AOT The Final Chapters (2024)

Attack on Titan's final episode of its final chapter in the final season has finally arrived, and it's even more complicated than its release schedule. As the series' finale came to a close, all the complex interwoven threads of Eldian, Marleyan, and Titan history collided, and it all led to an exciting – if at times confusing – ending. As far as the manga is concerned, the series' ending is widely considered controversial. However, the anime adds to and changes aspects of it that don't take away from its message, but instead were "pretty much there from the beginning" according to AOT’s creator Hajime Isayama.

With or without those changes though, what makes AOT so great is the air of mystery surrounding its well-defined world whose secrets are slowly revealed over time – and that all culminates in a finale that is as tragic as it is hopeful, and as complete as it is open-ended. In this way, AOT is a story about dichotomies, meant to show how no one side is ever totally right or wrong when they're truly understood. That's what makes understanding Attack on Titan's finale so important: just as beneath every war is a desire for peace, in every ending there's a new beginning.

AOT's Final Chapter

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AOT's final episode begins right at the start of the final battle between Eren and Armin's resistance group consisting of Levi, Mikasa, Armin, Jean, Connie, Reiner and Piek. At first, the battle seems all but impossible to win as the Founding Titan calls upon the assistance of every Titan in history to protect Eren and allow the Rumbling to continue. Armin is even consumed whole by Ymir, and all hope already seems lost.

Just when things seem most dire though, the group is joined by Annie, Gabbi, and Falco who has sprouted wings as the Beast Titan. Meanwhile, Armin finds himself within the Paths where he meets Zeke and – after convincing the latter of his mistaken perspective – the two join forces to convince the spirits of the other Titans to assist them in stopping Eren. With the assistance of the other Titans from throughout the ages, Armin and the others finally gain the upper hand for just long enough to allow Jean to detonate explosives which sever The Attack Titan's head from its body.

With the Attack Titan's head severed, the giant centipede-like creature that lies at the source of the Titan's power makes a desperate attempt to reunite with the Attack Titan's head, but Reiner, Annie and the others give everything they have to prevent it from reconnecting. Amidst the chaos, Mikasa has a sudden vision of her life with Eren – living in peace in a cabin in the woods. In the vision, Eren tells Mikasa to forget about him when everything is over, and the two embrace each other one last time. This final happy memory with Eren gives Mikasa the resolve she needs to do what's necessary, and with the help of Levi and the others, she's able to break through into the mouth of the Attack Titan and kill Eren. At this moment, Armin suddenly remembers a meeting he had with Eren just before the fighting started, which Eren purposely made him forget until the fight was over. In it, Eren admits the truth of his plans to Armin, and the two are able to reconcile despite their ideological differences. After witnessing Mikasa's ability to let go of Eren, Ymir is finally able to let go of her own love for King Fritz, and thus she disappears along with the power of the Titans. From then on, all the Titans are returned to their human forms, and Armin and the others with the power to transform become fully human once again.

The story then skips ahead three years, to a time when Eldia, under the control of the Yaegerists, has begun to rebuild a military force to defend themselves from the threat of the outside world. Historia builds up her own forces with knowledge of this in mind, and sends Armin, Annie, and the others to Paradis as a peace envoy in hopes that they can work out a treaty. Levi, Gabi, and Falco are all shown working to rebuild and assist their communities following the destruction caused by the Rumbling, while Mikasa reminisces of Eren as she sits by his grave at the foot of his favorite tree. As the credits roll, that same tree which houses Eren's remains is shown growing increasingly larger, while the civilization of Paradis is slowly built up and then destroyed by war in the background. The post-credits scene shows a young boy and his dog making a pilgrimage to the tree which has now grown to a titanic size, and the two walk toward a large opening at the tree's base.

The Great Tree and Paradis' Future

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One of the biggest question marks left open for interpretation at the end of AOT is what happens to humanity after the Titans are gone for good. The truth is that the titans' power is still very much present, and that fact is symbolized in the giant tree shown at the end of the series. Various theories and historical interpretations are given throughout AOT as to the true source of the Titans's power, but the reality of the situation has to do with the tree. In Ymir's backstory, she entered a giant tree identical to the one shown at the end of the series which housed the source of all living things. That source was what gave her the power of the titans, and it is the same centipede-like creature that lived within Eren.

This same tree has once again grown at Eren's burial place, and thus likely contains the power of the Titans which was supposed to have disappeared with Ymir. Even though the centipede-like source of the titans' power vanished after the fighting, it was never actually killed, so it's likely that it returned to the tree in an attempt to reconnect with the last host of its power. Many fans have come to presume that the child shown at the end of the series is actually one of Mikasa's distant descendants, and his returning to the tree symbolizes the repetition of the cycle of the Titans being reborn once again. That fact is never confirmed though, and the truth is left open to interpretation.

The Importance of Ymir's Love

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A key aspect of AOT's ending was the notion of Ymir's love for King Fritz. The thing that prevented Ymir from moving on for thousands of years was her undying love, which allowed her to exist in a place beyond life and death. This, in turn, is what allowed her to retain control over the Titans, and by extension, the descendants of the Eldians.

The only person who could inspire Ymir to move on from her pain was Mikasa, who had to endure a similar level of pain to then show Ymir that it was okay to move on and let go of that attachment. Without Mikasa leading by example, Ymir would have had no means by which to assess her own situation, and would have remained in that limbo which allowed her power to be abused for millennia.

The reason it had to be Mikasa was because of Eren's connection to Ymir. He was able to get her attention, which allowed her to set her sights on Mikasa's situation by association. It's also likely that Mikasa's status as an Ackerman (Eldians who are resistant to the power of the Titans) had something to do with her greater capability to break free. However, even despite everything that Eren put her through, Mikasa still found herself in a similar situation as Ymir in that she was unable to let go of her love for him. It was only Eren's reciprocation of Mikasa's feelings, and his willingness to want what's best for her, that allowed Mikasa to let go and quite literally cut Eren off in the end.

How Eren Was Able To Reconcile With Mikasa and Armin

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Up until the final episode, Eren and Mikasa's relationship was seemingly over forever. The last time they saw each other, Eren berated her and told her that he had actually hated her since they were children. Still, despite what Eren said, Mikasa still believed that deep inside him was the same person she had come to love. Inevitably, she was proven correct when Eren caused her to have the vision of them outside the log cabin shortly before his death. He couldn't leave things off without closure, and he knew that he was holding her back from moving on by telling her he didn't care for her. By giving her one final happy memory with him, even if it was fabricated, Eren meant to validate Mikasa's intuition.

Eren's true feelings were further shown when Eren and Armin met in a vision prior to the final battle. Eren has a moment of pure vulnerability with Armin, in which he cries and whines about how he never wants Mikasa to love anyone but him. Despite how tough and sure of himself he acted around the Yaegerists, Eren still just wanted to be loved and be with his friends. All the terrible things he did and said to both Mikasa and Armin were all just part of his scheme to become a martyr, but deep down he felt that he was acting in their best interests. Eren makes his true intentions explicitly clear when he tells Armin "I was doing whatever I could to push you two away."

Inevitably, Armin realizes the anguish Eren went through. Though he wishes things could go differently, he understands that Eren has foreseen every possibility and languished over it countless times, enduring his own psychological torture in the process. Armin accepts his own sins as well, telling his friend that they'll both spend eternity in Hell together. In this moment, Armin is acknowledging the fact that no evil action is better or worse than any other: at a certain point they're equally wrong. No matter how many people a person has killed, a killer is still a killer, and both chose the same path. In embracing his own role in making mistakes alongside Eren, Armin is able to forgive both Eren and himself, which is why he tells him "don't apologize to me. Apologize to Mikasa. She's the one you hurt with your nonsense."

The Deeper Meaning Behind Attack On Titan's Ending

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Because of the promise of endless war and the fact that Eren's actions had no truly lasting impact on the future, many fans have come to interpret AOT's ending as representative of a conservative, even fascist, morality. The Titans can be seen as a Hobbesian Leviathan: a means of staving off humanity's baser instincts with the threat of an insurmountable power. In that sense, the Titans will always come to be necessary in the future, because too much freedom only gives people the space to commit criminal acts. However, AOT's final message isn't just that humanity has an innate disposition towards conflict – there's another side to it. In fact, that's the true message of AOT: there is always another side to every conflict.

Going to one extreme or the other can only result in an equal reaction in the opposite direction. In this sense, the resultant war that persisted between the Eldians and the Marleyans long after the Battle of Heaven and Earth was entirely the fault of Eren and Ymir and the means through which they brought about that period of peace in the first place. Not all revolutionary acts are created equal: utilizing the most violent measures to enact peace will only hold out momentarily because the means of getting there will leave one side more hurt than the other. Once a new generation comes about that has forgotten the horrors of war and has been lied to by a history written by the winners, the conflict inevitably arises again as the truth slowly comes to light over time.

In war, no side is entirely good, and no side is entirely bad. The very nature of war is the decision to inflict harm on the other side which – as Armin recognizes – makes both sides wrong in the end. While each side has its soldiers, underneath those uniforms are just people who can make mistakes and do the wrong thing. Eren's major mistake was that he thought he could unify both sides through the shared hatred and anger associated with war, when in reality what was truly needed to unify them was a recognition of their shared humanity. The only reason Armin and Eren were able to reconcile in the end was because Eren was willing to share his all-too-human side with Armin.

AOT is a story of extremes: war and peace, friends and enemies, love and hatred, enslavement and freedom. It's a tale that sets out to show what happens when a person goes too far to either side of the spectrum. At the same time, AOT implies that the spectrum itself is inescapable: too much love becomes hatred, and the war to end all wars only leads to a fleeting kind of peace. The true tragedy of AOT is that there is no clear solution or means to definitely escape that cycle. As Hajime Isayama sees it, a peaceful ending is "not even believable. It's just not plausible in the world we're living in right now." That's because in the real world, as in the world of AOT, war continues. A civilization like Paradis can escape it for a time by building walls to shelter it from the outside world, but the Titans are bound to break through eventually.

Attack On Titan

TV-MA

Original title: Shingeki no Kyojin.
After his hometown is destroyed and his mother is killed, young Eren Jaeger vows to cleanse the earth of the giant humanoid Titans that have brought humanity to the brink of extinction in Attack on Titan.

Release Date

September 28, 2013

Main Genre

Animation

Seasons

4 Seasons