The Eternaut, based on the comics of Hector German Oesterheld, was originally conceptualized in an era when Argentina was going through political conflict of its own. Oesterheld wanted to express his pro-Peronist (left-wing movement) ideologies, but he didn’t have the freedom to do so. So the man, like many other artists, camouflaged his political views and started writing about a post-apocalyptic world, where a resistance force was desperately trying to fight against an alien invasion. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that it was a cry for help from an artist who wanted to safeguard his nation’s interests, who knew how fascism could rot the entire system and how it was essential to raise one’s voice against it. In a day and age when it was a criminal offense to even use symbols of resistance, I believe that somebody like Oesterheld was a true personification of courage. I would like to say here that for the first four episodes I wasn’t able to draw a parallel between the events of the series and the major political events that determined the struggle of the nation for stability. It is only in the last two episodes that you start connecting the dots and understand the hidden meaning, the symbolisms, and the parallels drawn by the narrative. The strangest and probably the scariest part is that the narrative holds relevance in contemporary times too, and it tells us why, at that time, those comics and the characters in them became icons of the pop culture scene. So without further ado, let’s recap the major events of the Netflix series and find out what was happening in Buenos Aires.
Spoiler Alert
What Did Juan And Tano Find Out About The Catastrophe?
At the beginning of the series, a mysterious astronomical event set the tone for what was to follow. A group of three girls hanging out on a boat saw a mysterious light in the sky. It seemed like the Northern Lights, but it wasn’t so. Suddenly there was a power cut in the entire city, and what was even stranger was that all the circuits somehow got fused. Ruso, Tano, Lucas, and Juan, who had been friends for almost 4 decades, met on an eerie Friday night to drink, play cards, and enjoy some downtime. That night, Russo also brought his brother-in-law to the party, something that the other three did not appreciate. It was their tradition, and they didn’t like an intruder sitting among them and watching them play. Suddenly, it started to snow, something that generally did not happen in that region. The moment the snowflakes fell on the people, they collapsed and died immediately. The friends were confused and not able to understand if what they were seeing was real or not. Unfortunately, Ruso got paranoid, and he went outside the house, and the other three just watched their friend commit the biggest blunder of his life. Tano, who happened to be an electrical engineer, came up with all sorts of theories about what could have happened exactly. Tano felt that the snowflakes were basically radioactive particles that were a part of the Van Allen belt that surrounded the Earth like a ring. Because his compass stopped working, Tano came to the conclusion that probably the poles had stopped functioning. But then all this was mere speculation, as the reality was far away from it. The subsequent night, the windows of many houses started to shatter all of a sudden, which made Tano and Lucas feel like there were groups out there vandalizing the houses. Juan noticed that once the snowflakes hit the surface, they changed color and ceased to be poisonous or harmful any longer. So the flakes on the clothes of a person didn’t kill anybody, but the ones falling from the sky and making contact with people did. Juan decided that he would wear protective waterproof gear and go out to search for his daughter, Clara. He believed that if he was able to find his ex-partner, Elena, he would be able to locate Clara too. But Juan was wrong, as Elena too didn’t have any clue where Clara was.
How Did Juan Find Out About The Bugs?
Juan walked to Elena’s place, and he was shocked to see the kind of damage the catastrophe had caused. There were dead bodies lying on the road. Buildings had been destroyed, there were people stuck on a train waiting for somebody to arrive and rescue them, and amidst all this, there were people who just wanted to take advantage of the situation and look out for their selfish interests. Juan was able to find Elena, but he had a hard time escaping from her building since the residents wanted to take his mask and protective gear. Juan would have died had Elena not met Tano and others just in time, who were roaming in that area to find supplies. Juan made it very clear that he wasn’t going to stop. Tano didn’t want to risk his life, but then he couldn’t leave his friend to fend for himself either. On their quest to find Clara, Tano and Juan saw something that changed whatever theories they had about the catastrophe. Firstly, they met people from the army who were stationed at Campo de Mayo. That meeting made it very clear that the army officers were not revealing the entire truth. But as Juan and Tano ventured further, they witnessed huge bugs, the size of a minivan, roaming all around the city and killing people. They looked like genetically modified creatures, and Juan and Tano were obviously terrified at the sight of them. There were Boy Scouts and survivors hiding in a church who spotted Tano and Juan and saved their lives. Ruso’s son-in-law, Omar, was also hiding there after he left Tano’s house as he got paranoid. It took Tano and Juan a bit of time, but they managed to get back to their house and inform others about what they saw. They had very limited knowledge about the bugs, but it felt like there was a hive mind that was controlling their movements. The source of their origin was the light that was seen in the sky. It was the general perception that there had been an alien invasion, and those bugs had come from a UFO that had landed on Earth.
Were The Bugs And Humans Collaborating?
Clara miraculously came back to Tano’s house on her own, and Juan couldn’t wrap his head around how that could have happened. He had seen what was happening outside and how it was such a difficult task to stay alive. Juan might not have said it explicitly, but he knew that Clara was lying about something, though he had no clue what could have been the reason behind it. When Clara had arrived at Tano’s place, she was wearing his mask that he had left on his boat. When asked about it, Clara denied being on his boat. But we saw in the beginning sequence of The Eternaut that she was there together with her two friends. It was evident that the alien invasion had done something to her. Maybe she was quite close to the power source (emitting the aurora-like light in the night sky), and it had impacted her mind. Clara was acting strange. She got these really bad headaches, and at times, she zoned out, not being able to perceive or grasp anything. Tano, his wife, Lucas, Elena, and Juan together made the decision to go to Tano’s cottage, located on an island nearby. But they weren’t able to make it there, as the water had receded from the shorelines, exposing the seabed. Tano knew that something like that happened only when there was a tsunami approaching. But it meant that they couldn’t take their boat into the water, and so they started searching for another place to hide. Luckily, Tano and Lucas found a huge shopping mall, where hundreds of people took refuge. That mall had become the base from which the resistance forces operated. There was enough food and other supplies for people to sustain themselves for weeks. One couldn’t help but compare it to the resistance movements that have happened not only in Argentina but throughout the world at different time periods. It felt like all the political dissidents had joined forces together, and they were trying to fight the autocratic forces.
Now, things were going fine until one night Lucas went missing, and the next day, three random people arrived at the mall and started shooting at the innocent people. Juan and Tano couldn’t understand why they were doing that, and how did they get to know about their location? A few moments later, Lucas arrived at the mall with the resistance force from Campo de Mayo. One thing that became very clear in that moment was that Lucas was lying about his whereabouts from the previous night, and just like Clara, he also wasn’t able to remember the details of the night. It wasn’t a mere coincidence that the snowfall, which was likely triggered by the aliens, stopped falling from the sky the moment the aliens took captives. In short, the snowfall stopped because the aliens didn’t want their new mind-controlled slaves to perish in the toxic environment. They wanted them to spy on the resistance and bring them to the trap that they had laid for them, so that they could take them captive as well.
In the latter half of The Eternaut season 1, we saw that there were a bunch of people who worked closely with the bugs and who walked past them without getting attacked. It was a mystery how they were communicating with them and why they were against humanity. What it meant was that the bugs and the humans were collaborating. The humans, after being brainwashed just like Lucas and Clara, had started following the orders of whatever was controlling those bugs. These people became like remote-controlled robots, who caused destruction and spread chaos, as they were no longer able to think rationally.
Who Was Controlling The Humans?
In The Eternaut’s ending, Juan and others moved to Campo de Mayo, where the resistance forces had established their headquarters. All sorts of efforts were made to bring back peace and normalcy, but it wasn’t such an easy task to accomplish that. The military had no clue for the longest period of time that there was a huge number of people who had collaborated with the enemy. Juan and Tano did whatever they could to help the resistance forces, but in the end, they realized that the war wouldn’t be ending anytime soon. At the end, Lucas turned against his own people, and Juan and Tano realized that he and others like him were not acting on their own free will. There was something that was controlling their minds and turning them into killing machines. Maybe the real enemy, whoever was behind the attack, had planted a controlling device in their heads. Juan realized that in order to save his family and other innocent people, he needed to find out who he was up against. He knew the risks involved, but he was ready to put his life in jeopardy. Juan and Tano parted ways in the 6th episode as the former went to the stadium, which had been turned into the enemy’s base. A soldier named Franco accompanied Juan, and what they witnessed next just blew their minds. There was a huge force of men and bugs combined that was working for the real enemy. The real enemy had a huge Hand that seemed like it was suffering from a congenital hand abnormality and it looked like an Arthropod’s limbs. The Hand was inside a blue translucent dome, and it could control everybody from there. The plan was obviously world domination and converting all the humans into robots that served their master. Juan realized that it wouldn’t be an easy task to save the world and his family.
Could Juan See The Future?
One can really imagine why Oesterheld’s comic characters became such pop culture figures and how Juan became the personification of Peronism and patriotism. If you observe closely, the writer couldn’t have been more blunt in his approach. I mean, a regime that controls the human mind, that is able to brainwash them and spread its propaganda, seems all too familiar. A journalist who just scribbles through his notebook as he does not want to miss out on any detail; a man who turns against his own men, not understanding how that radical shift happened inside him; a conspiracy theorist who got fascinated by the idea of surviving in a post-apocalyptic world as it was no less than a fantasy; young minds being brainwashed into believing a false narrative—there were certain not-so-subtle analogies that Oesterheld made that gave us a fair idea about what he was actually trying to say.
So coming back to the series, we saw that Juan had these visions, and for the longest time he didn’t know what they meant. He always felt that after the Falklands War, of which he was a part, he had developed PTSD, because of which he got such nightmares. But that wasn’t entirely true. Maybe the Falklands War, the defeat of the Argentinian forces at the hands of the British, and seeing his own friends die in front of his own eyes had triggered something inside him, but the things he was seeing were not merely visions. He was actually seeing the future, and he realized that the moment he stepped foot in that building, which overlooked the stadium where the Hand was gathering his army. Juan had seen that building; he had seen Franco with him. Maybe those headaches, those phases where he just zoned out, all meant something. The series left us on a cliffhanger where Clara was seen practicing her marksmanship in the resistance army camp, when something snapped inside her, and she looked as if she blanked out. I believe that after witnessing what she did at the beginning of the series, she too had come under the influence of the Hand, meaning that a controlling device had been planted inside her head. If we presume that Juan can see the future, he will try his best to save his family and not let them be used by the military dictatorship to carry out their agenda. Those visions that Juan got were so vivid that it almost felt like he physically traveled there in some parallel timeline. One thing is for certain: Juan had certain supernatural powers, as everything that he saw in his vision came true and had some meaning behind it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he becomes the leader of the resistance and tries to use his power to get the better of the Hand. It will definitely give him and others a leverage, since they were up against killing machines who just wanted to mindlessly destroy everything that came in their way. We saw to what extent the man could go to save his family, and I don’t think that if there is a season 2, we will see him surrendering so easily.
