The Eternaut: it’s snow joke (Netflix scifi TV series).
Aliens. Snow. Existential despair. Truco. Welcome, dear reader, to The Eternaut, Netflix’s latest attempt to introduce the world to a terrifying apocalypse that doesn’t take place in New York, London, or some gleaming CGI-infested ‘future city’. No, this time it’s Buenos Aires that gets the frosty treatment—specifically, a toxic snowstorm that would make even the most hardened British rail service whimper and cancel all trains until further notice.
Based on the legendary Argentine sci-fi comic El Eternauta, this six-part series finally brings to screen the long-suffering tale of Juan Salvo and his snow-suited mates as they try not to die in what might best be described as War of the Worlds meets The Day After Tomorrow, but with better card games and slightly more melancholy.
Our hero, played by Ricardo Darín—yes, a 68-year-old actor portraying a man in his thirties because, well, Argentina—finds himself trapped inside his house with his family and poker friends as sparkly deathflakes begin to fall. Cue home insulation, makeshift hazmat suits, and the kind of stiff-upper-lip team spirit that would make even Dad’s Army proud. If Dad’s Army had to fend off an invisible alien menace from the River Plate stadium, that is.
But The Eternaut isn’t just a bleak tale of frozen doom. It’s a layered Argentine allegory, a politically-charged narrative born from the brilliant mind of Héctor Germán Oesterheld—a man so bold he wrote himself into his own comic, and so tragically emblematic of his country’s turbulent history that he disappeared during Argentina’s Dirty War. Think Alan Moore crossed with George Orwell, if Orwell had been more partial to snowdrifts and metaphysical time loops.
Yes, time loops. Because after surviving the apocalyptic snowfall, the giant space beetles, the fascist space overlords known only as “Them” (capital T, ominous silence), and the standard betrayal of foreign powers dropping nukes on Buenos Aires out of sheer diplomatic laziness, Juan Salvo becomes unstuck in time. He ends up telling his tale to Oesterheld himself, creating a self-aware loop of narrative déjà vu that’d make Doctor Who look linear.
The comic, first published in 1957, was an immediate hit in Argentina, largely because it was one of the first times locals could watch their own city flattened by aliens rather than someone else’s. Since then, the series has been rebooted, continued, politically hijacked, declared a national treasure, and even reimagined with Argentine president Néstor Kirchner’s face Photoshopped into the snow-suit as the so-called “Nestornaut”. You think The Boys gets satirical? Hold my yerba mate.
Adapting The Eternaut has historically been about as cursed as a pyramid expedition in a mummy movie. Animated pilots were made and scrapped. Film scripts were written, torn up, re-written, and then politely forgotten. One proposed version even had the gall to suggest casting Americans and filming in English—sacrilege! After all, what’s the point of an alien invasion if you can’t hear people shout “¡Che boludo!” as they’re vaporised?
Director Bruno Stagnaro has finally cracked the code (and, one suspects, a few sanity points) to bring this chilly dystopia to life. He’s promised a faithful, grimy, patched-together portrayal of Argentine resilience in the face of otherworldly horror. Thirty-five locations. Virtual stages. Norweigan snow references. 1950s comics treated as sacred scripture. It’s not so much a TV production as a post-colonial pilgrimage with green screens.
Here at SFcrowsnest magazine, we love this kind of sci-fi: richly local, emotionally devastating, full of giant insects, and allergic to American sentimentality. It’s been described as “a collective hero’s journey”, which is a fancy way of saying “no chosen one nonsense, just some average folk trying not to be incinerated by alien-controlled light guns.”
Whether you’re a long-time fan of the comic or a fresh victim of Netflix’s auto-play algorithm, The Eternaut promises to be an icy blast of something genuinely different: a genre tale with soul, snow, and a surprising amount of political trauma. Just remember to bring a thermos and maybe a tinfoil hat.
Coming April 30th. Just in time for the spring thaw.
