Disney XD’s Once ran for three seasons and 220 episodes, from June 19, 2017 to August 1, 2020, and it never needed a crossover or a gimmick to hold an audience. It needed Gabo.
Gabo and the Scholarship to IAD
The premise is simple enough to fit on a locker room wall. Gabo is a soccer-loving teenager. A scholarship to the Sports Academic Institute in Buenos Aires lands in his hands, and with it the chance to play for Los Halcones Dorados, the school’s renowned amateur team. He also wants to go pro. That is the whole engine, and Once never pretends otherwise.
Jorge Edelstein created the series for Disney XD. The genres listed are Comedy, Family and Soap, which sounds like a warning label until you watch how the show braids them. The comedy is broad when it wants to be. The family material is sincere. The soap is the load-bearing wall.
Mariano González Carries the Middle
Mariano González plays Gabriel “Gabo” Moretti, and the show lives or dies on whether you follow him. You do. González plays the want plainly — the scholarship, the team, the professional dream — without turning it into a speech. Gabo is not a prodigy who arrives fully formed. He is a kid who got a door opened and has to keep walking through it.
The supporting cast is where the show gets its texture. Juan David Penagos plays Ricardo “Ricky” Flores. Sebastián Athié plays Lorenzo Guevara. Luan Brum plays André “Dedé” Duarte. Paulina Vetrano plays Zoe Velázquez. Javier Eloy Bonanno plays Joaquín Costa. Renato Quattordio plays Apolodoros “Catorce” Nikotatópulos — a name that tells you the show knows exactly what kind of show it is.
Fausto Bengoechea plays Adrián Roca. Lucas Minuzzi plays Pablo Espiga. Nicolás Pauls plays Francisco Velázquez. Guido Pennelli plays Ezequiel Correa. Mariano Zabalza plays Camilo Montero.
That is a deep bench, and Once uses it. The locker room is not a backdrop. It is the second script.
220 Episodes Is the Real Story
Here is the number that matters most, and it is not the score. It is 220.
Three seasons, 220 episodes, a run that started in June 2017 and ended in August 2020. That is a daily-strip commitment, and it changes what a show can do. A series with 220 episodes cannot survive on one arc. It has to build a world that resets, refills and keeps moving. Once does that with the IAD roster and the Velázquez household and whatever scheme Catorce has talked himself into this week.
Created by Jorge Edelstein.
That credit is the spine of the thing. Edelstein built a show that could absorb a hundred small stories without losing the one big one. Gabo wants to play. Gabo wants to go pro. Everything else is weather.
The Soap Is Not a Flaw
The genre tag says Soap, and the show earns it. Once is not embarrassed by a cliffhanger. It is not embarrassed by a rivalry that flares up over a starting spot or a friendship that cracks over something small and then has to be repaired across a week of episodes.
This is where a lot of family television goes wrong. It treats the emotional material as filler between the soccer. Once treats the emotional material as the reason the soccer matters. When Gabo fights for his place at IAD, the fight is not just about minutes on the pitch. It is about whether he belongs in the room.
The comedy keeps that from getting heavy. Catorce, Dedé and Ricky give the show a release valve, and the show knows when to open it. A 220-episode run lives and dies on that rhythm. You cannot sustain stakes at full volume for three years. You can sustain characters.
Los Halcones Dorados and the Buenos Aires Setting
The setting does real work. The Sports Academic Institute of Buenos Aires is not a generic school with a field attached. It is an institution with a reputation, and Los Halcones Dorados is a renowned amateur team inside it. That word — amateur — is the smartest choice in the premise.
Gabo is not chasing a contract. He is chasing a spot on a school team that means something, in a city that takes soccer seriously, at an age when everything feels permanent. The professional dream sits further out, past the scholarship, past the amateur roster, past the whole first chapter of his life. Once understands that the near goal is the one that hurts.
The Buenos Aires backdrop gives the show a specific texture that a lot of youth sports series sand off. This is a place where the sport is not a hobby. It is a language. The show does not have to explain why Gabo cares this much. It just has to show him caring.
Where the Show Stumbles
Three seasons and 220 episodes is a lot of runway, and Once does not use all of it well. The daily-strip format means some arcs get stretched past the point where they hold. A rivalry that should resolve in three episodes gets six. A misunderstanding that a single conversation would fix gets a week.
That is the tax on volume. The show trades tightness for consistency, and most weeks the trade is worth it. Some weeks it is not.
The soap elements also tilt harder as the run goes on. That is not a betrayal of the premise. It is the premise doing what soap does. But a viewer who came for the soccer and stayed for the locker room may find the balance shifting under them.
None of this breaks the show. It just means Once is better in stretches than it is as a single continuous object. The best episodes are the ones where the personal story and the team story are the same story. The weaker ones are where they drift apart.
The Verdict on Once
Once is a show that knows its audience and respects them. It gives Gabo a real want, a real obstacle and a real world to move through. It gives him a cast of teammates and rivals who are not props. It gives him 220 episodes to grow up in, which is more than most series get and more than most series need.
The TMDB audience score sits at 8.6 out of 10 across 1,535 votes. That number tracks with what the show actually is. It is not a prestige drama and it never tries to be. It is a family sports soap that does the job at a volume very few shows can sustain, and it does it with a lead who makes you care about a scholarship like it is the World Cup.
The part worth watching is not the professional dream. It is the amateur team. Los Halcones Dorados is where Once lives, and it is where the show is at its best. The Buenos Aires setting, the IAD roster, the Velázquez household — that is the world. Gabo’s want is the engine. Edelstein’s structure is the chassis.
Three seasons. 220 episodes. One kid who got a scholarship and refused to waste it.
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