverbial fork in her love life. There’s Miles, a case of an instant crush and her first crush. However, the two share a muddied history that prevents them from being together. On the other hand, there’s Dustin, a friend whom the blonde grew to care about beyond the platonic. Yet, the novelty of this dynamic prevents her from jumping into it with both feet. The finale finds Elle Woods back in Seattle, attending Rainier West’s Winter Formal in an effort to prove her friendship with Liz more than anything. As an indirect outcome, she also ends up confronting Dustin again. Their reunion, defined by the latter’s hurt at her abandonment, ends in a charged kiss, one that Miles ends up witnessing. Consequently, Elle ultimately finds herself firmly wedged in the middle of an unresolved love triangle between Miles and Dustin.

Why Does Elle Return to Seattle?

Once Elle finally finds a sense of belonging in Rainier West, the comforting feeling is taken from her in a matter of minutes. Her peppy personality, LA cares, and pink wardrobe make her an outcast in Seattle pretty much as soon as she sets foot in the city. Yet, over the course of the semester, she begins to find her footing. Eventually, she manages to earn the friendship of her peers by banding them together for the cause of saving Donna. However, while she has been working tirelessly to make her life in Seattle work, Eva ends up deciding on a different future for her daughter. At the beginning of the move, Elle is convinced she can never fit into the city. Moreover, she misses her old life dearly and just wants to go back to how things used to be. For the same reason, she applies for the Cosmopolitan internship in an effort to leave the new city behind.

Eventually, Elle realizes that she doesn’t actually want to leave Seattle. Leaving LA, attending Rainier West, meeting Liz and her other friends, all of it begins to change the blonde in significant ways. Instead of being scared of these changes, she’s inspired by them. Therefore, she wants to see things through rather than running away from life once again. For the same reasons, she decides to drop her pursuit of the internship. However, Eva’s experience in Seattle isn’t quite the same. The mother is as much of a fish out of the water as her daughter. The internship offers a convenient excuse for her to return to her old life as well. As such, despite Elle’s decision, Eva ends up mailing her essays to Cosmopolitan. Months later, once her daughter’s opinions on the city and her new high school have changed completely, the essays come out in print.

Worst of all, Shannon, who already hates Elle’s guts, stumbles across and finds a new reason to hate the LA girl. The latter hadn’t exactly been flattering in her essays, pitching Seattle as a hurdle to overcome, disparaging and demeaning the same people who go on to become her friends. Thus, the revelation of the essays turns the whole school against blonde. More importantly, it compels her friends, Liz, Miles, and Dustin, to believe Elle was only using them and had always intended to abandon them for her old life. Therefore, everyone ends up turning her back on her. This only encourages her to take the internship and return to her old life. Nonetheless, it’s only once she’s back in LA that she realizes how deeply Seattle had changed her. She discovers that she likes the friction it adds to her life and the way it challenges her beliefs. This is ultimately what compels her to return.

Do Elle and Shannon Make Up? Do They Forgive Each Other?

Elle and Shannon’s friendship unravels like a tragedy. From the get-go, the two girls click together despite the new student’s gross unpopularity among her peers. They have the same interest in fashion, and Shannon offers the blonde the first genuine hand of friendship in the city. Elle recognizes the same and remains grateful for it. This is why she initially refuses to act upon her feelings for Miles once she realizes he’s dating her friend. Nonetheless, circumstances continue to push them closer together. Still, Shannon might have been able to forgive the two for getting together so close to her breakup with the athlete.

However, this becomes an impossibility in the light of Robin’s death. Once Shannon loses her mother, the petty drama of high school romances begins to feel insignificant. For the same reason, Elle realizes she can’t be honest with her friend right away. As a result, her spur-of-the-moment mistake is turned into a betrayal when Shannon ends up learning about the kiss through Miles. The teenage girl is already grieving the loss of the most important person in her life. Therefore, the knowledge of the romance blooming between her ex-boyfriend and her close friend becomes too much for her to handle. In the end, Shannon and Elle meet again at the airport in a twist of fate. Although the two clear up the heavy air between them, it remains obvious that the hurt that has transpired between them will take some time to heal, if it heals at all.

Does Elle Prove Donna’s Innocence? Who is Blackmailing Anderson?

Once Elle and her friends begin investigating the embezzlement going on in Rainier West, certain things begin to clear up. They realize that the principal isn’t working for himself. A breakfast club-style mission at the school allows Miles to break into Anderson’s office and acquire some vital evidence. He uncovers a photograph that proves that the principal has a secret family he is hiding from his wife. Therefore, the teens conclude that Anderson must be getting blackmailed by a third party. Momentarily, even Elle wonders if Donna could be this third party. Nonetheless, her faith in the former school secretary and Liz strengthens her belief against the theory. Initially, she’s only planning on leading a protest with her fellow schoolmates to insist that the single mother is being framed.

However, Elle fortunately stumbles across tangible evidence to prove the same. The reason this investigation began was that Dustin could prove that the school wasn’t spending money on multiple items listed in the monthly budget. This means Anderson was embezzling large amounts of funds from the budget. However, he somehow had the receipts to prove the transactions despite lacking the final product. Yet, Elle realizes that one of the items, earthquake insurance, listed in the budget is blatantly forged due to her past experience with the same. This leads her to contact the listed insurance company, which leads her to none other than Dean Wilson, the mayoral candidate. As it turns out, he has been the blackmailer all this time, who has been using the embezzled funds to fund his political campaign. Once this truth comes out in the open, Donna’s name is cleared.