Television
Based on a late 1950s comic strip, Netflix’s new series The Eternaut is a stunning science fiction parable about resisting fascism. By Sarah Krasnostein.
Netflix’s The Eternaut is a stunning anti-fascist parable
Twenty years before journalist and genre-bending author Héctor Germán Oesterheld was abducted in 1977 and almost certainly murdered – along with his four daughters and four sons-in-law – by the Argentine military dictatorship, he published the first instalment of his science fiction comic strip, El Eternauta (The Eternaut).
During the Cold War years between 1957 and 1959, the story that unfolded in the pages of Hora Cero Semanal magazine was, in the recent words of Argentinian writer Valeria Massimino, a warning, a wound and a promise. Now it is a six-part, live action Netflix series – “a symbol”, Massimino continued, “of struggle, of living memory, and of a resistance that persists”.
Set in present-day Buenos Aires, The Eternaut starts with the fixities: the night sky, a small boat floating on the lapping tide and three young people toasting under the stars to the bright future. Then comes the end of the world as they know it.
Despite the hot summer night, a strange snow starts falling, instantly killing everyone it touches. In an inner-city suburb, a group of old friends are playing the trick-taking card game, Truco, in the cosy home of Alfredo “Tano” Favalli (César Troncoso) and his wife, Ana (Andrea Pietra), when the lights go out. There’s no reason to think it’s anything but the blackouts that Porteños have been protesting against around their city (“Power Now”) until the friends look out the window and see their neighbours lying dead in the streets.
The phones don’t work, there’s no Wi-Fi, no electricity. But, as Tano methodically discovers, “the old things work”. By lantern light and warmed by fire, the friends slowly begin to confront the scale of what’s happening outside.
Under no illusions that it’s safe but still undeterred, Falklands War veteran Juan Salvo (Ricardo Darín) is intent on setting out to protect his ex-wife, Elena (Carla Peterson), a doctor, and their teenage daughter, Clara (Mora Fisz). Despite his misgivings about that mission, Tano gives Juan a collectible army surplus gas mask and the friends fashion a makeshift protective suit. Then Juan leaves to cross the silent city on foot.
As Juan trudges through the frosted world, iced like a cake, everywhere is evidence of the gifts we took for granted and everyday horrors we normalised before life was abruptly abbreviated by the apocalypse. Increasingly tormented by what seem to be PTSD flashbacks, Juan has a soldier’s experience and skill set but no superhuman powers or aspirations. He finds himself inhabiting the hero’s role through a sustained sequence of resistances, large and small, each of which place the welfare of others above his own.
Propulsive and eerie, the six taut episodes reveal just how well most of the old things work. Not just phone books, high-frequency radios, record players, bells, old cars, pen and paper but our basest drives for power and control. “Now comes the part where we kill each other for resources – like in those shitty shows you like,” one of the friends jokes grimly.
No place – and no one – is to be relied on. “Right now, we’re all strangers to each other,” Tano says. The shocking betrayal of this estrangement – from each other and, increasingly, from themselves – at the precise moment when altruistic solidarity would save lives plays out in pockets across the city where survivors are huddled. Viewers are given just enough time to be horrified, yet again, at the self-defeating monstrosities of human greed, pettiness and brutality before the aliens arrive.
Creator-director Bruno Stagnaro maintains a broad fidelity to Oesterheld’s work while taking interesting liberties with the story to bring its present-day resonances to life. The comic book was the show bible, but while art directors María Battaglia and Julián Romera and director of photography, Gastón Girod, constantly reference Francisco Solano López’s original graphics, the series’ visual sensibility is its own.
Putting to one side the enormous bugs that make an appearance, high realism in the urban setting is balanced with painterly control over light and shade. The effect is that the devastated cityscapes are at once alarmingly legible and draped with a bewildered beauty. Reminding us of that bright future which never arrived, the darkness described as “gritty” hovers at the edges of each scene as the story toggles between past and present. That dim aesthetic also gestures towards enlightenment refused – lessons unlearnt from science and history.
Despite its blockbuster science-fiction chops, the series is driven more by character than by its high-velocity action sequences. This is one of the reasons its handling of gender is jarring. While the script subtly spools out dramatic detail in most other areas, female characters are written largely without complexity, relegated for the most part to secondary “caretaking” or “conscience” roles. There are barely any scenes in which women drive the action – or speak with each other – in meaningful ways. Given the liberties taken to update the original comic, those scripting choices remain perplexing. The result wounds the work, rendering the story less than it might have been.
Muted, muffled or defiantly singing, sound is used to notable effect. With characters masked for much of the early action, the chance of deadly miscommunication is always possible. In addition to a powerful original score by composer Federico Jusid, the episodes are buoyed by a mixtape of Argentinian greats from Carlos Gardel to Manal. This, along with the many other loving signposts of Buenos Aires, gives the series a placedness key to both its local significance and its broader relevance.
“The comic was set in 1957, but for me, it was important to make the series contemporary because that was [true to] the original spirit,” Stagnaro recently told the Buenos Aires Times. “El Eternauta was never a period piece – it was current when it came out. Treating it as something frozen in time would have betrayed its essence.”
Stagnaro’s adaptation is an Argentinian allegory. It mourns and commemorates, both overtly and obliquely, the 30,000 civilians killed or “disappeared”, like Oesterheld, in the “Dirty War” waged from 1976 to 1983 by the junta against suspected left-wing political opponents. It is also a broader critique of the fascist will to power from which today’s global politics is not exempt and how it is always aided by the tendency towards unthinking – or self-interested – human obedience.
It’s possible to watch The Eternaut as a compelling show about the annihilating consequences of an alien invasion. However, like the best science fiction, the story it tells is more squarely about us than “them”. As Oesterheld’s grandson, Martín Mórtola Oesterheld, told The Guardian, “My grandfather’s stories had as their central axis human bonds, human relationships.” With its cameras panning gradually outwards from friendships and families, churches and schools, to neighbourhoods, cities and nations, this show is always gesturing towards the fundamental fact of human relatedness and how we continue to disavow it at our collective peril. That is the essence of its message that “no one survives alone”.
Against his better judgement, Juan Salvo ends up at a refuge set up at the city’s Campo de Mayo military base. This is where Osterheld was detained before his probable murder. It’s unlikely the author would’ve been surprised that his work continues to have relevance 50 years after his death. It is this tricky sense of déjà vu – or more specifically, the ungrounding familiarity of the uncanny – that gives the show its psychological ballast, bringing the original story into our present moment where violent repetitions abound.
Ending on the creepiest cliffhanger, the show has already been renewed for a second season. Stagnaro has said that it will likely be the final one. It’s not possible to anticipate how the story’s ambiguities will be resolved or what direction it will take because The Eternaut has done so well with its handling of deception, of things not being what they seem.
That description also applies to the post-apocalyptic genre, with great hopefulness hidden in its darkly dystopian, scorched earth, clean slate settings. Each time the dramatic technique of defamiliarisation is fully realised in art, its creative value becomes a human value: its effect forces us to consider which fixities we’d be better off without and which ones are worth saving. “That’s all science fiction was ever about,” as Ray Bradbury put it, a few decades ago. “Hating the way things are, wanting to make things different.”
The Eternaut is streaming on Netflix.
ARTS DIARY
CULTURE Kulata Tjuta: Tirkilpa
National Gallery of Australia, Ngambri/Canberra, until March 29
LITERATURE Rose Scott Women Writers Festival
The Women's Club, Gadigal Country/Sydney, June 27-28
VISUAL ART Mau Mabaigal (Men of the Sea)
NorthSite Contemporary Arts, Gimuy/Cairns, until July 26
MULTIMEDIA The Weather at Midnight: Expanded Painting in Collaboration
Moonah Arts Centre, nipaluna/Hobart, until June 28
EXHIBITION It's Always Been Always
Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre, Whadjuk Noongar Country/Fremantle, until August 3
LAST CHANCE
MUSICAL The Lord of the Rings: A Musical Tale
Comedy Theatre, Naarm/Melbourne, until June 22
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on June 18, 2025 as "No one survives alone".
For almost a decade, The Saturday Paper has published Australia’s leading writers and thinkers. We have pursued stories that are ignored elsewhere, covering them with sensitivity and depth. We have done this on refugee policy, on government integrity, on robo-debt, on aged care, on climate change, on the pandemic.
All our journalism is fiercely independent. It relies on the support of readers. By subscribing to The Saturday Paper, you are ensuring that we can continue to produce essential, issue-defining coverage, to dig out stories that take time, to doggedly hold to account politicians and the political class.
There are very few titles that have the freedom and the space to produce journalism like this. In a country with a concentration of media ownership unlike anything else in the world, it is vitally important. Your subscription helps make it possible.
Subscriber exclusive
Send this article to a friend for free.
Share this subscriber exclusive article with a friend or family member using share credits.
