How did the world ending apocalypse in The Eternaut happen? Details revealed

In The Eternaut, t’s not bombs or monsters that end the world: it’s snow. Silent, white, and falling in the middle of summer, this snowfall kills instantly on contact. That’s the first clue that the apocalypse in Netflix’s adaptation isn’t natural or accidental. It's deliberate.

Beginning as a peculiar weather event, it soon develops into a complete alien invasion run by environmental destruction, technical breakdown, and psychic control. The conflict is already far started and not being fought with guns when the survivors figure it out.

Killer snow: The apocalypse begins with silence

The first signal that something is deeply wrong in The Eternaut is the snowfall itself. It arrives out of nowhere, drifting down in the heat of summer, blanketing Buenos Aires in deadly stillness. Within minutes, animals and people perish just by walking outside. No warning, no justification, just the strange stillness and rising body count.

The concurrent breakdown of all technology aggravates it even more. Radios, phones, and power all fail, isolating survivors and eliminating any possibility of coordinated reaction.

Favalli, the group's resident scientist, suggests that the snow might be linked to a magnetic pole reversal, an unnatural shift possibly triggered by external forces. Compasses spin uselessly, and nothing electronic behaves as it should. This isn't just a freak storm. It's a weapon.

The invaders guarantee greatest chaos and fear by using nature itself as a tool of mass annihilation. Without even knowing what they're hiding from, survivors are driven into concealment. That ambiguity is the ideal breeding ground for anxiety, stress, and something considerably more terrible lying just under the surface.

From snowfall to warfare: The alien threat takes shape

As terrifying as the snow is, it's just the opening move. Soon, bizarre insect-like creatures begin to appear, giant beetles with tough shells and hostile behavior. They aren't random monsters. They seem deployed, like soldiers or drones. It's obvious now that this is not a natural catastrophe but an organized invasion. However, much more troubling is how soon the barrier between human and inhuman starts to fade.

Clara, Juan and Elena's daughter, comes back after vanishing during the blackout, but something about her is off. She denies being on the boat we saw her on in episode 1. Her behavior grows erratic. And she’s not alone.

Survivors whisper about people going mad, turning violent for no reason. Lucas disappears overnight, then masked attackers slaughter innocents at the mall. After surviving, one of them ventures into a tunnel teeming with peculiar insects... while the insects move aside. He is not perceived by them as a danger but one of them.

The message couldn't be more chilling: the true threat isn't merely emanating from above. It’s inside the survivors. The invasion is already working, quietly, invisibly, through the people themselves.

Mind control and betrayal: Humanity turns on itself

The scariest thing about The Eternaut isn’t the snow or the bugs. It’s the realization that people are being turned into weapons.

Once a composed and devoted buddy, Lucas loses it all of a sudden. He viciously stabs Omar without provocation as they were playing a peaceful card game. Both the act and the fact that Lucas isn't there anymore make it surprising. Something else seems to be dwelling inside of him.

More and more bizarre sights and patterns, which Juan cannot make sense of, appear in his increasingly vivid dreams. This is not a case of trauma-induced hallucinations. They evoke thoughts of past lives, memories that have been implanted, or messages.

Clara, meanwhile, continues to act peculiar. Her eyes are expressionless as she practices with weaponry, as if she were getting ready for battle. Elena may have more than just a bruise on her head. That bump was something more serious. It may serve as a portal for extraterrestrial beings.

Even as the survivors try to rebuild some sense of order, they're constantly looking over their shoulders, unsure who they can trust. And that’s the genius of the invasion. It doesn’t just destroy cities. It corrodes the human bond from within.

The blue light and the Hand: What Juan discovers at the stadium

After barely escaping an ambush, Juan decides not to return to base with the others. Instead, he heads toward the source of the strange blue light spotted earlier from the rooftop. What he finds isn’t just a battleground. It’s a revelation.

In the middle of a deserted street, humans and alien beetles walk side by side in eerie silence. They're not fighting. They’re marching, synchronized like a single organism. The implication is horrifying. These people aren’t survivors. They’re part of something now. Something controlled.

The core of it all is a silhouette soaked in blue. Though little seen, its form is clear. The long, thin limbs. The grotesque number of fingers. This is the entity pulling the strings. It doesn’t speak. It doesn’t need to. Its power lies in control, not communication.

And Juan finally understands what they’re really up against. Not just creatures or weapons, but a will. A mind. A master.

A loop of fate? What the dreams might really mean

From the very beginning, Juan has been haunted by visions that don’t behave like typical flashbacks or trauma responses. They come in fragments, filled with symbols he can’t explain: trains, gas masks, beetles, and snow, repeating like a pattern he’s supposed to recognize. At first, they feel like dreams. But by the finale, it’s clear they might be something else entirely.

These aren’t just predictions. They feel like memories of something he’s already lived. The mural he stares at near the end, filled with imagery from both the past and the future, reinforces the idea that Juan is caught in some kind of temporal loop. He remembers things that haven’t happened yet, not because he’s psychic but because he’s been through this before.

The show doesn’t spell it out, but it drops enough hints to raise the possibility that Juan isn’t just surviving this apocalypse. He may have already survived it once. That changes everything. It suggests the fight isn’t linear. It’s cyclical. And Juan might be more than just a survivor. He could be the only one who remembers.

The source material behind The Eternaut: What the comic helps us understand

Héctor Germán Oesterheld and Francisco Solano López's seminal 1957 graphic novel serves as the inspiration for The Eternaut adaptation. Deeply affecting the tone and structure of the Netflix version, it is regarded as one of the most significant works in Latin American science fiction.

In the original story, the snowfall is just the beginning of a highly structured alien invasion. Creatures called Gurbos are deployed by a grotesque figure known as The Hand, a being with too many fingers and too much control. But even The Hand is not the final boss. It answers to unseen overlords known only as Them, distant entities orchestrating the downfall of humanity like a cosmic chess match.

The comic also explores a major twist. Juan becomes a lone traveler through time and space, caught in a cycle that forces him to relive the invasion across different realities. He ends up separated from his family and drifts across timelines, ultimately returning to warn the past about what is coming.

While none of these elements are confirmed in the show’s first season, several moments, from Juan’s visions to the mural full of symbolic references, suggest that the adaptation is drawing inspiration from those ideas. The comic does not predict what will happen in the series, but it does provide a framework for understanding just how deep this invasion could go.

The Eternaut: Season 2 - What the cast has hinted and where the story could go

Netflix has officially confirmed a second season of The Eternaut. Ricardo Darín, who plays Juan, has said in interviews that there is still a second part ahead and that the team aims to go even further with the story.

The ending of season 1 of The Eternaut certainly leaves room for it. Clara is still under alien influence, the creature with too many fingers has just been revealed, and Juan’s visions are intensifying. Nothing has been resolved.

A second season could dive deeper into the hierarchy of the alien forces, the origins of the invasion, and Juan’s possible time loop. The source material offers plenty of narrative ground to explore, and the show has only scratched the surface so far.

Until then, we are left in the same place as Juan, questioning what is real, what is remembered, and whether this battle has already been lost before.

Conclusion: A calculated apocalypse, not a random end

The world did not end by accident in The Eternaut. What began with a mysterious snowfall quickly escalated into a multi-layered alien assault, using weather, technology, and human minds as weapons.

Every phase of the invasion was designed to disorient, divide, and dominate, a strategy that proves more terrifying than brute force. By the end of season 1, it is clear that the apocalypse was never just about survival. It was about control. About erasing human resistance from the inside out.

The snow, the bugs, the visions, and the betrayal all point to a larger intelligence pulling the strings. And the most chilling part is that we still do not know who They are or how far Their reach goes.

By now, The Eternaut has already redefined the end of the world. Not as chaos but as design. Not as noise but as silence.