Bloody hell, “The Final Season: The Final Chapters Part 1”? Really? Well, agonisingly slow release schedule aside we’ve reached the final chunk of the Final Season that’s not actually the finale, so next time we can actually put this series to bed. This one hour special was very good though, I think if you end up watching the series after its finished you’ll probably think very highly of the Final Season, not realising it was so slowly rolled out. So let’s take a look at the penultimate part of the Attack on Titan story, shall we?
I think the highlight of the episode is its uncompromising first 10 minutes as Eren and his massive army of Rumbling Wall Titans literally crush the entire city of Liberio and most of its people under their feet, with a flashback of Eren talking to young Liberio child Ramzi and breaking down into tears saying that he knows he’ll return to the city one day to kill everyone and hates the fact that he won’t stop himself because he genuinely feels it’s the right thing to do. That’s some interesting layers to our protagonist-come-antagonist and I love it. Such a genuinely interesting character.
Everyone remembers Levi is still alive due to being too damn popular.
We then cut to our remaining heroes from the Island, including Armin reminiscing about Eren as a child and then finally, sort-of discussing his feelings towards Annie with her. This leads to everyone arriving at Odiha to try and get the “Flying Boat” operational in time to catch up with Eren and while they’re doing that we get some other loose end tying up as Levi wakes up and helps interrogate Yelena, Annie admits she’s lost the will to fight and Reiner apologises to her about forcing their mission through at the start of all this and asks her to look after Gabi and Falco, leaving them all to get on a boat and getting them out of the way (for now). Sadly just as things are looking up Floch reappears, shoots at them and gets killed for it but he hit the fuel tanks which begins to leak, which is followed shortly by the sound of thousands of gigantic footsteps…
Honestly it’s a pretty exciting hour, I just wish I didn’t have to wait until autumn to get the actual finale!
Overall Thoughts:
I’d love to go back to when I was first watching the first season, show me this picture and say “this is what Eren ends up like” and then waiting for my reaction.
Attack on Titan’s penultimate hour long special managed to wipe away my initial feeling of mockery at how they really should have called the previous two “parts” of the Final Season actual Seasons so the naming convention didn’t look so stupid by delivering a really exciting chunk of the story with some great shades of grey being thrown around on all sides, just how we like it. Looking forward to the actual, actual, actual finale towards the end of the year!
In order to buy some time classic Titan-loving character Hange heads off to try and slow the Titans down, putting Armin in charge and making sure to say goodbye to Levi too. She soon joins the many other characters in Attack on Titan heaven…literally in a scene where she wakes up to see all the Scout characters who have died, who welcome her and inform her that she successfully saw the plane take off! The flying boat is on its way to Fort Salta, one of the last bastions of the Marley people, but on the way they deal with the grief and even finally get on the same page despite their past differences due to all of them in one way or another having to kill innocent people and people they care about for what they felt was the greater good.
Hange goes out in a blaze of glory but still doesn’t come close to Erwin’s final moments… that episode end still occupies space in my mind to this day. Still, it was a good attempt!
It’s at this point where they all get taken to the mental plane as Eren tells them they won’t stop him but he is leaving them free to try. Mikasa tries to get through to his child-self who is metaphorically standing guard but it doesn’t work and they return to the present. They come up with a plan to find Zeke and the Beast Titan in amongst Eren’s massive Founding Titan as by cutting him out Eren won’t have control of the Rumbling any more (though that doesn’t mean they’ll all just turn around and leave, surely? In which case, isn’t that worse? Or at least just as bad?) At the same time Marely send their entire air force at the Rumbling Wall Titans and Eren but they all get taken out, leaving the refugees resigned to their fate and the fort commander regretting the whole demonising and mistreating of an entire race thing now a literal mass of revenge is heading there way. It’s at this point that our “heroes” plane arrives and everyone jumps down to Eren’s back to make their way to Zeke and put an end to things once and for all… Great cliffhanger!
Hogan Reviews 