Over the past month or so, I've had time to ponder the implications of Attack on Titan's final season so far - what it means for each of the characters, how all the pieces of the narrative fit together, and the huge cultural impact it's had for nearly the last decade. However, I also think some people are drawing the wrong conclusions, and actually siding with the villain of the story. So I want to give my thoughts on all of this in less of a review, but more of an analysis. So, be wary of spoilers below.
The theme since the beginning...
I think the main point of the story, as stated numerous times throughout the four seasons, is the cycle of violence and hatred between two groups, how people can find a way to break out of it, and how it could create a bigger monster than either side if it goes on for too long and gets too bloody. Essentially, it is a cautionary tale, warning of the dangers of hatred, prejudice and indoctrination of youth to maintain it through generations.
In the first three seasons, we follow Eren and his friends enlisting in the military to fight back against the titans, mindless giant creatures with distorted proportions who do nothing but eat humans. However, it is gradually revealed that some people have the ability to transform into specialised titans at will, and the titans that caused the invasion that resulted in the death of Eren's mother were some of his comrades.
By the end of season three, it had been revealed that they were sent by Marley, a continent that subjugates the race of people called Eldians - a people capable of transforming into titans, and the race of all the characters living in the walls. What's more is that this continent had been in control of the world for at least a century - the entire world wants the people of Paradis dead, for the crimes of being descended from those who once used the titan power to conquer them many centuries ago.
A New Perspective
Naturally, we as the audience sympathise with the protagonists in this predicament - they finally discovered the truth, that their enemies weren't the titans, but a whole world of people beyond their island. We also get the opportunity to look back on the past actions of the villains with sympathy, as now we understand the oppressive conditions in which they were forced to carry out their mission. They were just children, fighting against people they were told were Devils, for better conditions for their families.
However, as you can see in Eren's character, this changes his goal, which at the beginning of the show, was to exterminate the titans that killed his mother and threatened his and his friends' freedom. Now his enemies were people, with his final words before the end of season three being "if we kill all our enemies out there, will we be free?" as he pointed to the horizon over the shore. Little did we know the actual implications of what he was saying - mass genocide. His hatred to the titans seemed justified to us, considering they are beings only capable of death and destruction, but after realising they were just as much victims as he was, and seeing the future events he would make happen, he was set on his goal of wiping out all life beyond the shores of Paradis, ensuring the safety of his friends at the cost of the whole world.
I think this is a very clever direction to take the character, as despite being a huge tonal and narrative shift for him, it also totally makes sense considering his absolutist worldview. It also makes him inarguably and demonstrably the villain of the story. A tragic one, perhaps, as by seeing the future, he may have had no choice to carry it out, traumatising him, and ironically making him the one without the free will he values so much, but in the end, he achieves his goal in activating the rumbling, an apocalyptic event that involves giant titans trampling over the entire planet, killing everything underfoot or undersea.
Rationalising the Unthinkable...
Strangely though, I've seen many comments actually siding with Eren, feeling a satisfaction when the titans arrive on the shores or Marley and begin their long march. I find this deeply troubling, as it is attempting to justify a character causing, or at the very least attempting, mass genocide under the basis of retribution - Marley wronged Paradis and subjugated Eldians for over a century, and now they are getting what they deserve.
I feel the most appropriate analogy to describe how absurd justifying this would be the use of nuclear weapons on a country without such a capability that you are at war with, wiping it out completely. Yes, you would assure victory and defeat the armies primed to invade, but you would also wipe out every single civilian, as well as destroying a people and a culture. How on Earth could such an action be justified?
The rumbling is essentially this principle but on a larger scale. Billions of people including hundred of millions of children whom have no involvement in causing your suffering, stomped into the ground with nowhere to run. I seriously wonder how anyone could justify this, especially when viewing the scene where the Marleyan soldiers fire cannons to no avail at the approaching giants, before pausing with looks of despair, and slowly turning to run away, knowing there is no hope of survival for them or their families. The ending of the scene is deliberately paralleled to the very first episode of the show, with Eren and his army of mindless colosssal titans compared to the colossal titan breaking the wall of Shiganshina, Eren's home eight years ago, clearly portraying Eren as a villain in a tragic and terrifying way.
Now that isn't to say that Marley didn't cause the sequence of events that led to Eren's rage, from persecuting Eldians, forcing the Founding Titan to build the walls in the first place, to sending the Warrior titans in to break the walls, but as we get to see with the origin of the titans, the origins of this conflict began when the King Fritz of the Eldian clan used Ymir's titan power to build his empire and vanquish his enemies - the Marleyans, showing how everyone uses the past to justify their actions in the present. It is wrong to omit the past to perceive your side as greater than it is, or use it to justify atrocities, something everyone was responsible for in the show, one way or another.
But Eren responding to persecution and war with total annihilation is not a response anyone could reasonably call appropriate, and if a sizeable number of people can do so, I wonder if our society is a lot more like Marley or the Jaegerists than we care to admit.
Fate, or Free Will?
I think a more relevant question is not whether he is justified in his actions (which he clearly isn't), but whether he has any choice in carrying them out. Can he fight against fate? If he knew the future, what would happen if he tried to prevent it? Does he even want to?
My theory is it is both - when he sees the future, he is horrified by it, but he ultimately knows that it is something he would likely do - especially when time goes on and he realises how desperate things are getting. By the time he attacks Marley for the first time, they have declared war on Paradis and rallied the other nations against them, so his actions there to buy Eldia time for his plan to come to fruition is desperate, but ultimately understandable.
However, once he is battling for the power of the Founder Ymir with Zeke, he could have done almost anything that would stop the invasion of Paradis - like the original plan of a small-scale rumbling to maintain the mutually assured destruction ultimatum, or destroy the Marley government, or even change the Eldian physiology to make them invulnerable. No, he was hell-bent on the full rumbling, not as a threat to the rest of the world, but as a certainty. To me, that marks the mindset of a villain.
Heroes and Villains...
But if Eren has become the villain, then who are the heroes? That's quite simple. Armin, Mikasa, and the rest of Eren's friends. They too act out of necessity, taking out a dock guarded by Floch and his Jaegerists, but they do so with the aim of stopping the rumbling. They have reverence for human life - like how they protect Gabi despite the fact that she killed Sasha, and as a result she comes to understand that they aren't Devils, just ordinary people with hope and compassion, and if they can help Gabi overcome her violent preconceptions about Paradis, then they could have been able to help a great deal more beyond their walls.
Sadly, by the time Eren reaches this point in the story, he doesn't have those qualities anymore, leading to his horrifying actions and making him the final monster of the story.
The Moral of the Tale...
I think that is the moral to take away from Attack on Titan. No matter how dark or cruel the world we live in might get, or how much we lose, there is beauty in it, and that beauty is worth preserving. That was something that Mikasa understood. Something that Armin understood. Eren didn't. Since the beginning, he was a force of anger and destruction, lashing out at that world whatever the cost may be, making his closest friends turn against him, whereas Armin and Mikasa's enemies from Marley became allies through sympathy and compassion, breaking out of the warring factions they found themselves born into and choosing a better path.
What do you think about Eren's journey in the final season of Attack on Titan? Do you disagree with my analysis here? Leave your thoughts in the comments below (bear in mind I haven't read the manga so I don't know how the story ends - and I intend to keep it that way).
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