The final season of Attack on Titan still isn’t over. The first part of the last collection of episodes for the popular anime debuted in late 2020, and the second part wrapped up this past Monday. With the announcement of a third part on the way in 2023, it’s not quite yet to say goodbye to Hajime Isayama’s gruesome epic. Considering that there’s only nine chapters of the manga left to adapt after the Part 2 finale, the third part is likely to be the final-FINAL part of the final season. But where did the anime leave us for the long wait?
With Episode 86 ending on a bloody escape from Paradis Island for Eren’s (Bryce Papenbrook) friends, a flashback to a happier time is a disarming start to Episode 87. We are treated to the gang's first trip outside the island, as well as the return of late fan-favorite, Sasha Braus (Ashly Burch). The lighthearted scenes of the group experiencing ice cream for the first time are accompanied by a voice-over monologue of Mikasa (Yui Ishikawa) pondering the precise point when they lost Eren. She wonders if there was a pivotal moment in the past few years that transformed Eren into a monster, or if perhaps he has always been this way. The crew’s jovial tour through Marley is somewhat truncated when a young boy steals Sasha’s wallet, and the crowd turns on the boy suspecting him to be an island devil. It’s a sobering moment for Mikasa, Armin (Marina Inoue), and the others that this world fears them; for Eren, it’s evidence that what he is planning to do is a necessary evil.
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Ever since discovering the existence of humanity outside the walls, Paradis has lived under the threat of violent xenophobia. Nations such as Marley fear the “Island Devils” for the horrors that the Eldian race had inflicted in the past, and they believe the only way to secure the safety of the world is to wipe the whole island. However, no one has attempted to do so because of the danger of retaliation from Paradis in the form of the “Rumbling.” Before Paradis isolated itself, the Eldian king warned the rest of the world that the colossus titans within the walls would be released to flatten the world if the island was ever threatened.
The night that Eren attacked the Marleyan city of Liberio, Willy Tybur (Jonah Scott) reveals the truth: that the king’s warning was an empty threat, that the Royal Family of Paradis was beholden to a vow renouncing war, and that an interloper had seized control of the Founding Titan’s power – making the Rumbling a reality. Eren’s attack galvanizes hostile sentiments toward Paradis and damages the plans his friends had been making to get a foothold on the world stage.
The plan was ostensibly to use Eren’s Founding power to initiate a test of the “Rumbling”. Paradis would show the world a fraction of that power as a deterrent against invasion. By announcing that the power of the Rumbling is within their hands, Paradis would buy time to catch up to the rest of the world technologically, thus rendering the need for the Rumbling unnecessary. Because Eren is unable to use the Founding power on his own, Paradis would need to cooperate with someone from the Royal bloodline – namely their enemy, Zeke (Takehito Koyasu). Since it would take about fifty years for Paradis to catch up with the rest of the world, after Zeke’s death his Beast Titan would need to be passed onto another Eldian with Royal blood – namely, Queen Historia (Shiori Mikami). In another thirteen years, before Ymir’s curse could claim Historia’s life, her children would eat her in order to pass on the power and maintain the threat of the Rumbling.
As we learn in the finale, this plan is unacceptable to Eren. He refuses to let Historia’s life be cut short, and he refuses to let the cycle of children eating their parents continue – he himself had eaten his father in order to have the Attack titan passed on to him. But almost from the start of Paradis’ alliance with Zeke, Eren was made privy to a different plan: Zeke’s secret plan. Zeke believes the only way to save the world is to use the Founder’s power to sterilize all living Eldians, ensuring they can never have children and they can never pass on the titan bloodline, effectively dooming the race to extinction. Though Eren plays along with Zeke, this plan is also unacceptable to him. Eren believes he is free because he was born into this world, and he intends to use that freedom to insure the freedom of his friends.
Eren’s motivations for initiating the Rumbling have been somewhat murky until this finale. What made Eren such a compelling protagonist – his intensity, his bloodlust, and his devotion to his friends – also makes him a terrifying villain. It’s a turn for the character that reflects what Isayama has done with the world of Attack on Titan in the grand scheme. At first, titans were the enemy that united humanity within the walls. Then, when the Scouts came under attack from Kenny Ackerman (Phil Parsons), other humans became the enemy until the military staged a coup against the monarchy. Finally, with the revelation that Paradis is a small part of a larger world, the enemy became every living person outside the island. With every evolution of the threat, the heroes of the story were forced to adjust their morals for the sake of their survival and the survival of their people. The nationalistic fervor of the Paradisian military remained the same – the only thing that changed was the target. Floch, the only other person Eren trusted with his true plan, used that nationalistic fervor to seize control of Paradis and turn its population against the outside world. What once was an inspirational rallying cry is now a chilling form of propaganda: “Dedicate your hearts!”
As is made obvious by this point, Eren’s true goal has always been to unleash the Rumbling on the world – not just as a demonstration, but for real. Eren intends to exterminate all life outside the island, as he believes the only way to end the cycle of hate is to commit genocide. The finale revealed that it’s not just Eren’s bloodlust driving him to do this. It’s not just his desperation to finally be free. Eren is killing the world because he wants his friends to live long and happy lives, and he believes it’s the only way for them to do that. Any hope he may have had for a peaceful solution was extinguished when he witnessed an Eldian sympathizer in Marley proclaim that the Eldians of Paradis Island need to be wiped out, claiming that the Eldians of Marley were not to be feared like the island devils who deserve to die. At that moment, Eren convinces himself that the future he saw when he kissed Historia’s hand – the future in which he destroys the world with the Rumbling – must come to pass. As he tells Historia, he believes it is the only way to "end the cycle of revenge fueled by hate."
In a montage of Eren’s memories, Attack on Titan confirms a few other notable details. Firstly, that everything that has happened so far, and everything that will happen next, occurs according to Eren’s will and his alone. No one is twisting his arm. He is not under the influence of any otherworldly entity such as Ymir. Destroying the world is a choice that he made, even though he saw visions of this future beforehand. Secondly, Zeke tells Eren he doubts Mikasa is loyal to Eren out of any kind of genetic conditioning, like Eren suggested in their heated confrontation at Niccolo’s restaurant. What’s more likely is that Mikasa just likes him a lot. The night of their first day in Marley, Eren is upset to be in the presence of people he knows he is going to slaughter, and in a moment of weakness he asks Mikasa why she is so devoted to him. He wants to know what she is to him, and Mikasa tells him that he’s her family. She wonders if she might have been able to prevent Eren’s massacre if she had given a different answer – implying perhaps that the one she did provide wasn’t the full truth.
This vulnerable moment is interrupted by an elderly refugee who offers Eren, Mikasa, and the group to join his people for dinner and drinks, and we are allowed one last look at the whole team as if they were normal kids – not soldiers, not murderers, not war criminals – just a gaggle of young friends getting drunk together for what seems like the first time. It’s an important moment that sets the stakes moving forward and marks how far these characters have come since the beginning of the series in 2013. When tragedy compelled them all to join the military as children, no one could have guessed that one among them would commit the same kind of atrocity on a global scale, or that the rest would need to unite against him. During that joyful night in the tent, none of them except Eren would suspect that every single one of the refugees hosting them would be trampled to death in a few months.
After several episodes spent glancing at the advancing titans through clouds of steam, the Part 2 finale at last showcases Eren’s army in its terrifying completeness, along with his skeletal new titan form. The united forces of the world launch an artillery attack against the rumbling titans to no avail. The intense heat radiating off the bodies of the colossus titans violently evaporates the ocean water beneath the naval armada, destroying the battleships in the blink of an eye. As the titans make landfall and begin their rampage, Eren delivers a voice-over monologue justifying his march. His rationale is depressingly similar to a much younger Eren’s resolve to rid the world of titans. “I’ll wipe out every last one of them from this world.”
While the themes of the final season have so far seemed to be waving a big red warning flag about the dangers of fascism, the anime is wading into some potentially muddy territory. It’s raising some big questions that require carefully measured answers. One such question is whether Mikasa can be held accountable for Eren’s violence simply because she denied him a romantic avenue. The other is whether genocide of any kind can ever be justified, whether because of historical conflict or because the perpetrator is doing it for their friends. There’s no need to spell out the importance of sticking the landing when it comes to these big questions being posed. In 2023, Attack on Titan will need to answer these questions in one form or another.
