Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for The Eternaut Season 1 finale and The Eternaut comics.
Cliffhangers are often the way to go when a story wants to leave its audience hooked for future chapters, butThe Eternauttakes this to awhole new level. Thefirst seasonof Netflix’s new Argentine sci-fi series ends right as protagonist Juan Salvo (Ricardo Darín) finds out what is really causing the end of the world, leaving us with more questions than answers as we wait for asecond season. The series itself adapts the original comics byHéctor Gérman OesterheldandFrancisco Solano López, but takes many creative liberties to fit that story into the streaming framework, so the comics may not hold all the answers, leaving everyone even more curious about what will happen.
Is the Hand the True Enemy?
The Eternautwraps up Season 1 just as Juan Salvodiscovers what is really going on. As it turns out, everything that has happened so far is part of an alien invasion of Earth: the snowfall was meant to kill most of the population and turn survivors against one another, while the bugs are supposed to kidnap survivors, instead of kill them. The terrifying next step is what Salvo sees when overlooking a park in the final scenes of the season:an army of mind-controlled humans. They show up earlier, chasing Salvo and his group away from the building they’re based in, and cornering Inga (Orianna Cárdenas) and her group as they investigate an airplane that crashed in the middle of Buenos Aires.
The mind-controlled people are being conducted like an orchestra by a being known as “the Hand,” an alien with multiple fingers on its hands. The Hand is covered by a bright light, but Salvo says it is “the true enemy,” seeing how itcontrols people. Is it really, though? When Salvo sees the Hand, the giant bugs are leading people to form an “audience” in front of the gazebo where the Hand stands, butit doesn’t seem like the Hand is controlling the bugs themselves, but rather collaborating with them. When the Hand conducts, only people react to it, and the bugs continue doing their own thing. Which begs the question: is the Hand really the architect of everything? Or, like the bugs, is it another gear in a well-oiled machine controlled by someone else?
In the original comics, the Hand is every bit asweird and unsettlingas it is in the series (although we have only seen, well, its hands so far), but it’s not the ultimate enemy.As it turns out, it is the lieutenant in a larger army controlled by another species referred to as “Them”(“los Ellos,” in the original). Even the bugs themselves are mind-controlled via a device on their necks and turned into mere cannon fodder, but, so far, nothing of the sort has been found in the series, leading us to believe it may take a different approach regarding the whole invasion.
What Is Happening at River Plate Stadium?
Lucas' (Marcelo Subiotto) death is one of the most shocking twists inThe Eternautso far, and the whole scene ismade even darkerby its whole ambiance. As he, Salvo, and Alfredo “Tano” Favalli (Cesar Troncoso) stand on the top of a building in downtown Buenos Aires,the River Plate stadium emanates an eerie and blinding light in the background, with dark storm clouds gathering over it. The lights at the stadium had already caught Salvo’s eye and led him to ultimately part ways with Tano to investigate what was going on there, but the season concludes before we can get a glimpse of what’s going on there.
Given how the Hand is also hidden under similar lighting in the park,it’s safe to assume that the aliens have made the stadium their base of operations. Strategically, it’s not a bad idea, seeing how it’s an enclosed and fortified space right beside a river, limiting access from potential enemies by land. It also has the infrastructure necessary to establish a small airfield, control rooms, prison cells, etc. And it wouldn’t be the first time an oppressive enemy has turned a stadium into an instrument of evil in South America —in Chile, for example, the Estadio Nacional was commandeered by theirmilitary dictatorshipand turned into a huge prison and torture center in the 1970s. As to the dark clouds above it, they are probably the aliens' way in, acting like a “portal.”
In the comics, though, it’s actually the opposite: the human army gathers at the stadium, using its huge stands to seek cover from the aliens' terrible weapons, especially their lightthrower cannons. The series inverting this is a thoughtful tribute, since the comics were written before stadiums were used as instruments of evil in South America.The stadium is also where a major battle against the aliens takes place, with tragic and surprising consequences for Juan Salvo, his family, and his friends. It’s even implied that Juan Salvo himself is a supporter of River Plate, making the whole thing even more dramatic.
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What Are Juan Salvo’s Visions About?
Throughout the series, Juan Salvo experiences many strange visions, even passing out sometimes. They usually alternate between flashes of his period fighting in the Malvinas War in 1982, and darker, more ominous images of red-hot meteors falling from the sky over Buenos Aires, a church burning, and so on. At first, he believes that he is experiencing PTSD reminiscent of histime as a soldier, especially considering that his current circumstances require him to fight and hold weapons once again. However,in the season finale, he mentions that he has “already lived” through the alien invasion, which adds to the mystery of his visions.
This is an aspect from the comics that the series adapts to further build the mystery of why Salvo himself is so important to the story. He is clearly the protagonist, and his experiencing flashes of events of his life from both the past and future feels reminiscent of works likeKurt Vonnegut’sSlaughterhouse FiveandDenis Villeneuve’sArrival, in which characters become “unstuck in time” and are able to experience moments out of order. This doesn’t happen to him in the comics, but, sinceThe Eternautis a work of science fiction with aliens and possibly even other dimensions, given the “portal” above the stadium, Salvo becoming a time traveler would be no surprise at all. The visions then could be how his mind adjusts to “future Salvo” reliving those moments, which leads us to the final unanswered question.
What Does ‘The Eternaut’s Title Mean?
At this point, the very name of the series is a big mystery. The word “eternaut” isn’t mentioned at all, nor is it in any dictionary, so what exactly does it mean, and why is it the very title of the series? Without entering into spoiler territory from the original comics, the etymology of the word itself points the way:it comes from a combination of the word “eternity” with the Greek suffix “naut,” meaning someone whotravels through eternity. This is explained in the first pages of the comics, but the Netflix series takes an alternative route and keeps the mystery as to what an eternaut really is.
What can be speculated is that, given the many differences between the comics and the series, the actual meaning of “eternaut” can still differ from the traditional take, butit does seem like Juan Salvo may be headed towards becoming a “traveler of eternity.“He is already experiencing visions of bothhis past and futurein his present, and seems to understand that all of that is probablyhappening at onceas he becomes unstuck in time. How that will help him, however, remains to be seen in Season 2, as well as how and why exactly he becomes the eternaut. If it resembles the story in the comics, it will be nothing short of epic.
