I’ll be honest. I almost gave up on Attack on Titan.
Season 2 was quite a chore to watch. Sure, the titans were still there and the action was still pretty fun to watch, but there was something off about its run. I’m not sure if it was the imbalance in good events in comparison to the many losses the humans encountered, the lack of answers to previous mysteries in spite of the additional questions that were mounting with every new character or event, or the fact that you feel they’re dragging out the story and just attempting to distract us with Levi being awesome?
But I was in the groove to watch anime and I’m OC enough to get bothered by not continuing a series, especially with Netflix recommending it every time I opened the app, so here we are.
After Reiner and Bertholdt retreated with Ymir, and the Beast Titan revealing himself to be yet another human with the ability to transform, Eren and Historia have become targets of the Military Police. They are hounded by a new group lead by serial killer Kenny Ackerman, who shares a past with Levi. The Scouts struggle with keeping Eren and Historia from being captured, while Erwin faces trial under trumped up charges by the king’s royal advisors.
Attack on Titan isn’t the type of series that will survive by merely showing us monsters and battles, although both have been entertaining. When you start a series by showcasing some potential world building and mysteries to hook in your audience, you don’t serve up additional questions without rewarding them with more answers for the first ones. You can’t mask a badly paced season that way, nor can you move on to the next part of the narrative without frustrating your viewers. It’s a good thing this was addressed in Season 3, with the series finally taking the time to answer the big questions, such as the origins of Titans and what lies beyond the wall of Eldia.
I expected that we would get more explanation as to where Reiner, Bertholdt and Annie came from and why they infiltrated Eldia, but that wasn’t the only reveal of the season. Eldia suffers not just from the external conflict by Reiner’s group, but within its very walls are secrets that would shed light to the origins of Eldia. Historia’s real identity is revealed to be closely tied to the ruling of Eldia and why people are in the dark about their history before they started living within the walls. And Eren gets some of the answers relating to his father Grisha, and some of those revelations related directly back to Reiner’s group and their origins, as well as to the Eldian royal family, deftly tying together all the loose ends that were unceremoniously dangled at the end of the second season.
Sure, there were still conflicts to resolve, such as the future of the Eldians who now know about the wider world and their history, and the exploration of the deeper mysteries of the Titans and their powers. There is much uncertainty going into the fourth and final season of the series, but if the third season and how they handled the different plot points that led to its rousing (yet still slightly depressing) conclusion is any indication, then we will be treated to a satisfying finale.
Not that I believe they will all survive it.
Happy viewing!
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