General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Snakes and Ladders (2025 TV series)

Snakes and Ladders (Serpientes y escaleras) is a Mexican dark comedy television series created and directed by Manolo Caro for Netflix, in which an ambitious but overlooked school prefect at an elite elementary school climbs a ladder of lies and corruption to become head of the school¹. Its eight episodes were all released on May 14, 2025². The series reunites Caro with Cecilia Suárez, his frequent collaborator from The House of Flowers and Someone Has to Die, who plays the teacher Dora³.

Key fact	Detail
Original title	Serpientes y escaleras (Spanish-language series)⁴
Premiere	May 14, 2025, all 8 episodes of season 1 on Netflix²
Creator/director	Manolo Caro, who also created The House of Flowers¹^•⁵
Lead cast	Cecilia Suárez (Dora López-Negrete), Juan Pablo Medina (Olmo), Martiño Rivas (Vicente), Marimar Vega (Tamara), Benny Emmanuel (Toño)⁶
Setting	An elite elementary school in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico⁷^•⁸
Rating	TV-MA; Common Sense Media rates it 16+ for sex, strong language, and violence¹^•⁷
Audience score	6.3/10 on IMDb from about 850 ratings⁹

Spoilers

Premise and story

The series is set in an elite elementary school in Guadalajara. Dora (Cecilia Suárez), a principled but overlooked school prefect, dreams of becoming headmistress. When a fight between two students, and between their powerful parents, throws the school into scandal, Dora seizes the opportunity to climb the political ladder⁷. As she is pulled into backdoor deals and moral compromises, she faces scheming administrators, controlling families such as Vicente (Martiño Rivas) and Tamara (Marimar Vega), and her own son Toño (Benny Emmanuel), who has a secret of his own⁷. Netflix's trailer description frames the goal as becoming principal of a prestigious school in Jalisco, with Dora maneuvering a dispute between two of the state's most powerful families to her advantage, even if it means bending her ethics⁵.

The eight episodes, each titled as a paired theme, run from "Morals and Ethics" through "Alliances and Retaliation", "Action and Passion", "Anti and Sadness", "Family and Tradition", "Failure and Triumph", and "Secrets and Discretion" to the finale "Heaven and Hell"². Alongside Dora's campaign, the season follows Toño's coming-of-age arc, including a closeted queer relationship marked by secrecy and betrayal, and the student Juana's manipulative tactics, showing how children absorb and replicate adult power dynamics⁷.

Cast and production

Cecilia Suárez leads the cast as Dora López-Negrete, appearing in all eight episodes. Juan Pablo Medina plays Olmo, Marimar Vega plays Tamara Sahagún, Michelle Rodríguez plays Martha Sánchez, Loreto Peralta plays Juana Muriel, and Germán Bracco plays Nicolás; Gerardo Trejoluna appears as Fernando Colmenar "El Gober" in four episodes⁶. The wider credited cast includes Alfredo Gatica, Luis Felipe Tovar, and Margarita Gralia¹⁰.

Behind the camera. Manolo Caro created the series and shares writing credit with Alexandro Aldrete, Ángela Armero, and Estíbaliz Burgaleta⁶. Producers include Maria Jose Cordova, Triana Garcia Simon, Rafael Ley, and Caro himself; Lucas Vidal composed the music, Ana Ibarra was production designer, and the show was made by the production companies Woo Films and Noc Noc Cinema⁶^•⁸. Filming took place in Guadalajara, Jalisco⁸. Episodes run roughly 35 to 37 minutes⁸^•⁴.

Reception

Professional reception was mixed. Rotten Tomatoes listed four critic reviews for season 1 without an aggregate score². Chris Joyce of Movies and Munchies gave 3.5/5, praising the off-kilter comedy and character growth while noting several storylines of varying attention; Charles Hartford of But Why Tho? gave 2/10, writing that the series "fails far more than it succeeds"; and Weiting Liu of Common Sense Media found little beneath the glossy surface, calling it "drama for the sake of drama"². Decider's Joel Keller described the premiere as packed with plot in a fun, campy way², and Dexerto's roundup of early reviews called the show an explicit telenovela version of workplace comedies like Abbott Elementary¹¹.

Audience response on IMDb was moderate overall but rose across the season: the weighted rating stood at 6.3/10 from about 850 votes, while per-episode ratings climbed steadily from 7.2 for episode 1 to 8.0 for the finale⁹. The countries with the most ratings were Mexico, the United States, Spain, Argentina, and Colombia⁹. Common Sense Media highlighted the show's all-Latino cast and its centering of women in roles of authority and ambition, while cautioning that its characters are morally questionable and that bribery and manipulation are presented as tools for getting ahead⁷. GLAAD's 2024–2025 Where We Are on TV report listed Snakes and Ladders among Netflix's inclusive shows¹².

Other series of the same name

The title is shared with an unrelated Tamil-language thriller series, Snakes & Ladders, created by Kamala Alchemis and Dhivakar Kamal, directed by Bharath Muralidharan, Ashok Veerappan, and Kamala Alchemis, and produced under Karthik Subbaraj's Stone Bench Productions. That nine-episode series, about four school friends in the fictional hill town of Rettamugadu who try to cover up an accidental death, premiered on Prime Video on October 18, 2024¹³. The two shows differ in language, platform, cast, and story, and the 2024 series predates the Netflix comedy by roughly seven months.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026