dierregi

I was a child when I first read El Eternauta, serialized in an Italian magazine. I couldn't have followed every twist of the story, but one image etched itself permanently into my brain: a man in a sub mask, trudging through a landscape of deadly snow. It was surreal, terrifying, and oddly majestic. That mask didn't just protect him from toxic snowfall - it turned him into something more than an ordinary man. It was a symbol of survival, resistance, and sheer stubborn human grit.

Cut to 2025, and Netflix brings us a glossy adaptation of The Eternaut with high production values but not much emotional impact, urgency or narrative clarity

Episode 1 sets the tone: our hero Juan Salvo takes refuge with friends in a house that's curiously free of both supplies and strategy. This trend continues for multiple episodes. By episode 3, civilization is collapsing, but no one has boiled so much as a potato.

The characters, meanwhile, move with the dazed logic of people who've wandered into someone else's hallucination. Juan Salvo is brooding and passive. His ex-wife Elena enters the scene and quickly becomes insufferable.

What the show gets right - sometimes beautifully right - are the visuals. The image of corpses frozen mid-movement, caught sunbathing or mid-toast, is haunting. The contrast between the carefree scenes of summer and the white blanket of death is effectively eerie. The snow looks simultaneously delicate and menacing. It's almost a character in itself.

But striking visuals alone don't carry a story, especially one that was originally driven by fear, resistance, and political subtext. Oesterheld's comic strip was about ordinary people facing extraordinary terror. It was about dictatorship, solidarity, and losing one's humanity - or clinging to it - under impossible conditions. In the Netflix version, these themes are mostly reduced to people looking anguished in dim lighting.

And yes, the diving mask finally makes its appearance, but it lands more like a designer accessory than a desperate innovation. In the strip, it marked a transformation. Here, it's just another prop in the slow-motion apocalypse fashion show.

Watching this series as an adult who once feared and revered that masked figure in the snow feels like seeing a childhood monster again, only to realize it's been tamed and fitted for streaming. It's not bad, it's just hollow.

I'll probably keep watching, if only out of loyalty to that image lodged in my brain all those years ago. But I miss the mask that meant something - and the man inside it who knew how to act when the snow started falling.

Juan Salvo finally leaves the safe house and takes a stroll through what's left of Buenos Aires, where toxic snow swirls artfully and death comes with a soft crunch underfoot. He finds a few survivors but can't do anything for them - except look very haunted - before ending up in his ex-wife Elena's building, where humanity is already starting to crumble.

Tensions are high, barbarism is budding, and after a dramatic standoff, Juan manages to escape with Elena in tow.

Back at Tano's, people are also starting to snap, because cabin fever sets in faster than hypothermia.

Visually, it's the strongest episode yet. The contrast between the summery leisure of the victims - caught mid-barbeque, or mid-dip in the pool - and the creeping horror of the snow gives the devastation an eerie beauty. The dead, in their bathing suits and sandals, look absurdly unprepared. Much like the living.

The series kicks off on a balmy Buenos Aires night, with three girls on a boat (to attract younger audience?) who will never be seen again. Weird choice.

Anyway, in town, everyone is out barbecuing, sipping drinks, and enjoying life - until the sky starts sneezing radioactive dandruff. No one takes it seriously at first, and everyone's too busy lounging to notice that people are starting to drop like flies.

Juan Salvo, our reluctant protagonist, takes refuge with his friends at Tano's house, where the concept of "emergency preparedness" seems to mean drawing the curtains. The snow is killing everything it touches, but no one appears to own a radio, a plan, or a single clue. Still, there's a nice sense of growing dread, even if most of the characters are still catching up to the plot.

Visually moody and ominous, with some great atmospheric touches, but it's mostly an hour of people slowly realizing they might be in trouble. Baby step.