The atomic shelter: where to watch the bunker series from the creators of La casa de papel

What would the richest people on the planet do if the world ended tomorrow? In The Atomic Shelter, the answer is to go down to a bunker with a spa, haute cuisine and virtual reality — and take your miseries inside. The Spanish series by Álex Pina and Esther Martínez Lobato, the creators of La casa de papel, locks up a group of billionaires in the Kimera Underground Park while an unprecedented global conflict breaks out. It is complete on Netflix with its 8 episodes.

What's it about The Atomic Shelter (no spoilers)

Max is released from prison and moves in with his parents in Kimera, an ultra-exclusive underground refuge where a group of fortunes protect themselves from the threat of war. The problem is not outside: inside the bunker the family awaits him, with whom his family carries a wound that is impossible to heal. From there, the series mixes thriller, family drama and class satire - that "hatred of the rich" that gives the title to one of the episodes - with the constant twists that are the Pina brand.

The tone connects with Silo or Paradise (confinement, hierarchies, secrets from the surface), but with the soap opera and choral DNA of La casa de papel: alliances that change from episode to episode, flashbacks that rewrite what you thought you knew and a cast headed by Miren Ibarguren in an unprecedented dramatic record, together with Joaquín Furriel and Natalia Verbeke.

Kimera: the most expensive bunker on Spanish television

Netflix presented the series as its most ambitious Spanish production. The bunker was built in the Vancouver production company's studios in Colmenar Viejo — the same warehouse that was the prison in Vis a vis and the Mint and Stamp Factory in La casa de papel —, expanded to 6,000 square meters to film "in continuity", like a 360 degree set in which the camera can move anywhere. Adding the Netflix headquarters in Tres Cantos and its virtual set, some 8,000 square meters of sets were built, as detailed by ABC.

The 8 episodes of the single season

Why it was canceled (and why see it the same)

The series started strong — it was the most watched in Spain for two weeks — but the global audience did not match expectations, and on December 10, 2025 El País announced that Netflix canceled it after its first season; The sets began to be dismantled immediately afterwards, as also confirmed by El Periódico. The ending is left open: Pina acknowledged in the promo that the second season was "very little thought out" and that "everything depends on the public."

Is it worth starting it knowing that it doesn't continue? Yes, with adjusted expectations: the season closes its main plots and works as a miniseries with an ambiguous epilogue. If you like Pina's choral suspense and confinement fiction, it is a very digestible eight hours — and the bunker, visually, is one of the most spectacular that recent Spanish fiction has produced.

Where to see The atomic shelter

The entire season is available on Netflix worldwide, with original audio in Spanish and dubbing/subtitles in multiple languages. In the United States it is rated TV-MA; in Spain, 16+.