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PORTSIDE CULTURE

NETFLIX’S ‘THE ETERNAUT’ MAKES A HAUNTING SERIES OF AN ESTEEMED
ARGENTINE COMIC  
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Bob Mondello
June 9, 2025
NPR
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_ 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. _

Ricardo Darín as Juan. , 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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."

* eternaut
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* NETFLIX
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