El Eternauta - Chapter 1: Sound analysis of a world that is fading away

We're going to do something a little different from what we've been working on in previous posts. We're going to step away—temporarily—from video games, tools, and interactive spaces to focus on a series. But not just any series. We're going to talk about The Eternaut.

And we're going to do it through sound. Because when I was a kid, this story impacted me not only because of what it told, but because of how it sounded. I don't remember the dialogue so much as that feeling of dense silence, of invisible danger, of a world fading away. Perhaps that's why it left such a lasting impression on me.

This analysis won't focus on faithfulness to the comic, nor on aesthetic or narrative debate. What interests me is how sound design builds a world before the world collapses. How, through hearing, it anticipates the breakdown, the trauma, and the grief. And how music, noise, and even silence end up saying what words can't.

A world full of sounds

The episode opens with Buenos Aires in full swing. But it's not a generic or idealized city: it's a recognizable, sonically situated environment. The first thing that appears is the noise. Constant traffic, protesters, distant voices, barking dogs, blaring sirens. Everything vibrates like an urban choreography where sounds build a familiar atmosphere.

The protesters' attention is not insignificant. They are neither an exception nor an extraordinary event: they are part of the city's everyday landscape. Particularly in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, street closures, chants, drums, and gatherings are part of the everyday sound. The characters perceive this chaos upon arriving at the chalet, register it naturally, and coexist with it. Their inclusion in the initial soundscape adds verisimilitude and anchors the narrative in a recognizable social reality. The city's sonic chaos is not fiction: it is the foundation upon which silence will be built.

Later, when Salvo and Ana go out to throw away some old phone books, the soundscape comes to life. It's summer, it's hot, and the city is alive. There's movement, there are voices, there are cars. But what begins as a collective soundscape gradually becomes tense. The music that accompanies the scene—initially extradiegetic—reveals itself as part of the world: the sound is coming from a spinning vinyl record inside the house. This transition from the extradiegetic to the diegetic isn't just an aesthetic decision: it's an anchoring point. The music and the soundscape intertwine in an everyday moment that, unbeknownst to us, is about to disappear.

In this fragment, the environment isn't just scenery: it's alive. People cross the street, insects can be heard, and dogs bark incessantly. The chaos isn't dramatic, but it's total. Everything moves. Everything makes a sound. And the feeling is that, at any moment, something is about to break.

The tension builds in layers. And what signals the imminence of that break isn't the script, nor the shot: it's the sound. This accumulation of everyday noises acts as a warning.

In the midst of this construction, a brief but ambiguous scene appears: Ana, Favalli's wife, sits alone inside at a computer. She seems to be composing music, or perhaps meditating, but it's never entirely clear. What matters is perception: while we see her concentrated face, we continue to hear the chaos outside.

This simultaneity creates a particular effect. The soft music that insinuates itself from within contrasts with the urban background noise. But they don't quite blend. Instead of inviting us into Ana's state of mind, the scene leaves us outside. There's no empathic fusion: there's distance. And that distance reinforces the role of the spectator: we're not sharing the experience, we're observing it. The sound doesn't accompany the character; it accompanies our perception of her and marks the boundary between the intimate and the social, the emotional and the narrative. Everything suggests that something is brewing: it hasn't happened yet, but it's already been announced by ear.

Truco and Flor: A Pause Before the Abyss

Before the break, a scene marks the last moment of collective calm: the truco. The table, the wine, the friends, the almost ritualistic gesture. There, Omar asks a question that sounds strange in the present: "Do you play with flor?" Today, in Buenos Aires, playing with Flor is not common; it's associated with a clumsy, outdated form of play, disconnected from the real rhythm of what's happening. This disconnection shows him as someone endearing but a little clueless, who isn't reading the tension of the moment. It's a generational nod and a way of building tension from a cultural perspective.

This detail refers to the original comic, where Juan Salvo does play with a flor. Unlike the series, there is no ironic subtext or cultural disconnect, which marks a difference in time and sensitivity between the two versions. In the series, that tension is reconfigured. The music continues to play. The atmosphere remains relaxed, but the viewer now knows more than the characters might suspect.

The decision to include this truco scene just before the sonic collapse is no small one. It's a way of stopping time, of showing a false sense of calm. As if the sound were being sustained for the last time by habit. A scene where what is heard is not just what is playing, but what is about to stop playing.

The Break: When the World Stops

And suddenly: it stops. The interruption isn't total or immediate, but it's felt. The light goes out. The sound of the city, which until that moment filled the space, is interrupted with a sharp bang. As if the system—the logic of the everyday world—stopped responding.

This break doesn't come alone. It's accompanied by several loud bangs. Deep, metallic thuds, which are left unexplained but mark a change of scene: something has broken. In that instant, the environment stops functioning as usual. A new sonic logic emerges.

Silence doesn't appear immediately, but it begins to take center stage. From this moment on, the music changes its function. It no longer comes from vinyl records or radios within the narrative world. Now, most of the time, it's extradiegetic: it appears to underline the emotional aspect, to sustain the suspense, to mark a distance between what we see and what we feel. Music is no longer part of everyday life: it comes from outside, as if accompanying the mourning of the world that has just gone dark.

The sound is no longer filled with people, movement, or the city. What remains is something else. A kind of waiting. A world that no longer sounds like it used to.

And in that wait, even the most mundane sounds take on new meanings. The wind, which was once simply part of the urban background, now becomes an omen. It comes and goes, filters through cracks, settles in the ear like a threat. The silence, which never fully existed before, now imposes itself at times. It's a tense silence, one that offers no comfort. A silence that accompanies death—or at least the possibility of it.

Sound design works with this redefinition: it's not about inventing new sounds, but rather listening to existing ones in a different way. The familiar becomes unsettling. What was once part of everyday life is now a sign that something is wrong. The city falls silent, and what little remains becomes a warning.

Changes of the Era and the Role of the Feminine

One of the most significant gestures introduced by the series is the shift in gender roles. While in the original comic, Juan Salvo's wife and daughter have a marginal presence and almost no active participation in the plot, the current series reconfigures that logic. One striking example is the scene in which someone says for the first time "don't open the door": in the comic, it's a male character who warns, but in the series, it's Ana who firmly intervenes.

This small gesture marks a shift in the era. The woman's voice is no longer confined to the background: it is incorporated into the center of the action, into the core of decision-making. Ana not only observes; she also acts, thinks, and proposes. And her connection with sound is no coincidence. At various points, she is associated with sound, with music, with attentive listening. The series not only gives rise to this, but does so through the very language that organizes its structure: sound.

Closing the Analysis: A Reinterpreted Sound World

What the series proposes in this first episode is not simply an effective soundscape, but a profound reorganization of the connection between listening and narrative. Sound design doesn't merely accompany the story; it shapes it. The viewer's auditory experience is not secondary—it becomes a central element in interpreting what is happening.

The chapter can be clearly divided into two parts. The first, before the snowfall, is where the sound world is constructed through superimposed layers: traffic, voices, insects, diegetic music. Everything adds up, sometimes with a density that borders on excessive. This sonic thickness generates a crescendo that prepares for the break. The second part, after the snowfall, is governed by a different logic: extradiegetic music, silences, and the reinterpretation of everyday sounds that now evoke danger, threat, or death dominate. It is a transformed sound world.

The gradual disappearance of urban noise, the loss of everyday sound references, and the emergence of new, abstract or threatening sounds serve as symptoms of collapse. And this transformation of the soundscape is also a transformation of the world. Thus, sound serves a dual function: it acts as a diegetic indicator of what is happening in the plot and as a perceptual metaphor for grief, loss, and the disruption of order.

In that sense, analyzing this episode allows us to observe how sound is neither decorative nor illustrative: it is narrative. It is structure. It is time. It is ideology. And in The Eternaut, as in all great sound fiction, the world is constructed—and shattered—from the ear.

Sound Epilogue: Listening to the Present Through Fiction

The sound construction of the first chapter of The Eternaut not only redefines the original narrative but also engages with our present. The sonic city that fades away, the tension that grows on the margins of everyday life, the active role of the feminine in the perception of danger—all refer to collective experiences that go beyond fiction.

The choice to situate the conflict through the auditory is political. In a world saturated with images, silence and sound acquire new power. Making a city resonate, and then silencing it, is a way of narrating trauma through the sensorial. It's an aesthetic decision, but also an ethical one. Because what is heard—or what is left unheard—also defines whose lives matter, whose fears are legitimized, whose bodies have a voice.

In this retelling of the classic, sound design operates as a form of memory. It not only recalls the past—the comic strip, the fears of another era—but also interprets the present. The sonic breakdown of The Eternaut is not just a science fiction catastrophe: it's a metaphor for our own disruptions. We saw it, for example, during the pandemic: empty streets, masks, an invisible danger, abrupt changes in the city's soundscape. A crisis for which many parallels can be found. The city that falls silent also narrates something we don't fully understand.

Thus, the series invites us not only to look at a familiar story with different eyes, but to listen to it with different ears. And in that listening, to rethink our place as spectators, as citizens, as bodies in a shared space. Because in The Eternaut, sound is not just background: it is a boundary, a signal, a language of what is not spoken. And, above all, it is the clearest way of warning us that the world, as we knew it, has already begun to change.

Closing: A Music That Becomes Hybrid and Translates the World to Us

As the episode moves toward its climax and the urban world ceases to roar, music takes on a new importance. Silence begins to dominate, and sound effects almost completely disappear. In this empty space, the music not only sustains the emotional tone but also begins to condense multiple functions simultaneously.

It's no longer just extradiegetic accompaniment: it becomes a narrative guide, an emotional bridge, a period marker, a character expression, an atmosphere, and a commentary. In other words, it's transformed into a sonic hybrid.

On the one hand, it is a hybrid with the voice: it takes the place of what is not said, of what cannot be said, and allows us to empathize with what Juan Salvo feels at that moment, translating his experience without the need for words.

It also works as a hybrid with the environment: in a nearly extinct soundscape, music takes the place of the environment, situating us emotionally and temporally, and marking the before and after. If the city falls silent, music takes its place.

Finally, it merges with the function of sound effects: it provides feedback on what is happening on stage, highlights what can no longer be described with specific sounds, and defines the overall tone of the ruined world.

This convergence of functions recalls the concept of ambient-foley hybrid we've been exploring in previous blog posts. But here, this hybrid expands: the music blends with everything else and becomes the central audio device of the narrative.

Would You Like Us to Analyze More Chapters?

This was an analysis of the first episode. But you might be interested in exploring other chapters later—more briefly or comparatively—to continue disassembling this powerful series from the ear.

You can leave your comment, suggestion, or idea for future posts. We'll listen.