Since moving to the United States, I’ve struggled to watch Argentine television. It’s purely personal, for whenever I see something beautifully executed coming from the country I chose to leave, I am forced to wonder whether leaving was the right decision. Perhaps one’s uprootedness becomes more livable the less we are faced with reminders of what has been lost.
Still, as a die-hard fan of Pizza, Birra, Faso, I was counting the days for El Eternauta to premiere. And when it finally did, I housed the entire series in one sitting. Partly because it’s brilliant, and partly because—well, if I’d already watched two episodes, how can I not watch just one more?
Joining the collective excitement, I rushed to add my love to the online craze. Then I started getting texts from friends asking if my enthusiasm stemmed from seeing the familiar streets of the country I grew up in, now elevated through the lens of a major production; or from the blend of cutting-edge visual effects with hyper-local customs and sly, unmistakably Argentine humor.
But the truth is, no. My connection to the series came from somewhere else entirely.
Yes, El Eternauta rests on what film theorist Howard Suber calls “bi-association”—the combining of two seemingly unrelated elements to create a third, and new concept. The Godfather (family loyalty + organized crime), Star Wars(Western/samurai cinema + fairy tales) are some common examples. I too once attempted something similar in my first short film, The Night Watchman, converging a noir film set in the city of Córdoba. When this technique works, it usually gives birth to something memorable, or at least innovative. In the case of El Eternauta, it’s both.
BUT (“but” being, as Suber notes, the most important word in all of storytelling) the real triumph of El Eternauta isn’t that it’s “on par with any Hollywood production.” It’s that it subverts the very logic that propels the mechanics of Hollywood storytelling.
In most American genre narratives—from Alien to The Last of Us—the arc of the story is marked by progressive loss. As the plot thickens, the protagonist is stripped of allies and close ties. With each battle, those in the orbit of the main character are one by one devoured, run over, or murdered, creating further engagement with the audience as both the circle of trust and the chances for survival shrink.
El Eternauta moves in the opposite direction. The more people join the group, the greater their chances of triumph. The more mouths to feed, the more resources are multiplied. The logic is not one of attrition, but of collective fortitude and solidarity.
The concept of the Hero’s Journey has flourished in U.S.-made films because it mirrors—in my opinion—the country’s own strategies for survival: genealogies disengaged from any geographic anchor, provisional social bonds, and constant domestic migrations that prevent roots from taking hold beyond a single generation. Young people move far from home to attend the universities that “accept” them, and later, adults rarely settle based on where their ties are, but rather where there is work. Your friends don’t pay your rent.
That system functioned, or simulated to, for a long time. But the emotional toll is now too heavy to ignore, and this very detachment may be one of the reasons why the country’s mental health crisis has progressively skyrocketed. This notion was crystallized during Biden’s presidency, when Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, declared “an epidemic of loneliness, isolation and social disconnection”—particularly among older adults.
In Argentina, while internal migrations do exist, the link to home is rarely severed. Those who leave their towns often return—or at least find comfort knowing their parents are still there, likely in the same house. People come back. In El Eternauta, Juan comes back. He comes back for the group. The only person who doubts whether he would return is, unironically, the man who’s just arrived after living two decades in the U.S.
As Argentineans, we’re filled with pride anytime that “anything” coming out of our country finds recognition abroad. We delight in seeing the lead singer of Metallica drinking yerba mate, or Gustavo Santaolalla saluting us by name when raising both of his consecutive Oscars. Who wouldn’t be?
But we would be enormously shortchanging the series to pin El Eternauta’s brilliance solely on the fact that it’s “as great as any Hollywood production”—especially when Hollywood is in trouble. The recent tariffs on the industry announced by the president created chaos, not only for their left-fieldness, but because they open the wound of how this industry has long abandoned its own.
Audiences who once looked to memorable movies as a means to compensate for their daily vicissitudes are now left with a self-run machina that endlessly regurgitates intellectual property, turning animated classics into modern dramas, those dramas into musicals, looping back ad infinitum, offering little comfort and no path forward.
A breath of fresh air came when Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan shared his soul-searched reflection pleading with writers to start creating characters who genuinely strive to become better human beings. After decades of glorifying antiheroes, the line between moral complexity and outright nihilism had grown too thin, and the idea of human greed as a cautionary tale had been missed for too long, leaving spectators to adulate behavior that is toxic for any society.
This series is far more than a show that “doesn’t fall short of anything you’d see in a Hollywood blockbuster.” It’s an invitation to reorient our sensibilities and values—both as storytellers and as audiences—asking us perhaps to release the compulsion for external validation that would allow us to recognize our own feats. I join the rallying cry of fellow fans who, fervent and grateful, choose to celebrate the simplest truth this series offers us: that together—as a family, as a community, and as a society—even the darkest hour is endurable.
And in that, El Eternauta is unmistakably Argentinean.