This week’s episode was mainly a history lesson about the titans through Grisha’s past. So much has been revealed, and we now finally know the origin of the titans and the walls and what this “outside world” is all about.
In the last episode, we saw Grisha and his sister, Fay escape from what seemed to be the wall but apparently they grew up in a whole different place called Liberio. The citizens of Liberio are not supposed to leave the walls of their community so what the two kids did was going to be punished if they get caught. And unfortunately, two Marleyan soldiers saw them and decided to punish them. Grisha got beaten up by one of the soldiers while his sister was taken by the other one to supposedly bring her back home. Fay’s mutilated corpse is then found and the worst part is that the soldiers were denying any responsibility. They then took Grisha back home and blamed him and his sister for her death, saying that they were not supposed to go out there in the first place. These first scenes show the cruelty of this outside world and the obvious problem between the Eldiens and the Marleyans. It was very clear that when they were wondering around the city, people despised Grisha and his sister and the history lesson that Grisha’s father gave him after the incident explained everything.
Apparently, 2000 years ago, their ancestor Ymir Fritz, made a deal with “the Devil of All Earth” in order to gain the power of the titan. Once she passed away, her soul was divided into nine individuals who are eventually the titans who ended up creating Eldia and destroying the neighbouring nation of Marley. And after 1700 years, the Marleyans managed to take control of 7 of those 9 titans and they won the war. The Eldian king then built three walls in the paradise island, which are now the walls where Eren and the others live, and took a great number of his people to escape and live there. Even the young Grisha felt that his father was acting like a dog obeying his master, shaming his own ancestors and making the Marleyans look like heros. While the story was being told, they were showing beautiful pictures of “the Devil of All Earth,” the first titans and Ymir which made this historical part even more interesting.
Grisha was still young and naive back then so he didn’t really understand what all of that had to do with his sister’s death. All he was sure of was that the soldier was lying about everything and he was convinced that they did nothing so wrong for his sister to get killed. But his father just asked him to stop if he didn’t want them to suffer the same fate as Fay. He had to just agree and continue living his life and eventually became a doctor like his father. But at that age, he also discovered the true nature of his sister’s death which reminded him of how much he hated the Marleyans and he decided to join a group lead by a certain “Owl” whose goal is to restore the success of the Eldians. When he joined them, he learned more about the true story of their ancestors and as he met Diana Fritz, who explained the true nature of what happened everything started making sense. Even though we might have thought at first that the Eldians were the bad guys, the explanation given in this part makes us doubt our judgment.
The episode continues to evolve in the life of Gricha as he and Diana have a child, Zeek. Aafter the child grew up a bit, his father decided to make him a mole for them. There was a program made for Eldians between 5 and 7 years old which consisted of them taking titan injections and training to one day attack the walls in Paradise Island. In exchange, the families become Marley citizens so Grisha thought it was a great opportunity. It was a bit of a messed up plan and it wasn’t good for a father to impose this on his child while he’s that young. But it still came as a surprise for all of us when the little Zeek betrayed not only his father but the whole organization by telling the Marleyans everything about them. Even though what he did wasn’t good, it could be justified since his father was using him as a pawn and being a mole as a child must have been pretty stressful for him.
The group’s punishment was to live in paradise island as mindless titans but before that, Grisha was badly tortured because they were expecting him to know “the Owl’s” identity. The torture he was facing looked even worse than what we saw Hange do to the military police! And they didn’t just brutalize him, but they also continued torturing him by making him look at his wife and his friends becoming titans or getting devoured by them. As the soldier who killed his sister and Grisha were talking about this world, and as he was about to drop the tortured guy from the wall, the soldier who beat him up back then saved him and threw the guy who was supposed to be on his side to the titans. And when he told Grisha that he was “the Owl,” everything made sense. He then transformed into a titan, leaving us all shocked. Nobody could have expected one of the Marleyan soldiers to be “the Owl!”
It turned out that all of this was happening in Eren’s head and it wasn’t just a dream. Those were shared memories with his father! He woke up screaming and crying in a jail cell because of what he saw, or rather it’s because of the amount of information that he had to digest. That also makes us think, how could he see all of that? It could be that there is some kind of transfer of thoughts and pasts between titans when the power gets passed down from a generation to another.
This thrilling episode told us a lot about the titans’ history and a lot of questions have finally been answered. We now finally know the origin of the walls which is a big step forward in the understanding of this haunting fairy tale that Attack on Titan has become. The next episode will literally be titled “Attack on Titan,” and all that has been discovered in these past episodes will be discussed by the higher authorities within the walls and we will finally know what Eren will do with what his father passed down to him.
Ines Aouadi
JET Press Team
