Billionaires’ Bunker review — Fake apocalypses, fragile bonds, and greed in a gilded cage

Billionaires’ Bunker arrives on Netflix as a claustrophobic melodrama disguised as a survival thriller. From the creators of Money Heist (La Casa de Papel) comes another heist. Yes, it's about a heist. While the premise is explosive, with a supposed World War III pushing the wealthy into hiding, the truth unravels soon as an elaborate con.

Yet, the real tension in Billionaires’ Bunker comes from how people unravel when forced to share space with grief, resentment, and fear.

The series locks us inside with its characters and asks what matters more, the end of the world or the way humans turn on each other long before bombs ever fall.

Melodrama as survival instinct

What could have been just another dystopia leans fully into melodrama. Max drags his guilt like a chain. Asia circles between suspicion and loyalty. Guillermo cannot stop blaming. Varela never lets anyone forget his role in saving Max, while his later betrayal in court lingers in every interaction, and so on.

Billionaires’ Bunker thrives on these emotional collisions. It feels heightened, sometimes predictable, but that is the point. The series argues that in extreme confinement, human behavior doesn’t become noble. It becomes petty, obsessive, desperate. The apocalypse isn’t fire outside. It’s festering grief inside.

The con that swallowed the apocalypse

Minerva’s scheme drives Billionaires’ Bunker forward, but it isn’t only about money. The fake war, the guards, the endless manipulations, all of these things create a theatre of power where survival itself is currency. Watching billionaires bleed wealth without bullets forces us to question what apocalypse even means. Is it the destruction of cities, or the hollowing of trust?

The show doubles down on deception until truth itself feels unreachable. By the time Guillermo’s clone, forged startups, and drugged signatures appear, it’s less about plot than about watching illusions pile into a grotesque business plan for survival.

The bond between Max and Asia

In the middle of the chaos, Billionaires’ Bunker offers the fragile tenderness of Max and Asia. She admits she always liked him, something the audience sensed from the very beginning. He promises that if there’s life above ground, he’ll come back for her.

These moments, especially in the end of the finale, may lean on familiar beats, but they ground the series, reminding us that even inside a lie, longing for connection still feels true.

The final scene, bathed in sunlight, refuses to confirm whether Max is free or trapped in yet another layer of deception. The ambiguity works because the emotional promise is stronger than the literal answer. It leaves us suspended between hope and suspicion.

A palette that refuses to hide

One of the boldest choices in Billionaires’ Bunker is its color palette. Where most survival dramas drown themselves in muted tones, this series leans into vibrancy. The reds, the organges and yellows, the metallic blues, the sharp contrasts in costume and set design do more than just decorate the series: they keep it alive.

It’s not unlike La Casa de Papel, where the saturation made chaos feel electric. Here, the brightness works as a counterpoint to the supposed apocalypse outside. Instead of the washed-out greys we’ve come to expect, every scene insists on being seen in full clarity. And that’s refreshing. It can be irritating when a show hides behind what I like to call the “depression filter.” Yes, The Boys and Stranger Things, I’m looking at you, even though I love you two.

Billionaires’ Bunker refuses that aesthetic trap. The colors cut through the claustrophobia, making the bunker less a tomb and more a stage, where every lie and every betrayal is performed under harsh, unforgiving lights.

Hell is other people, even underground

Billionaires’ Bunker echoes Sartre’s Huis Clos, the existentialist play where three characters are trapped in a room and slowly realize that hell isn’t fire or torture but the eternal gaze of others. The bunker works on the same principle. Locked away from the world, these families discover that the real apocalypse isn’t nuclear but interpersonal.

Every look carries judgment, every silence festers, and every attempt at civility is poisoned by memory. Max cannot escape Guillermo’s hatred, Varela tries to rewrite his own role in history, and Asia clings to order even as it collapses around her. The bunker magnifies them until their flaws become unbearable.

By evoking Sartre, Billionaires’ Bunker positions itself as more than a thriller. It’s an existential trap, a place where survival means confronting not bombs but the reflection of your own choices, endlessly mirrored by the people you cannot leave behind.

A mirror held to human nature in Billionaires’ Bunker

Beyond the bunker walls, Billionaires’ Bunker works as critique. Not only of wealth hoarded in underground palaces, but of human behavior itself. How quickly do people weaponize grief? How far does the instinct for control go when survival is on the line?

The series insists that the apocalypse isn’t simply about bombs or shelters. It’s about what people choose to sacrifice when they feel entitled to live. Billionaires’ Bunker uses its confined setting to turn human behavior into its most terrifying display, one where greed and suspicion outlive any war.

Rating with a touch of flair: 4 out of 5 velvet coffins locked from the inside.