The Eternaut: 10 things you need to know before the Netflix premiere

Published between 1957 and 1959 in Hora Cero Semanal magazine, El Eternauta was created by writer Héctor Germán Oesterheld and artist Francisco Solano López. The work developed over 106 weekly installments, featuring memorable illustrations and a script that blends science fiction, social criticism, and a poetic sensitivity uncommon in the genre. Decades later, it remains as relevant as it is necessary.

Fact: El Eternauta is the most influential comic in Spanish-language comics.

The plot revolves around Juan Salvo, an ordinary man who, along with his family and friends, tries to survive an alien invasion in Buenos Aires after a toxic snowfall blankets the city. The story begins not in Manhattan, but in Vicente López: a tale that starts in a suburban house. Friends gathered, playing truco, and suddenly, the end of the world. Together, they improvise suits, helmets, and homemade gloves to go outside and face the new reality.

El Eternauta achieves what few stories do: it makes the impossible feel possible. That the apocalypse begins on your front sidewalk. "We didn’t know that night, while playing truco, the end of the world was beginning."

Fact: the deadly snow covers Buenos Aires for almost the entire story. It symbolizes the advance of an unstoppable threat.

It’s a term created by Oesterheld: a combination of "eternal" and "naut" (navigator). Juan Salvo becomes that timeless traveler, trapped in a time loop, condemned to jump from era to era while searching for his family. He has no superpowers. He survives with wit, love, and memory. He is a symbol of the survivor who resists, of the ordinary man who becomes a legend, and of one who, even unwillingly, becomes a witness, and sometimes hero, to what no one wants to see. "I am an Eternaut, a man with no time, traveling through all times."

Fact: Like his character, Oesterheld also became a wandering figure. Disappeared during the Military Dictatorship, the whereabouts of his body are still unknown.

Buenos Aires City is not just a backdrop: it is the protagonist. It's there, recognizable and chilling: General Paz, Plaza Italia, the Congress, the subway, the River stadium. All covered in deadly snow. An empty, silent city.

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A single snowflake on the skin, and you die. Buenos Aires becomes a battlefield and a refuge. Solano López's strokes have the precision of an urban archive: each panel is a dystopia that feels familiar, like a cracked mirror of something we know. “There are snows we didn’t see because we didn’t want to see them.”

Fact: El Eternauta was published in 1957, and in one of its panels, the River Plate stadium appears closed, before the construction of the stand that would complete the horseshoe.

El Eternauta unfolds in real-time. The reader faces the horror alongside the characters, without warnings or prior explanations. First, the snow. Then, the “cascarudos,” the “robot-men,” and the “gurbos.” Fear builds with each page, and the narrative structure becomes crucial to conveying everything that happens. The panels immerse us in a story where uncertainty about the future mixes with desperation, beauty, and perhaps, a spark of hope.

Fact: Francisco Solano López started drawing professionally five years before the publication of El Eternauta. He used a black-and-white drawing technique characterized by a saturated surface and the use of India ink.

Although there are monsters, spaceships, and deadly snow, El Eternauta never stops being an allegory. The invasion represents power, subjugation, and forms of colonization. The walls speak: in one of the panels, you can read "Vote Frondizi," a nod to the political context of the time. Nothing is casual. The enemy may come from another planet, but it looks too much like the ones we already know. "Everything that seemed impossible happened."

Fact: In El Eternauta II, written by Oesterheld in the 70s, the tone becomes more direct: there are no more metaphors. It’s a direct denunciation.

Also underground. In the subway tunnels, between hidden passages and stairs that descend. Oesterheld turns the Buenos Aires underground into a trench: that’s where the resistance hides, and humanity takes refuge. The epic isn’t in glory but in survival. And in that underground silence, at least for a moment, they are safe.

Fact: In El Eternauta, Juan Salvo and his group descend into the subway to seek shelter. The D Line, at the height of Congreso de Tucumán, is where they organize to resist.

The universe of El Eternauta is populated by enemies that not only generate terror but also represent forms of control, subjugation, and destruction. The cascarudos, giant beasts with thick shells, advance with unstoppable strength, difficult to destroy. The robot-men are humans mentally enslaved, neighbors turned into automatons who obey without question. The gurbos, other blind beasts that act only by instinct, are living weapons without consciousness. And then there are Ellos, the invisible masters, who operate from the shadows. As Oesterheld made clear: "The real threat doesn’t always have a face." "They were like zombies... like dolls without will."

Fact: The cascarudos, one of El Eternauta’s most iconic enemies, were designed by Francisco Solano López with a clear reference to the horror movie monsters of the time.

For years, adapting such a story to television was considered an impossible mission. There were failed attempts, stalled projects, and international proposals that didn’t advance. But Netflix took on the challenge and moved forward with this adaptation of the original story, starring Ricardo Darín.

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The much-anticipated adaptation was created, directed, and written by Bruno Stagnaro, with a script co-written with Ariel Staltari and key participation from Martín Oesterheld as a creative consultant. Martín, the grandson of Héctor Germán Oesterheld, accompanied the entire process with a sensitive perspective and a direct link to the family legacy. “My grandfather wrote the scripts and created a whole phenomenon from Editorial Frontera, which he founded with his brother Jorge, in that house where the story begins,” he recalls.

Fact: The series was filmed in Buenos Aires between May and December 2023, with a total of 35 real locations and 25 sets created through Virtual Production technology, which allowed for the precise recreation of the apocalyptic atmosphere of the story. One of the director and writer’s first decisions was to move the plot to the present day.

Over time, El Eternauta transcended the pages and became a symbol. The story of Juan Salvo, that ordinary man who resists from the everyday, intertwines with the real story of the one who wrote it. In every panel, in every narrative decision, there’s more than what meets the eye. There are layers. There’s a reading that goes beyond the comic.

Fact: El Eternauta was banned, persecuted, silenced. But it survived. Today, it is studied in universities, painted on murals, printed over and over again. Salvo’s story is Oesterheld’s story. And they can no longer be separated. Because as long as there is injustice, there will be an Eternaut traveling through time to warn us. The question is: will we listen?