Home World Netflix's 'The Eternaut' makes a haunting series of an esteemed Argentine comic

Netflix’s ‘The Eternaut’ makes a haunting series of an esteemed Argentine comic

Ricardo Darín as Juan.

Ricardo Darín as Juan. Mariano Landet/Netflix hide caption

toggle caption

Mariano Landet/Netflix

The Eternaut begins on Netflix with a shot of a borrowed sailboat on a beautiful summer’s night. The lights of Buenos Aires twinkle in the background as three high school girls who’ve been drinking more than they should toast to “all the beautiful things that await.”

As they hug, they don’t notice the lights of the city blacking out behind them. They’re looking the other way, at a strange green glow in the heavens — the first indication that their story is based on a sci-fi graphic novel of uncommon staying power.

Their boat begins to rock, and one of the girls pops below deck to discover their GPS isn’t working. Neither is her cellphone. Then she hears a thump, and looks out a window in horror as first one, then the other of her friends collapse. Her eyes and the camera fix on a single flake of snow.

Sponsor Message

In the city, when the electricity goes out, some old friends who’ve gathered to play cards chalk it up to yet another power outage. But as they joke about that, they hear loud bangs outside. They go to the window and also see what looks like snow.

“In summer?” one wonders. Then cars crash and people drop in the street, and they realize something outside is toxic.

One of the card-players, Juan, tries to call his daughter, but nothing electronic is working. So the others scramble to help him turn what they can find around the cluttered house – an old gas mask, waterproofed clothing, gloves – into some sort of protection. Protection against what, they’re not sure.

And Juan heads out — looking like a cross between an astronaut and a deep sea diver — into a Buenos Aires at once familiar and ghostly. He walks past corpses seemingly felled in mid-gesture — two policemen who’d been chatting through a car window, a power line repairman suspended high in the air, leaning back in his harness, lifeless atop a telephone pole. And everywhere he goes, there’s a light dusting of apparently toxic snow.

Andrea Pietra as Ana, Carla Peterson as Elena, Marcelo Subiotto as Lucas.

Andrea Pietra as Ana, Carla Peterson as Elena, Marcelo Subiotto as Lucas. Marcos Ludevid/Netflix hide caption

toggle caption

Marcos Ludevid/Netflix

Chilling for any viewer — I’ll stop here, just a few minutes into the first episode so you can discover the rest for yourself — these scenes have a special resonance in Argentina, where the story originated as a comic book serial almost 70 years ago.

Sponsor Message

Like audiences everywhere, Argentine movie patrons are mostly accustomed to disaster films set in cities north of the equator. But El Eternauta is homegrown, politically freighted, and has acquired near mythic status since it was first published in 1957.

Partly that’s because it’s a terrific sci-fi mystery – set in familiar locales, with muscular illustrations by Francisco Solano López. And partly, it’s because writer Héctor Germán Oesterheld, a committed leftist whose work grew more overtly political as his career went on, rebooted the story a dozen years later, amplifying what had always driven the story — the need for collective action to overcome societal horrors.

That in 1977, during a brutal military dictatorship, Oesterheld and his four daughters were all “disappeared” added immeasurably to the graphic novel’s resonance. Today it’s regarded as an Argentine pop culture classic.

Oesterheld’s widow was adamant that the story be filmed in Spanish and shot in Buenos Aires. After decades of copyright disputes and false starts by an array of Argentine and Spanish filmmakers, director Bruno Stagnaro was finally able to begin filming in 2023, after pandemic shutdowns turned much of Buenos Aires into a real-life ghost-town during COVID-19. Masked figures roaming deserted streets became haunting in a freshly traumatic way.

The series, with its protagonist played soulfully by Ricardo Darín, Argentina’s most famous actor, brings the action from the 1950s to an age of cellphones, and fills in characters in ways the original didn’t. But it’s a largely faithful adaptation, and with Argentine society currently roiled by political and social frustration, it has been well received.

Subway tiles in Buenos Aires' Uruguay station depict scenes from El Eternauta

Subway tiles in Buenos Aires’ Uruguay station depict scenes from the comic version of El Eternauta. Tile illustration by Alberto Breccia. Carlos Schröder hide caption

toggle caption

Carlos Schröder

That was not a given, considering the esteem in which the graphic novel is held. An esteem that led decades ago to the installation of a huge tile mural in the Uruguay subway station in Buenos Aires — a platform-wide El Eternauta illustration to remind commuters that a climactic battle in a story they’ve long taken to heart was fought right where they’re standing.

Sponsor Message

That’s a battle not in the six Eternaut episodes currently available on Netflix (in Spanish, or dubbed in English). But a title card at the end of the final, cliff-hanging episode notes, “It’s official: a second season is coming.”

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Must Read

Russia’s Largest Bombardment of Ukraine

A multi-story residential building damaged after a Russian drone attack in Odesa on June 28, 2025, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. OLEKSANDR GIMANOV/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption OLEKSANDR GIMANOV/AFP via Getty Images Russia attacked Ukraine with over 500 drones and missiles over the weekend, it was the largest air assault since

After Glastonbury, Bob Vylan faces U.K. criminal investigation and U.S. visa revocation

Bobby Vylan of Bob Vylan crowdsurfs in front of the West Holts stage during day four of Glastonbury festival 2025 on June 28 in Glastonbury, England. Leon Neal/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Leon Neal/Getty Images LONDON — The BBC and the annual Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts have come under criticism from the

In effort to protect children, France bans smoking at parks and beaches

A woman smokes a cigarette at Kerlouan in Brittany in France on May 30. The country is banning smoking in many public places. Vincent Feuray/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Vincent Feuray/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images PARIS — A restrictive outdoor smoking ban has come into force in France, a country where

80 years later, a Holocaust survivor meets an American soldier who helped free him

Andrew Roth (left) stands up from his wheelchair to give Jack Moran a hug at the Shoah Foundation at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Roth was imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp, which Moran helped liberate while serving in the U.S. Army. Grace Widyatmadja/for NPR hide caption toggle caption Grace Widyatmadja/for NPR

Canadian prime minister says U.S. trade talks resume after Canada rescinded tech tax

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney holds a closing press conference following the NATO Summit in The Hague, Netherlands on Wednesday, June 25. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP hide caption toggle caption Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP TORONTO — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said late Sunday trade talks with U.S. have resumed after