The long-awaited adaptation of the Argentine comic from the fifties has arrived. It’s a work that, as we’ll see, is a political symbol with a whole history behind it. Furthermore, the Netflix adaptation is worthwhile. Much like recent literary adaptations for streaming that didn’t disappoint, “The Eternaut” is a superb series that revisits an incredible human story with significant international influence.
Think series about the apocalypse are a recent phenomenon? As we’ll explore, the Argentine comic it’s based on was a truly seminal work that sparked a global phenomenon.
It begins with an impossibility: snow falling on a summer night in Buenos Aires. But it’s not a gentle snowfall. It’s silent, swift, and lethal. Anything it touches – human, animal, plant – dies instantly. Within hours, the vibrant Argentine capital transforms into a snow-covered cemetery, millions dead, the few survivors isolated, terrified, and disconnected from a world that has vanished beneath the toxic white blanket. This chilling scenario marks the beginning of “The Eternaut,” Netflix’s ambitious new science fiction series set to premiere globally on April 30, 2025.
Starring Ricardo Darín as Juan Salvo – an ordinary man forced into an extraordinary struggle – the six-episode first season represents a significant undertaking for the streaming giant. It’s the first screen adaptation of The Eternaut, the 1957 graphic novel by writer Héctor Germán Oesterheld and artist Francisco Solano López, a work deeply embedded in Argentina’s cultural and political consciousness.
The Comic: A Legend in Argentina
Before the big-budget Netflix series, before the global anticipation, there was the comic strip. The Eternaut first appeared in weekly installments in the Argentine magazine Hora Cero Semanal between 1957 and 1959. Written by Héctor Germán Oesterheld with the raw, evocative art of Francisco Solano López, the 350-page narrative gripped readers with its tale of humanity’s desperate fight against a mysterious alien invasion. The story unfolds through the eyes of Juan Salvo, initially just a man playing truco (a popular card game) with friends in his suburban Buenos Aires home when the deadly snow begins. He, his family, and friends become reluctant survivors, forced to improvise protection and venture into the now-hostile city.
Quickly recognized for its quality and depth, The Eternaut transcended the medium to become arguably the most important and influential comic book in Argentine history, its impact resonating throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Its enduring power lies not only in its thrilling plot but also in its rich thematic layers and distinctly Argentine perspective. Despite its specific setting – the recognizable streets and landmarks of Buenos Aires – the story achieved universal appeal through its deeply human characters and timeless themes of survival, solidarity, and resistance.
Oesterheld himself articulated a key theme: the true hero of The Eternaut is not an individual, but the collective. This focus on group survival and collaborative effort was a deliberate choice, positioning the work against the prevailing “rugged individualism” often celebrated in American popular culture of the time. The narrative demonstrates how ordinary people – the pragmatic intellectual Favalli, the cheerful blue-collar worker Franco, the everyman Salvo – must band together, pooling resources and courage, navigating internal suspicions and external threats to survive. This emphasis on the collective was not merely a narrative device; it reflected a specific political and philosophical stance, a counter-cultural statement championing community over lone heroism, originating from a nation often feeling itself on the periphery of global power.
Furthermore, The Eternaut is steeped in political allegory. The invaders remain largely unseen, masters referred to only as the “Ellos” (“Them”). They operate through intermediaries – enslaved alien races like the insectoid “Cascarudos” (“Beetles”) or the tragic “Manos” (“Hands”), beings whose own hands control deadly technology but who act out of fear. This hierarchy was widely interpreted as a metaphor for imperialism – the hidden hand of global powers manipulating client states or factions – and, increasingly over time, as a critique of Argentina’s own cycles of political instability and military dictatorships. Oesterheld’s concept of imperialism was broad, encompassing any subjugation by unequal forces based on exploitation. Later remakes and sequels would make these political dimensions even more explicit.
Its imagery, particularly the improvised protective suits with their multiple visors, became iconic. These suits, born of necessity within the story, transformed into a potent visual metaphor frequently seen in Buenos Aires street art, representing survival, alienation, oppression, and humanity surrounded by death.
From Panel to Screen: Reimagining a Classic
Adapting such a revered and complex work for the screen presents significant challenges. Tasked with this responsibility is director and creator Bruno Stagnaro, a respected figure in Argentine cinema known for gritty, realistic portrayals of Argentine life in films like Pizza, Beer, and Cigarettes and the influential TV series Okupas. Working with co-writer Ariel Staltari, Stagnaro made several key decisions in translating the 1950s comic strip into a 2025 television series.
Contemporary Setting: The most significant change is updating the timeline from the late 1950s to the present day. Stagnaro explained this choice was made to maintain the original’s powerful sense of immediacy for a modern audience. The goal was for the city to be “a living presence” recognizable to today’s viewers, ensuring the catastrophe feels immediate and grounded, just as it did for readers in 1957.
An Older Juan Salvo: Casting Ricardo Darín, 68 (at the time of filming), fundamentally alters the protagonist. The original Salvo was younger, more physically defined by the immediate need for action. Darín’s Salvo is conceived as a “more mature personality,” drawing on experience, memory, and perhaps buried trauma. Stagnaro initially had reservations about casting an older actor for such a physically demanding role but embraced the opportunity to explore “the vulnerability of a man facing impossible choices,” someone who isn’t a typical action hero but must reconnect with “old instincts” and relearn violence as a last resort. This aging of the hero introduces potential new themes of legacy, regret, and the weight of the past informing present action, a departure from the original’s focus on raw, immediate survival instinct.
Episodic Structure: Translating the original’s serialized, often “ephemeral” weekly installments into six hour-long episodes required careful narrative construction. Executive producer Matías Mosteirín noted an episodic format was necessary to “do justice to the depth and scale” of Oesterheld’s creation.
Crucially, the adaptation process involved Martín M. Oesterheld, Héctor’s grandson, as a creative consultant. His involvement aimed to ensure fidelity to the core spirit of his grandfather’s work, particularly the emphasis on the collective hero (“no one saves themselves alone”). The Oesterheld family stipulated two key conditions for the adaptation: it must be filmed in Buenos Aires and spoken in Spanish, preserving its essential Argentine identity.
The stated goal, according to Stagnaro, was to remain “faithful to the spirit of the comic, but with a lens tuned to contemporary audiences.” This involves delving into the original’s social and political resonance while creating a distinct Argentine language for science fiction, rather than simply mimicking global trends. Stagnaro’s own background, marked by a focus on Argentine social realism and often marginalized characters, suggests an approach likely to prioritize the grounded, resourceful, almost “cobbled-together” nature of survival depicted in the comic, preserving its unique cultural texture even amidst a large-scale production.
Creating the Apocalypse: Behind the Scenes of the Netflix Adaptation
Filming spanned from May to December 2023, a 148-day shoot. The production utilized over 35 real locations across Buenos Aires, firmly embedding the action within the city’s recognizable landscape – including areas like the Avenida General Paz ring road, and neighborhoods like Monserrat and Núñez – making the city itself feel like a character, a “living presence” as Stagnaro intended. This extensive location work was supplemented by the use of over 25 virtual production sets.
Advanced technology played a crucial role. The production employed cutting-edge Virtual Production (VP) techniques, utilizing the Unreal Engine game engine and massive LED screens. Vast areas of Buenos Aires were digitally scanned and recreated, allowing the team to project realistic, controllable backgrounds onto the set. This enabled the filming of complex exterior scenes, particularly those depicting the pervasive deadly snow, with greater flexibility and realism, while crucially allowing the production to maintain control over the digital environment locally, ensuring the specific Argentine “identity and realism” weren’t lost to generic, pre-made assets from abroad. This heavy reliance on technology, however, presents a creative tension: balancing the need for global production standards and convincing effects with the desire to capture the raw, resourceful, “cobbled-together” spirit central to both the original comic and Stagnaro’s stated vision.
The art department’s work, led by María Battaglia and Julián Romera, was essential in establishing the series’ eerie, snow-laden aesthetic. They researched high-mountain environments and various artistic depictions of snow to achieve the desired tone, treating the original comic as their guide. Creating the deadly snowfall itself required innovation, developing five different types of artificial snow – using materials from table salt to dry foamed soap – for various practical effects.
The series is produced by K&S Films, a prestigious Argentine company with a track record of internationally acclaimed films like Wild Tales and The Clan, further signaling the project’s high artistic ambitions. Producer Matías Mosteirín emphasized the story’s deep connection to Argentine identity and the national trait of ‘aguante’ (resilience), highlighting themes of loyalty and friendship amidst tragedy and adventure.
The scale and ambition of “The Eternaut” carry significance beyond the screen. Positioned as a flagship project for Argentina and Latin America, its creation takes place against a backdrop of national debate regarding public support for the arts and cultural industries. In this context, the series becomes more than just entertainment; it stands as a testament to the capabilities of local talent and infrastructure, a potential “cultural act of defiance” asserting Argentina’s creative power on a global stage.
History, Politics, and the Ghost of Oesterheld
The Eternaut cannot be fully understood without acknowledging the profound historical and political context surrounding its creation and its creator. While the initial 1957 publication carried allegorical weight, later iterations – a 1969 remake with artist Alberto Breccia and the 1976 sequel, again with Solano López – became far more explicitly political. The alien invasion narrative increasingly served as a direct metaphor for imperialism and, more pointedly, for the brutal military dictatorships that plagued Argentina and Latin America.
Héctor Germán Oesterheld’s life tragically mirrored the escalating political turmoil his work depicted. As Argentina grew more radicalized, so did Oesterheld. By the mid-1970s, he had joined the leftist guerrilla organization Montoneros, becoming its press officer. This forced him underground during the violent military dictatorship that seized power in 1976, the period known as the Dirty War. He continued writing the sequel to The Eternaut in hiding, delivering scripts clandestinely. In 1977, shortly after completing the sequel’s script, Oesterheld became one of los desaparecidos – “the disappeared” – abducted by state forces. He was tortured and killed, his body never recovered. His four daughters, also politically active, met similar fates; three were disappeared and murdered, while the fourth died during a separate violent incident related to the conflict.
This devastating history irrevocably fused The Eternaut with the trauma of the dictatorship. The comic transformed into a potent symbol of resistance against state terror, its narrative of fighting an unseen, oppressive force resonating deeply with the national experience. Juan Salvo, the Eternaut, became an emblem of the memory of los desaparecidos and the ongoing struggle for justice and truth in Argentina.
The Netflix adaptation, helmed by Stagnaro and overseen with input from Oesterheld’s grandson, inevitably grapples with this legacy. While shifting the setting to the present day necessarily alters the specific targets of the original allegory, the core themes remain potent. The series explores collective struggle against a dehumanizing force, the fragility of civilization, mistrust of authority, and the necessity of solidarity – themes that continue to resonate with Argentina’s “national memory and trauma,” from the dictatorship to economic crises. The challenge for the adaptation lies in honoring the specific political critique embedded in Oesterheld’s work – his fierce opposition to imperialism and state violence – while translating these themes into a contemporary context that speaks to global anxieties about societal collapse, hidden power structures, and the nature of resistance in the 21st century. The very act of producing The Eternaut, prominently featuring Oesterheld’s name and story nearly fifty years after his murder, serves as a powerful act of cultural remembrance. It defies the historical erasure attempted by the regime that silenced him, reasserting the enduring importance of his voice and the history his work represents.
Ricardo Darín’s Juan Salvo: An Ordinary Man Facing the Unthinkable
Leading the cast is Ricardo Darín as Juan Salvo. He is joined by prominent Argentine and Uruguayan actors including Carla Peterson, César Troncoso (as Professor Favalli), Andrea Pietra, co-writer Ariel Staltari, Marcelo Subiotto, Claudio Martínez Bel, Orianna Cárdenas, and Mora Fisz.
Darín’s portrayal is central to the adaptation’s interpretation of the source material. He embodies Juan Salvo not as a predestined hero, but as an “ordinary man.” He is depicted as an aging man, perhaps already feeling marginalized or “beaten down by the system,” who is unexpectedly forced to confront the apocalypse and call upon latent survival skills and leadership qualities. His journey involves rediscovering a capacity for action. A primary emotional driver appears to be the desperate search for his family, particularly his daughter Clara, amidst the devastation.
Casting Darín, often dubbed “the Argentine George Clooney” and arguably the country’s most globally recognized screen presence, lends the series immediate international weight and visibility. However, this star power introduces a different dynamic than the original comic, where Salvo was a more anonymous figure, allowing readers to easily project themselves onto him. Darín’s inherent charisma and recognition might subtly shift the perception of Salvo, making him less a pure stand-in for the common man and more a recognizable figure navigating extraordinary circumstances.
Where to Watch “The Eternaut”
