This review is a long explanation & interpretation for Eren as a character and the story itself. 
It’s kinda amazing how little people actually understood the story, but I’m going to explain now why Eren actually did the rumbling, what makes him a special character and this ending great. 

Hey maybe you already understood it, but I’m convinced most people that think the ending is bad don’t understand it. So here goes. 


When Eren was a child, we’re shown pretty quickly he’s naturally kinda deranged. He’s completely fine with killing if he deems it justified, killing Mikasa’s captors was the right thing to do I’d say, but that’s not my point. 

It doesn’t affect him mentally AT ALL, the taking of anothers life didn’t phase him even one small bit, just because he decided it was okay for them to die, he didn’t feel anything snuffing out the light of other humans. 

So Eren is not normal, that’s out of the way. We also learn eventually that before Armin showed him that book, he was just living out dull days. He felt meaningless, didn’t care about freedom, he was just bored. Thinking “I hope something interesting happens today” when Armin showed up with that book. 

Now what Armin found in that book was excitement and wonder at the prospects of these landscapes they don’t get to see within the walls, exploring them would be amazing…

What did Eren find within this book? The beginning of the whole story. 

He found out within this book that there were amazing places he wasn’t allowed to go because of oppressors taking away his freedom to do so. 

This is where he realised he wasn’t free. 

As we see, he becomes OBSESSED with freedom for the rest of the series. He didn’t get positive ideas from that book, he just got ideas full of hate, he didn’t care about the landscapes that much, he just HATED not being free to go to them. 

He moves forward throughout the story with the motivation to kill all the titans, all his oppressors so he’ll finally have his free outside world he always wanted. 

He even kills his own mom in this final episode with time travel so that the young him will have the extra motivation to do everything needed to lead down the timeline of his plan - The Rumbling 

I skipped a step, let’s back up. 

Fast forward to the end of season 3 when they find out humanity outside the walls is alive, well, and hates everyone within the walls.

When Eren finds out through his father’s memories that the outside world is just as bad as the one within the walls he wanted to leave (Grisha leaves Liberio’s walls, for this oppressors murder his sister) 

And then when they finally reach the sea, what they’ve always wanted. 

Armin is very happy experiencing his lifelong dream, but Eren seems…disappointed? 

He asks “If we kill all the people across the sea, will we finally be free?” 

By now his future abilities had already been unlocked, everything is already set in motion for The Rumbling. 

He was disappointed when he found out the outside world was just as bad as the one inside the walls and also disappointed that it was full of humans, not titans. 

Why? because he knows what’s going to happen. He knows what HAS to happen. 

To get the freedom he always wanted, to wipe all his oppressors away, to wipe the whole outside world clean so that he can finally have the free one he always wanted, there’s only one way. 

To make the The Rumbling happen, to have the sheer power to actually flatten everything outside those walls, to “wipe it all away” he needs to do ANYTHING required to make The Rumbling happen. Even genocide.

So he does as we see, absolutely anything, he manipulates history once he has both the attack titan and founding abilities, even sending that titan to kill his mom so that young him will go down the path needed for The Rumbling. 

No matter what, he’ll just keep moving forward towards his freedom. He hates killing all those innocents, doing all the horrible things for his plan, but he just wants the rumbling THAT bad. 

This is the freedom he has always wanted since he was a kid, to wipe away every last oppressor outside the walls and have his free world, because he was born into this world, it’s his birthright to be able to walk across this world as he pleases. 

Which leads to that iconic moment with child Eren in the sky as he’s finally achieving it 

“This…is freedom!” 

…
“If we kill all the people across the sea, will we finally be free?” 
Eren did The Rumbling for himself, not for his friends, not for the island, not for any greater good. He did it because it was the only way to fulfill that desire of freedom he always wanted. 

He did it because he wanted to, so very badly. 

I usually don’t use this defence for stuff, but people who hated Attack on Titan’s ending *quite literally* just didn’t understand it. 


Now those are his desires but there’s another side to factor in aswell, he’s a “slave to freedom” because he’s forced to follow out the predetermined timeline he saw with the attack and founding titan’s abilities, towards the end both of those powers are working in unison and his brain is completely jumbled, experiencing every second of every possible timeline at the same time, he has no control and there’s lots of paradoxical elements to how it all works, but basically even his desire for freedom didn’t come from a place of freedom, he was always a slave to the predetermined outcome. 

At the same time, he didn’t *want* to go down another path. He was forced to want it so very badly. It was his destiny so to speak. 


The Ending

I don’t think there is actually any other ending that could’ve happened, as I’ve explained this is what literally the entire story has been pointing towards from the *very* start. 

I’ve never seen such a largescale misinterpretation of an ending before man like you would actually think it’s bad based on what people say, but no it’s just a wide misinterpretation from nearly the whole anime community. 

This is the ending that encapsulates what the entire story is about. 

It’s satisfying, there’s some small plotholes and stuff but way too much great stuff to outweigh the nitpicky issues. 

The thing is, this is a great character driven ending, there are some plotholes and things left unexplained, but you’re just simply not supposed to get caught up in all that. 

It’s not a crime against humanity to leave some things open to interpretation okay?! Just enjoy this emotional last ride with the characters and you’ll realise that even though it doesn’t have some grandiose legendary plot like earlier in the series, that doesn’t matter. 

This is the end, the end of all of that. This is where all our beloved characters reach masterful conclusions and you’re supposed to try and connect with it on an emotional level. Is it really so bad to have a character driven ending? 


People think Eren’s love for Mikasa wasn’t setup at all and that he never shows an ounce of interest for her romanticly in the whole series, so where is it coming from? I thought this too, but now I’m debunking it. 

He is quite literally just the clueless guy archetype when it comes to love. That’s it. I realised this when reading the manga and on that celebratory night before the Return to Shiganshina, They show a moment where all the characters are disappointed and amazed by how clueless Marlo is to Hitch’s love, and the ONLY character to stand up and say “what are you guys sighing about? I think Marlo is completely valid in this situation” is fucking Eren. 

After this link is made between the two, we later see Marlo realise his love for Hitch and he wants to be with her, RIGHT before his death. The exact same situation as Eren. 

So Eren simply being clueless to his own love and realising it at the end was foreshadowed for ages. 

People think Armin has character assassination in his talk with Eren because in the manga the author made a simple writing mistake where Armin says “thank you for becoming a mass murderer for our sake” the author directly corrected this in the anime and the whole conversation is much better. 

Their final conversation in the anime is perfect, it’s about Armin acknowledging his own terrible sins (colossal genocide of Marley) and essentially Armin is trying to bear/take on some of the weight Eren is carrying, he’s comforting Eren one last time by joining him in guilt, basically telling him “you’re not the only one who’s done terrible stuff” because Eren is obviously distraught at this time by everything he’s done. 

It also fits in line with what Armin’s whole character was about. 

That no single person can be ultimately good or bad, and that they may be good to one set of people but bad to another. 

Armin is seen as good to us, the reader for basically the whole series while sprinkling in moments that show us how bad he can be to others (tormenting Bertholdt with mentions of Annie’s fake torture) (Colossal genocide of Liberio) and despite these moments as the viewer he’s still a “good person” in our eyes, and this ending bluntly slaps us in the face and says “Armin has actually done some pretty terrible things, he’s not a ‘good person’ and he would be a hypocrite to call himself one while scolding Eren” 

Now that I understand it, it’s a really touching final moment between the two brothers, and Armin’s character as a whole. 

I think all the characters get great endings like this, but now that i’ve talked about the main trio let’s move on to the plotholes and nitpicks with the ending. 

Plotholes and Nitpicks

Yes the twists at the end aren’t as meticulously set up as the twists we got earlier in the series.

Ymir loved Fritz for literally no reason at all, he was just evil to her that was it, no manipulation, no nothing just evil to her and she loved him for it apparently. Stockholm syndrome does not work like that. 
There’s no universe where Fritz’ behaviour produces the love emotion in someone. That shit would produce the most vile and evil hatred and lust for revenge, not love. 

Why did Ymir choose Mikasa? something pretty important? well we can think of our own headcanons sure, but the actual explanation? “only Ymir knows that” ??? 


Eren… killed his own mother. This does feel like a shock value twist that was unnecessary but it did serve a purpose to the narrative as I explained earlier, to show how how far he would go to cause the rumbling. 

The whole point of that moment though is how the indoctrination of children into hatred and persecution of other groups of people leads to the cycle continuing now in Eren Jaeger who just had his mother killed at the hands of the Marleyans.

But if Eren was actually the one to kill her, that kinda ruins those themes. They’re still present in other aspects of the story but that main one is kinda screwed. 

Maybe not completely because even if Eren’s mom didn’t die, lots of others did so maybe the themes still apply but they wouldn’t apply to Eren who is the protagonist of this story the themes are centered around. Idk. 

Then there’s the quite unbelievable outcome of The Battle of Heaven and Earth, where no one dies even though they’re fighting endless previous titan shifters with a very small amount of people, and no one dies?  


Still a great ending though. it just feels more disappointing than it normally would be because of the contrast to the rest of the series writing level. 


And then… a very long time later, Paradis is presumably destroyed, some people say this is another thing that ruins the story because if Paradis is destroyed, what the fuck did all our beloved Scouts give their hearts for? Now listen, it’s like 20,000 damn years that go by, the society is all futuristic and shit, and that is a really long time. 

The Scouts gave their lives for 20,000 years of peace, I would say that’s worth it. 

And it’s more realistic that EVENTUALLY long after any of our characters actions could have effect, conflict will return. Instead of a fairytale ending where conflict is completely eradicated and everyone lives in peace, it shows that no matter what, eventually, people will fight. As that is the human condition. 

Paradis appears to be in ruins, and a kid curiously walks into a big tree that seems to lead somewhere inside. 

It’s the same tree that Ymir had found (i think?) it’s pretty evident that this is hinting the titan powers will come back, but will it all go the same? when Ymir stumbled upon this tree she was being persecuted as a slave, viewed as a lesser lifeform. 

But when this new kid finds it, it’s peaceful. He enters out of wonder and curiosity. 

Maybe the cycle will continue, but it doesn’t have to be the exact same. 

All we can deduce is that in one way or another, millions more new people will have to tackle with the issue of titan’s existence, the same way the people in our story did. 

Will someone down the line ultimately lead the world to a better tomorrow instead of selfish genocide? Will they triumph in that regard instead of becoming another cautionary tale? We’ll never know, and it doesn’t really matter. 

What matters is that we got a beautiful story to enjoy called Attack on Titan. 