Attack on Titan ENDING Explained! | AOT Finale Timeline

what's going on people today we're breaking down the final ever episode of Attack on Titan in hopefully around 40 minutes or less along the way I'll be explaining certain key moments character motivations small details you might have missed and just My overall thoughts on the ending itself just before we dive into it though I should mention that one of my upcoming videos is a full updated recap of the alternate timeline where vvin got the Colossal Titan so if you don't want to miss that then remember to smash that sub button with notific on all right so the final final episode of Attack on sidon began with a flashback to 2,000 years ago when yumia was still just a slave for the eldian tribe at that moment in time she had no Titan powers and no hope of escape and there are two key reasons why this scene is important reason number one is that it gave us a rare insight into yia's motivations specifically her feelings about Freedom itself earlier this season we know that she initially had a pretty peaceful existence that was brutally taken away from from her and ever since then she's had no control over her own life however as she stared at the pigs in this scene we see her come to the realization that although she can't attain freedom for herself in this specific moment she at least had the power to Grant freedom to something else despite the obvious risk involved Yia freed these pigs simply because she had the chance to do it and that's why it's so interesting that when she had the chance to be free in this moment and in this moment on both occasions she chose to remain as a slave this leads us to the all important question why is it that someone who clearly values Freedom would willingly deny that same freedom for herself Zeke theorized it it's because there's something yumia couldn't let go of and Aaron confirmed that that thing was the love she had for King Fritz now this topic is definitely one of the stranger elements of the series but in my opinion the anime did a slightly better job of conveying why it happened in the first place when we look at the Manga version we see that yia's fascination with love it began when she saw this random couple getting mad married and from the way the chapter was drawn to me there was never anything about this couple that really stood out however when rewatching her backstory in the anime it finally became clear to me that yeah this wasn't just any random person when you look at the nose facial hair forehead wrinkles and pretty much everything this is clearly King fritz or I guess he was Chief Fritz at the time you might be wondering though why would it even matter if this was Fritz and to answer that question we have to look at things from yia's perspective on the day her Village was massacred was the one who led that operation so from her point of view this guy is just you know a cruel and violent person to then witness that same evil human displaying this kind of gentleness and affection it would understandably be a huge shock and it showed that when love is involved even a Savage like him can treat people nicely on top of that the wedding itself was an example of what happiness looks like which is something that Yia likely aspired to have as a slave who had no happiness no family and no nowhere to go even if she did somehow Escape King Fritz's love was the only thing in her mind that could potentially give her that happy life that's the sole reason why she returned to him even after achieving the power of the Titans since she thought that by being useful to him he'd eventually show her the same affection she saw from him on that day of course as we all know he never viewed her as anything more than just his slave but it was her desire to experience this affection from Fritz that kept her loyal to him even after after her own death we'll talk more about her mindset towards the end of the video but for now the main reason why this scene was significant is that it showed us that she's always valued freedom from the beginning and that it's the curse of love that kept her trapped in PS for 2,000 years also the second reason why it matters is that this is just a great example of the butterfly effect given that immediately after she freed the pigs the episode abruptly flashes forward to her standing on aon's founding Titan for me this contrast worked incredibly well while since it was directly showing us how a seemingly minor decision from 2,000 years ago has led to this insane series of events where now all life on Earth is getting trampled moving on to the alliance after Rina destroyed the fake Beast Titan in part three the group now realized that finding Zeke inside this massive pile of bones is virtually impossible as a result the quickest option to stop the rumbling would be to kill Aaron himself or at the very least blow his Titan to pieces and this is where the Colossal Titan comes in as Arman struggled with the idea of using his explosive power against his best friend he thinks to himself those who can't abandon anything can't change anything this was a direct reference to something he previously said about Irvin in season 1 cuz at the time the old Commander had he' effectively sacrificed hundreds of Scouts in his plan to capture the female Titan and although not everyone was cool with that Armen said that to change the world you have to be willing to sacrifice things that you care about given that Armen himself is now commander of the scouts and given that he's alive in anan's place this is the moment where he's kind of stepping into that type of role and beginning to accept that this might end with eron not surviving what I loved about this whole moment is that throughout the entire episode in fact every time someone alluded to the possibility of Aaron dying mik's reaction was always consistent like it was very clear that she was never on board with taking things that far which is one example of the parallels between Mikasa and Yia at the end of the day these are two characters who are both in love with genocidal maniacs and who would usually put their lives on the line to defend that Maniac regardless of the situation that being said in a perfect world yir would have had the courage to let King Fritz die on the day he was nearly assassinated but instead her love for him meant that she didn't have the strength to let it happen by comparison Mikasa is in a very similar situation in that the person she loves is being targeted by other people and just like Yia is ultimately her her decision whether he lives or dies what Yia wanted to see is someone who would make the difficult choice that she wasn't able to and in the process demonstrate that being in love doesn't necessarily mean being subservient to that person however in order to reach this end point Yia puts pressure on the alliance by summoning an Army of Ancient Titans as the name suggests these are Titan Shifters from the past some of whom you would have to assume we're in the great Titan war and there were a few designs here that I just wanted to highlight easily the best looking one for me at least was the RoboCop Warhammer Titan they ended up getting pummeled by rer but besides that the draw Titan with the rectangular Ice slots and the giant deer Beast Titan they were in my top five uh but it's just a shame we couldn't see more of the creatures shown in the opening for season to I mean I think that would have been the perfect payoff although to be fair I don't think Ryan would stand much chance against a freaking T-Rex now before we explain what's going on with Armen a quick word from today's sponsor War Thunder the free online game available on PlayStation Xbox and PC when it comes to vehicle combat War Thunder offers easily the most complete experience ever proven by the selection of over 2,000 tanks planes helicopters and warships personally one of my favorite things about this game when playing it on Playstation was aerial combat in particular the hyper realistic damage models that come with it of course every vehicle in the game is incredibly detailed by default but there are still a wide range of customization options including skins 3D decorations and these anime inspired body pillars to play War Thunder for free on PC or consoles be sure to click the link in my description and you'll be able to claim all of these free bonuses that you can see on screen and if you're a new player or even an existing player who hasn't played for 6 months or more you'll be able to claim all of these free bonuses now pretty soon after the ancient Titans appeared Armen gets violated by the aopi Titan which is a type of animal I think most of us probably wouldn't know about if it wasn't for this show and by swallowing him like this this it was a very calculated move by yir moments earlier Armen told the rest of the alliance to get away as he was planning to blow the place up and so by kidnapping him like this it forced the rest of them to stick around and try and fight to get him back when it comes to Peak though you have to respect that she really didn't want the hassle and early on she tries to avoid a big battle by just killing Aaron with dynamite sadly for her she got stopped by the ghost of Lara Tyber and from that point onwards the alliance really did struggle against this on slaugh of ancient Titans during the chaos we did get this heartfelt moment where Jean still acknowledges Riner as a member of the scouts and to me this was significant because even in previous Seasons when they were trying to kill each other there were a few times where it was kind of obvious that deep down Jean secretly did still care about him now that doesn't mean by itself that he forgives rer for the things he did but it does show you that the years they spent together wasn't just forgotten after the Warriors betrayed them and I guess this was him finally admitting that to his face regardless with the exception of Mikasa things weren't looking too good for the alliance until Falco swoops in to save them with his flying Titan his ability to fly in this finale shouldn't have been too much of a surprise for everyone considering the dreams he was having in part three but there were still a few small details that suddenly became relevant in this moment for example in episode 19 of the final season when Aaron is entering the PA Dimension he sees a vision of Falco's Titans soaring towards for alter which is where this final battle is taking place in hindsight we can now say that this Vision was a memory from the future and speaking of future Memories the next small detail comes straight from episode one of this season shortly after we were introduced to Falon for the first time he wakes up from a dream in which he says he was flying around with a sword while there were also Titans nearby that line about flying around with a sword was a bonus detail that was specifically added for the anime but it was never in the manga and it was directly hinting at this final battle where you have a bunch of Titans a bunch of people with swords and a flying Falon literally carrying them on his back finally the third Easter egg that was relevant to this came in episode two of the final season where General Calvi made a throwaway comment about how the marlean Army could use a Titan with wings moving on with Falco Annie and Gabby arriving at Fort Sala the alliance then splits into separate teams with one team having the job of saving Armen while the other had the job of blowing up Aaron's neck by this point the entire group except Mikasa had reluctantly accepted that to stop the rumbling Aaron has to die otherwise everything they've done up until now would be for nothing technically speaking there was also a third team here consisting of Levi who was injured and Gabby whose main superpower is of course her 100% accuracy as we already know the captain's main aim in being here was to fulfill his promise to Irvin by killing Zeke and the irony of the situation is that two times in the past Levi could have easily done it like this isn't a skill issue for him it's just that on both occasions he wanted to preserve the Beast Titan so that someone on the island could steal his power the problem now with this third attempt to kill Zeke is that after he was absorbed by the source of all living matter his body became a physical part of the founding Titan making him undetectable unless he chooses to reveal himself in a second we'll talk more about Zeke and his mental state but first Armen was busy having a breakdown inside of the PA's dimension one of the things I thought was funny about this scene was the huge contrast between his opinion and the captain's opinion on who should have been brought back to life and turned into the Colossal Titan just a couple minutes earlier in the episode Levi made a comment that he had no regrets about entrusting the future to Armen which may have been a reference to when he initially gave Armen the injection and told him not to make him regret it on the flip side Armen has said in the past that it was definitely the wrong choice and in this scene he Echoes that same sentiment believing that he hasn't repaid the second life he's been given after calming down though he does eventually realize that he's in the P Dimension and eventually finds Zeke quietly building a sand castle this is what brings us to Zeke's mental state because from the beginning he always believed that the existence of ens was pointless since around the world all they do is experience suffering or just cause suffering to others in the form of titans in his mind everyone would be better off if subjects of yir were just never born again and this ideology formed the entire basis of his euthanization plan however when Yia turned her back on him and joined up with Aaron instead it sent Zeke into this depressed state where now it seems like he's given up on the rest of humanity as well not just eldians from his New Perspective all life is effectively meaningless since from the beginning of time the goal of life has only been to survive and to multiply the biggest proof of this is the source of all living matter itself since although it can't seem to reproduce it uses other other living things to do the job on its behalf an example of what I mean by this is how even when yumia died the creature still managed to survive by attaching itself to her descendants and in turn the number of Titans kept multiplying that's why in the present day there are millions of alens around the world who in the right circumstances can be used as its own personal Army and this was all done in the name of survival Zeke's point was that being driven by this instinct to survive and multiply is meaningless and that it's time to let go of this natural instinct to survive that seems to motivate a lot of the things we do on a day-to-day basis on the flip side Army's belief is that life is given meaning by the small trivial moments that we sometimes enjoy and if you're an anime only I want you to know that you were robbed of this flashback of him feeding this tiny squirrel anyhow within the P Dimension alen finds this Leaf in the sand and throughout the episode this object kept manifesting itself as different things to different people in armen's case it appeared as a leaf because that symbol izes his most precious childhood memory of embracing Aaron and Mikasa towards the tree on the hill conversely physique it appeared as a baseball since that represents the games of catch he used to play with Tom SAA and despite having nothing to do with survival that game did give meaning to his life as well as a child all Zeke wanted was for gisha to show him a degree of like fatherly attention like all the other kids but instead all his dad cared about was turning him into the Messiah of the ens as a result these games were the only time a father figure gave him the quality time that he wanted and although catch by itself has no meaning Zeke admits that he would have been happy playing it forever just by saying this he's acknowledging armen's perspective that there's more to life than just survival and multiplication and this moment is when a bunch of Dead characters suddenly reappear in parts for the most part you can understand why most of these characters are here like the three former Warriors obviously have a connection to Zeke and would be against the rumbling but for Aaron Krueger I'm honestly not so sure this is a man who by his own admission has killed thousands of ens throughout his life and the only reason he took things that far was cuz he believed in the end it would lead to eldia being restored his goal and the goal of the other restorationist was to take back the founding Titan get revenge on Marley and bring back the eldian Empire so however evil the rumbling might be Aaron Jer is ticking all of those boxes that's why to me I don't really see why Krueger would help stop the rumbling at all gisher is slightly different given that he already said he didn't support taking things this far but Krueger he's the guy who was taking things super far already he was willingly sacrificing people to achieve this goal let me know what you think in the comments down below like I think all the other people here would help Arman and Zeke but Krueger is the one I'm just like you probably shouldn't be here now one thing that's worth mentioning is that before this scene we got a montage of Titans trampling different parts of the globe and this was interesting cuz it gave us our first real look into other foreign countries besides Marley in the Middle East in particular we saw London a couple of Asian cultures including what is potentially hiizu not to mention they showed the attack on Titan equivalent of the African continent by zooming in here you can see a group of tribes people watching on as the rumbling approaches them and scenes like this do help to humanize the rest of the world for example it's not like these tribes people were any kind of threat to the Island in fact like Historia said most of these people don't have any idea why they're being killed as an audience though because we barely know any people outside of Mary it can sometimes be difficult for us to empathize with characters who you never really see that's why this Montage was so important cuz it demonstrates the reality of the situation that the vast majority of people in the world are innocent and they don't really deserve this in the slightest as a side note one of the best creative choices of the finale was the whole black and white scene where only the mother and baby were colored in and I can't take any credit for finding this Easter egg but it does seem like the mother here who was falling off the cliff was the same woman that eron saw back in Marley when she was pregnant I think I just saw that on Twitter somewhere so I thought I'd mention it but yeah it's pretty that's a pretty amazing detail anyhow back at Fort Salter the alliance was once again on the brink of getting wiped out until berol and the other past Titans agreed to help stop the rumbling personally I would have loved if these has shown a little bit of Personality instead of just staring blankly and never saying anything cuz if you're burtal you have to get at least a few hits on Armen before listening to what he has to say regardless in the real world the Titans rally together to protect the alliance and this shot of Krueger breaking the armor Titans back this was great simply because he used the exact same finishing move as when he tore apart that Maran ship on top of that you had Tom saa's Ram Beast Titan making its first appearance and just like like how Zeke's Titan form was inspired by a childhood toy Tom's Beast Titan form was inspired by one of his son's stuffed animals a reasonable explanation for this is that we know yamir is the one who designs these Titans in the P Dimension and considering that she has full access to the memories of every eldian it's likely that she selects the design based on animals that have you know some kind of emotional significance to that person obviously this is just my theory or head Cannon whatever you want to call it um but I do think it makes a lot of sense moving on there was a moment where Gabby and Mikasa combined to free Armen from inside the aopi Titan while Zeke showed off his brand new cheeks made from Titan hardening in this sequence the Beast Titan was offering himself up as a sacrifice to stop the rumbling cuz it was already established that Aaron can't continue this massacre if he doesn't maintain contact with the Titan of Royal Blood having now realized that life isn't just a pointless game of survival and multiplication he takes a quick second to appreciate the weather cuz after his talk with arm I guess he learned to appreciate the smaller things in life that he was taking for granted that being said his New Perspective doesn't last for long as Captain Levi swoops in to decapitate him and it is ironic how when the moment finally came of the captain killing Zeke the two of them were genuinely on the same side here every time they clashed before there was obviously huge differences in what they were trying to achieve and what they were fighting for but in this case they share that overarching goal of stopping Aaron of course for Levi he gets the added bonus of fulfilling the promise he made to Irvin and by killing Zeke all of the wol Titans around the world immediately come to a stop technically speaking you can argue this is a plot hole given that back in season 2 Aaron was able to temporarily control an army of Titans even after Dino Fritz was killed and so if we follow that exact same logic then he should have been able to continue the rambling at least for a little bit after Zeke's death because you know that power of the founding Titan it lingers for a little bit longer however a Counterpoint to this is that I think we can all agree that if yamir wants the rumbling to stop then it's going to stop and by her allowing Zeke to switch sides which is what she did she let it happen it clearly shows that this is how she wants the events to play out when the Beast Titan died if we're being fully logical then yeah maybe Aaron could have kept the Titans Marching for a bit longer but at the end of the day yamir's aim is to force Mikasa into a specific situation and that situation only occurs when the rumbling stops here following the Titans coming to a standstill Dron detonates the explosives around aon's neck and in the process unleashes the source of all living matter just like when Gabby exposed this thing back in chagan it rushes forward trying to reconnect with Aaron and this Frame right here is easily one of my favorites from the episode can you imagine trying to explain this image to someone who's just started season 1 where would you even begin with this anyway as the alliance escapes on Falcon's back Armen detonates his nuke to to blow away this pile of bones this moment was especially notable for two reasons the first being that at the exact same time it was happening Historia was giving birth back on the island in case you've never read the Manga this scene of her giving birth was meant to take place before the events of the final episode so you have to wonder why was it moved to the finale and specifically why was it placed right after Armen blows up the founder there are several ways we can interpret this for example one explanation is that it's a tasteful reminder of how historian's influence indirectly brought them to this point four years ago it was because of her that Aaron first saw visions of the rumbling and of course he had no idea whether that future was avoidable then 2 years later when the island was given an alternative to the rumbling Aaron had to reject that plan because it involved Historia and her future kids all being turned into Titan Shifters in his words he didn't want her descendants to be bred and killed like livestock and he didn't want her joining this cycle of kids e in their parents in that sense the birth of this child represents one of his main motivations for doing the rumbling which is a future where Historia and her kids are free from this responsibility another interpretation is that this moment is meant to be a contrast between life and death cuz when Armen blew up the founding Titan he acknowledged there was a chance this could kill Aaron hence why he was saying goodbye that being said for plot reasons he was still alive uh but before we get to that there was a nice moment of the Warriors being reunited with their parents up until now they assumed their families had to be dead since Liberia was trampled and it's not like aliens are allowed to leave so to find their parents here A Million Miles Away in Fort Sala it's got to be one of the Hall of Fame coincidences alongside Armen sitting right next to Annie in part two for the GCE family specifically this reunion was a bit Bittersweet since they found out that one of their kids is now a giant bird and the other one got evaporated back in Shanta so yeah not the the best news meanwhile off in the distance Aaron generates a brand new Titan body which combines with his original founding titan head strategically speaking turning into a colossal was his best option to fight against Armen cuz we've already seen how badly his regular Titan form compares to a shifter of this size at the same time the source of all living matter only had one aim which was to survive and to do that it obviously needs to reconnect with its host body in fact Gabby even says right here that the rumbling might start again if Aaron makes contact with this giant worm which was an interesting thing to say considering that when the rumbling stopped Aaron was already in contact with the worm and it didn't make a difference so I think what this shows us is that without Zeke there is pretty much nothing that would have restarted the rumbling but it was still necessary for the alliance to believe there was a chance otherwise why would Mikasa kill him for that reason it was also necessary for Aaron to keep fighting against them cuz if he had just peacefully stayed in side of his titan head then in all likelihood the alliance would have left it alone and in in the worst case scenario they would have killed the source of all living matter or they would have tried to in that sense you can understand how all of this everything that's going on right now is basically just theater it's Aaron and yumia going through the motions all to manipulate other people into taking certain actions it's partly why later in the finale he admits to Armen that he's a slave to freedom because for the longest time he's been going through the motions also that the future he saw would eventually happen now like I was saying the source of all living matter desperately wanted to reconnect with Aaron but in this case Ryo was standing between them to deal with him the worm releases a gas similar to the gas that Zeke used in Rago and this substance was meant to turn every eldian in Fort Sala into a pure Titan the only eldians who were immune from this were either aans or Titan Shifters which meant that Gabby Connie and John were among the victims honestly this would have been the perfect set end off for these characters not that I wanted them to die but if their Journey had ended here it would have remained as like a permanent Goosebumps moment that had lasting consequences a couple of details I want to mention is that as they're about to transform Connie jokingly mentions that this is all Johan's fault because in season 1 it was him who influenced everyone to join the scouts up until then he'd been pretty dead set on having a kushy life in the military police but Marco believed that Jean could be a leader on the actual Battlefield on the night they then cremated Marco's corpse his death had a huge impact on Jean's decision to join the scouts and by extension it brought him and Connie to this moment the second detail about this scene that might have been easy to miss is that as the smoke fills up for Sala Annie's dad was specifically asked if he hurt his leg if we look into Annie's backstory she was the one who gave him this lifelong injury and what's funny is that moments after he's asked this question she appears in front of him for the first time in 9 years unfortunately the reunion gets interrupted when all of the Normy aliens get titanized leading us to one of the best moments in the entire finale this scene of the Warriors all crying and screaming as they're mobbed by Titan versions of their own parents there was a level of like chaos and hopelessness here that really did feel like the end of the world what follows this is arguably the most confusing sequence of the episode so let's break it down step by step to understand what's going on firstly if we flash back to when the alliance were traveling to Oda that time period is when Aaron individually said goodbye to each of his friends as you can see here one of those friends was Armen but he also separately had conversations with Connie Jean Rina and Annie that we never got to see what's important here is that after each conversation he erased each of their memories knowing that once he eventually dies the memories would likely return however when it comes to Mikasa it was impossible to do things this way since Grandpa aiman confirmed a long time ago that aimin can't have their memories erased as a consequence Aaron had to wait until these final chaotic scenes to have a moment with her and there's an interesting reason why he chose this environment although it's true that he never spoke to Mikasa when she was traveling to Oda at the very least it seems like either Aaron or Yia were aware of what she was thinking at that time the reason I say that is cuz when she was on the boat Mikasa wondered to herself how her life would be different if she admitted her feelings for him during their first trip to Marley on that trip Aaron was having a moral crisis inside of his own head and when he asked her about her feelings for him it's because in this moment he was looking for a way out an excuse to not follow the future he saw if Mikasa had answered differently and not family zoned him then this could have been their life where they abandoned everything to spend his final four years in peace now despite the fact that this didn't end up happening in the real world the p Dimension offered them a unique chance to experience it like we saw with Zeke it is possible to spend what feels like years in here even though only a few seconds have passed in reality and there is evidence to suggest that this is what happens to Mikasa for example in this scene where she hugs Aaron she mentions how they previously agreed that they wouldn't speak about the day they ran away because she's an aen it's not like Aaron could have altered her mind and you know implanted some kind of fake conversation clearly they did actually speak before this confirms that they've been in pars for longer than what we see in this episode with Aaron outright saying that running away to the mountains was her idea assuming that's true then they've been here in the PA's dimension for at least 2 months since this moment with the PA's Dimension offering Miker a chance to redo her decision whether they then spent four entire years in PA is definitely Up For Debate but at the very least they were here long enough for her to be happy about the situation it's relevant to remember that just minutes earlier in the real world Mikasa was super depressed cuz she thought that Aaron had died and that their final conversation was him saying how much he hated her to go from feeling like that to this where they can spend all this time together in the P Dimension as an actual romantic couple this is what enabled her to get the closure she needed one great thing about this entire sequence besides the Colossal fight which looked amazing one great thing is the way mik's Consciousness flickered in between the dream and reality the best example of this is when Aaron tells her imp pause to throw the scarf away once he dies to which she replies in the real world by saying she can't do it from mik's point of view the scarf represents her connection with Aaron and her love for him and the time they spent together in pars only solidified that feeling then when she swoops in to decapitate him it coincides with his death in the PA's Dimension as in that reality four years had gone by and his body was shutting down due to the curse of yir during the scene where he dies in the past Dimension you probably notice that we've already seen this moment back in part three in case you may have forgotten this scene in part three was a dream that young Aaron had while sleeping under the tree once he wakes up from that dream the first thing he says is what am I doing here followed by him revealing that he had a really long dream that he's now forgotten one way of interpreting this is that Aaron's Consciousness is stuck in some kind of endless time Loop in which he constantly relives his own traumatic life or he just reincar wanted as a seagull whichever you prefer I honestly don't mind anyway switching over to Yia after 2,000 years this is exactly what she wanted to see by Mikasa refusing to let go of her love for Aaron but at the same time killing him for the greater good it showed that you don't have to blindly obey someone just because you're in love with them what yamia wanted to know is that you can still love that person even if you reject what they tell you to do and mik's action showed her that she's free to make her own decisions regardless of what she felt the king Fritz on top of that with Aaron being dead the source of all living matter didn't have a host body to return to and so it vanishes Up in Smoke although admittedly this was a lot clearer in the Manga version where you actually like see it disappearing but yeah after aon's death it didn't have anywhere to go and so it just died I guess off screen consequently with the source of all Titan Powers being destroyed and with yir being freed the power of the Titans itself disappears from the world that's why all the Titan shifters and pure Titans reverted back into their human form with the only exception to this being the wall Titans who I guess we can assume just were never humans in the first place either that or you have a bunch of naked people hiding behind all this smoke I mean why would they be naked I don't exactly know but the point is there should be no one there now before we get into my thoughts on the ending especially the time skip scenes I just wanted to highlight a couple things from Aaron's final conversation with Armen that like I said took place a day before this final battle in this finale he admits that he thought he was doing the rumbling to protect his friends but because he isn't The Mastermind that he might have appeared to be things still ended up with Sasha and Hani dying also before he gained y's power he didn't actually know if any of his friends would survive the war this led to him admitting that his primary motivation was to destroy everything so we could see this sight of an uninhabited World by the way just to clear up any confusion about this line where he says I want to do that what he's basically saying here is that he doesn't understand why he's always had the desire to Chase Freedom because when we look at the first episode 99% of people inside the walls were happy to live inside the walls like Aaron was very much an outlier he's a weirdo most people were happy with their lives and it's only people like Aaron and Armen who were even curious about what lies beond the wall so when Aaron says I don't know why I wanted to do this it's just him saying that he doesn't know why this is in his name nature he doesn't know why he's different from most other people anyway the other thing from his conversation with Arman that I thought was worth mentioning was the scene where he says that his head is just a total mess because the effect of the founding Titan power means that from his point of view there is no past or future everything just happens at the same time the side effect of him experiencing the flow of time in this way is that events that have happened in the past they have to happen like he can't change them in any way and one of those events was the moment where D Fritz eats his mother in this scene he admits to Armen that effectively he was the one who made it happen because as we saw in in the very beginning of season 4 there was a moment there where Dino Fritz could have eaten beral instead in fact I think in any other situation there would have been nothing stopping her she would have just gone for him she would have eaten him and she would have become the new Colossal Titan however that obviously would have broken the timeline because everything would have just changed if that had happened and because of the way Aaron experiences things he was the one who influenced dinitz and made her walk past him and towards his mother and by doing that it sent the whole events of this series in motion and gave Aaron the anger he needed to you know reach this point in that way it could be said that Aaron killed his own mother but the truth is that she probably would have been eaten anyway if it wasn't Dina Fritz it would have been another Titan because you know the whole area was infested with Titans and her legs were broken she couldn't have run so there are just too many factors going on here for us to say Aon is solely respons responsible because ultimately she would have been eaten by someone no matter what finally the last thing from this conversation that was worth highlighting is aon's emotional maturity and I know that sounds like a joke because he was breaking down crying and all that stuff but he is actually being incredibly emotionally mature when we contrast this scene where he Reveals His true feelings and this scene where he is essentially lying in the scene on the left he tells Armen that he doesn't want Mikasa to forget about him for 10 years at least like that is his true feeling but went face with Mikasa for the last time that's not what he tells her he tells her to throw the scarf away and forget about him now what this shows is that Aaron despite often acting like a child he is emotionally mature because if he wanted to be selfish he could have told her the truth that he wants her to keep thinking about him but he didn't do that he was doing everything to help Mikasa kill him and to help Mikasa move on after he's dead and the ability to not think of himself and instead think of the person he loves and how this is all going to impact her after he's gone that is a very emotionally mature thing because he's putting her feelings above his own also this might be a parallel with eron's mother because when she was trapped under that house she told them to run away but then when they actually left she was she said don't go so the two situations do have some similarities because it's more about protecting the other person and so it ends up being a nice parallel anyways after Armen and Aaron say goodbye to each other the anime flashes back to the present day where the power of the Titans has now officially disappeared as a direct consequence of this the memories that were previously removed by Aaron have now returned to everyone and although we didn't get to see it he did say goodbye to each of the people who I already mentioned it's also heavily implied that the past Dimension itself has collapsed which is why we see the vestages of Irvin Hani and so many other Scouts all saying goodbye to Levi and we also see Sasha saying goodbye to Connie and John following this Mikasa decides to bring eron's head back to the island to give him a proper burial although how she exactly does that I mean Marley has mostly been trampled so I doubt she could have taken the train back to Liberia cuz you know the train tracks are probably Rubble by now but I don't know honestly let me know in the comments if you have a solid idea for how she got back home uh cuz yeah I don't really see how she did that also just like Aaron wanted Armen takes responsibility for stopping him and the whole idea behind this was that sort of like the Tyber family Armen and John and the rest of them they would become Heroes of the world who stopped Aaron from destroying everything this moment right here was the chance for the ending to go super dark though because could you imagine if the Maran soldiers had just killed all the eldians here regardless I mean that could have happened you know like if we're being realistic secretary Müller was the only person who had the authority to decide if the ens lived or died here and you know he seems like quite a tolerant person so he let it slide but if that was someone else I think most Marans in that situation would have probably just given the order to Massacre the ens here especially after you know everything that had happened but yeah I mean they got lucky cuz secretary Miller seems to be a really nice guy and he lets them live and in doing that they are allowed to become ambassadors 3 years later for the rest of the world during that 3year time skip eldia becomes a highly militarized country that can't rely on Titans anymore so their m thing is guns hence the new flag and you know a lot of people on the island are just going with the flow like hitch and it seems like Ki is back on the island and working with the JIS which is that is kind of a big surprise considering how they treated her towards the end I'm not really sure what her end game is here exactly um but if we look in the background it is quite a multicultural Alliance standing behind Historia if I had to guess this is possible that after Aon did the rumbling and during those three years Historia and kiomi have somehow managed to get other nations on their side because there is a side here it's Elia versus everyone else and I guess if certain countries perceive Elder as being more prepared in the fight that's about to come then they might decide to join that alliance with eldia so that their countries don't get victimized in the future this Theory becomes even more believable when we compare the anime ending to the manga ending because in the end of the manga within 3 years there were certain countries that had pretty much much been rebuilt to the way they were before U and the best example of that is this panel right here where we see on yapan seemingly going to work we see Falco in a turtleneck without any problems in the world and we see what looks like a very builtup modern looking City now when we contrast this with the anime ending we don't see anything like this at best in the outside world all we see are refugee camps and basically areas of the planet that need to be rebuilt we don't see any anything that looks modern so if we look at the anime ending only you would believe that the rest of the world is a lot weaker compared to the island in fact during Aaron's final conversation with Armen he says to him the world outside the walls drops to the same level of civilization as parade now he could be referring to population size but I don't think that's the case I think what he means is that the remaining Tech that exists outside the island it doesn't surpass what currently exists on parody that would certainly explain why certain countries would want to join forces with the island even after what Aaron did um but let me know your thoughts on this in the comments down below now one of the best moments from this time skip scene that I think was intentional was when Gabby and Falon were planting this tree because it has a secret meaning that relates to something that Sasha's dad said earlier in the season back then Sasha's dad said that the world is a great big Forest where everyone's fighting for their life and he implied that Sasha was killed because she stayed in that forest for too long in G case he said that it was the responsibility of adults like him to make sure that kids like this stay out of the forest and he was talking about a metaphorical Forest where people kill each other and get killed themselves and now 3 years after that Gabby and Falco are planting a literal Forest having now escaped from that metaphorical Forest of violence thanks to the Titan Powers disappearing even though it does seem like a little bit of a reach I do think that this was intentional um because it's just too perfect for them to be planted an actual Forest having gone out of the metaphorical Forest that he was talking about I I stand by this I think this was definitely an intentional detail a couple other details were yelling her crying when she saw the baseball and gloves because it obviously reminds her of zek and Levi handing out candy to the refugee kids and you know when he saw this lollipop it instantly reminded him of his first trip to Marley when he saw the clown and I guess in this scene he did look a bit sad and I'm pretty sure the reason for this is that this moment when he first met the clown it's a time when the scouts were hopeful they believed that peace was still possible and that they could reach some kind of agreement and understanding with their enemies and so I think that's what he's reminded of when he looks at this thing and it's why he kind of like closes his eyes and looks a little bit upset because naturally things didn't go the peaceful way they wanted them to go at that particular time in their lives finally back on the island Mikasa was just chilling by aon's grave which I imagine she's here quite often and this was the day that Armen Annie and the rest of the alliance were arriving back to Elia for the first time in 3 years what's interesting is that in that time despite killing Aaron Mikasa still hasn't gotten over his death and I think this actually serves to make what she did that much more powerful the fact she was willing to prioritize the rest of the world over him even though she loves him this deeply that's the whole reason why y waited 2,000 years to see it so what Mikasa still being love with him shows us is that yes her feelings for him were always real and her love was so intense that it still persists even after she kills him even after 3 years even after decades she's still in love with him which only makes her decision to kill him that much more unbelievable as the episode then comes to an end a bird swoops down to fix her scarf which is something that Aaron himself had promised to do to fix her scarf forever honestly this is probably a coincidence although there is one thing that I would say Norse mythology has had a huge impact on this series whether it's the paths tree aka the world tree whether it's yir being the first giant whether it's the nine Realms and the nine Titans so there's a lot of parallels here and one thing that happens in Norse mythology is that Odin who's essentially you know the most powerful character he has the ability to see the world through his Birds I think they're Ravens or crows he can see the world through their eyes so based on all the other connections to Norse mythology that exist in this series I wouldn't say it's impossible that eron is either controlling this bird or seeing the world through this bird but I also don't think there's meant to be a 100% definitive answer now moving on to the post-credit scenes we got to see shagan's Evolution over the course of hundreds if not thousands of years and if you pause at certain parts there are major historical events going on and also conclusion iions to certain characters for example the first thing that caught my attention was the arrival of Armen and the rest of the ambassadors as they go to visit eron's grave presumably on the day they arrived or not long after that and this was the final time we saw a bunch of characters I mean Connie Rina Peak Annie they definitely don't show up in any of the other post credit scenes Mikasa and Armen do and Jean potentially does but I know this is an area of debate but this was the final appearance of of at a minimum four major characters but possibly five following that a lot of time passes I would think 10 years at least and Mikus shows up to eron's grave with a man now the anime doesn't really make it clear at all who this man is but I know a lot of you watching would have seen the manga panel where it does seem from the hairstyle that if it's any character we know it would probably be Jean now while there is no definitive answer in the anime version I would say one thing Jean is the only person possibly in the world who would be okay with his wife or girlfriend still being completely obsessed with her dead ex-boyfriend because ultimately Jean's been there from the beginning he knows how Mikasa feels about Aaron and he I guess he wouldn't expect her to forget him whereas any other man I'm not sure if anyone else would be willing to put up with this this constant eron Obsession that never goes away so for that reason just because Ron is a bit um flexible about the situation I think yeah it probably is him like if we're talking about percentages here I would say like it's 70% going to be him but honestly if it's a random person like Historia husband then that's fine too but I'm just saying what I think is the most likely scenario decades later we then see that Shanina is a lot more built up and they do have cars on the island now and Mikasa an old version of Mikasa visits Erin's grave with her extended family now after looking zooming in closely on this we see what is probably mik's adult daughter as and one grandchild and over here we see a couple who I assume at least one of these two people are one of mik's kids um whether it's the guy or the girl we have absolutely no clue but they do have three kids so that's two daughters on the left and one son on the right and if this really is Mikasa and Jean as a couple over here then collectively they have four grandkids two grandsons and two granddaughters sometime after this Mikasa then dies but regardless of what she died from the fact is that she lived a long whole life just like Aaron asked her to do but what she didn't do is throw the scarf away she held on to it for her entire life and in death by now you think she'd at least have like a second scarf maybe one with a horse on it or something like that um but no I guess till the end she really did just care about Aaron and I guess whatever her and her new husband had it it just could never Eclipse how she felt for him what follows this is a bunch of super fast moving scenes one of which includes Armen visiting the grave is an old man and I'm pretty sure this is Armen like he's old he's got the blonde hair who else is this going to be rher no this is Armen for sure also right after Arman appears we see these kids racing each other towards the tree on the hill which I guess is meant to be like a proper full circle moment like it's just meant to be a nice touch as the years then go by shagan becomes a super industrial place and it progresses so amazingly that it actually catches up with our modern civilization what I never expected though was that the anime would show things advancing beyond that point because in the Manga version the island basically reached our modern civilization and then got destroyed but here it goes so far beyond that like this is pretty much sci-fi in fact one of my favorite shows right now besides anime and stuff one of my favorite shows is a show called Foundation which is set like tens of thousands of years in the future when humans have like moved out into other solar systems and have pretty much forgotten that they came from Earth and this city that I see right here in Shanina is easily a city that could exist in that show like things have progressed this far this sci-fi looking city was so far in the future that even though it does get nuked in the end we can't honestly say that this is because of the rambling there is an unbelievable amount of world events that could have happened in between this point and this point so many things that would be more fresh in the mind of the people who were living in this sci-fi world I honestly don't think we can say this is because of the rumbling I think it's just meant to show that the cycle of of violence it will continue no matter what because like Irvin said humans will always have conflict with each other until there's only one person left anyhow sometime after shagan gets nuked into Oblivion there is this moment where we see a young boy who's clearly on a journey with his dog and he it looks like he knows where he's going like he's not just wandering aimlessly he knows he's looking for the tree on the hill where where Aaron was buried and that made me wonder a little bit like is there a story here like why is he seeking out this tree which is now you know after all these years it's basically become the original tree that yir fell into it looks basically exactly the same and there are a couple implications of this for example did the source of all living matter somehow survive like was there a piece of it inside of Erin's head potentially it is interesting to think about because like Zeke was saying life always finds a way to adapt and survive and this tree is Testament to that somehow the source of all living mastera or something like that has somehow managed to restart this whole thing again what's nice about this situation though is that unlike Yia who was being chased by dogs and only ran into the tree because she needed a place to hide from being killed this boy is obviously a lot different he's seeking out the tree he's looking for it it kind of makes me think that even if him and the dog do fall down into there and even if they were to gain some kind of power it might not be a destructive power like the Titans because yumia you know the whole reason why she became a Titan was because she wanted to escape death that's the way Zeke put it she was trying to escape death and was given an immortal body that helped her Live Forever This Boy's intentions I would imagine are slightly different from that she I doubt he's trying to escape death um so the power that he might end up with it might not be exactly the same overall I do like this ending it is quite open-ended but at the same time you feel like you've been told everything you need to know like we don't actually need to see this boy transforming or anything like that um so it was a really good way to wrap up the series in terms of my thoughts on this series as a whole I mean obviously I wouldn't have made a 100 videos on Attack on Titan if I didn't already love Attack on Titan so even if this ending was trash which it wasn't it wouldn't have changed my thoughts on the overall Series this is a series that was that is a masterpiece I mean I think from season one the best thing about this was the mystery he hid information from us in a genius way where every time something was revealed it was shocking but then it made sense and as we progressed further and further you know and we learned more and more about Royal Blood and Marley and gish's true identity and all these other things it all fits together like a perfect puzzle and this final episode was that last piece and it does feel incredibly satisfying now that that piece has been put in its place and the puzzle is complete however my biggest criticism of the series is that given that the ending is so heavily dependent on mikasa's love for Aaron and Aaron's love for Mikasa it only makes sense that it should have been developed more than it was because I think in retrospect we can say that it was always obvious that she liked him but at certain points I also felt like she thought she was his mother or his sister she acted a lot like that on certain occasions so it wasn't a 100% clear that there was a romantic connection there and I think that's the one thing that could have been improved if there was just a few more scenes of them having that spark or chemistry that would have really sold the ending but it is what it is by the way if you've made it this far then don't forget that my updated version of the alternate timeline will be dropping relatively soon probably within the next one or 2 weeks so if you don't want to miss it then remember to subscribe with notifications on just before we the video don't forget to download War Thunder for free by clicking my link in the description and you'll get 100,000 silver a 50% booster in your rewards a body pillow decoration and other parks for an entire week

Channel: Turtle Quirk

Views: 84,251

Keywords: Attack on Titan, eren, AOT, yaegerists, Attack on Titan the final season, Attack on Titan season 4, aot s4 episode 20, memories of the future, historia, beast titan, zeke, zeke’s plan, eren zeke, levi zeke, eren’s plan, mikasa, Titan, titan shifter, hizuru, future memories, Zeke jaeger, new titan, Yelena, pieck, AOT s4, AOT season 4, levi vs the beast titan, shingeki no kyojin, eren season 4, jaegerists, eren war, paradis, eren warhammer, falco titan, final episode, aot part 4

Id: p5ReoLWc0HI

Length: 52min 38sec (3158 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 09 2024