Shingeki no Kyojin: The Final Season - Kanketsu-hen Episode 2 Discussion

Han-yuu said:
When the manga ended, I couldn't believe the finale, not because Eren turned villain, but because of the Paths and demigod nonsense. I was so deep in denial that I even joked on MAL forum that Isayama wrote the ending at gunpoint from jealous rivals. It took me years to watch the final season, knowing what awaited, but I finally pushed through, and now I'm out of denial.

Attack on Titan ends like a bad joke with serious music. Eren turns into an all-knowing demigod because Paths said so, sure, why not. Ymir loves her abuser, the crew does group therapy while the world gets crushed. And Mikasa's grand moment? A scarf and a sulk while the world burns by her beloved. Armin's big brain moment? Punching Eren over Mikasa's crush, not over genocide. The so-called genius gives us nothing but sad eyes and speeches slower than titans. Then, sitting in blood, he thanks Eren for wiping out 80% of humanity. And let's not forget Eren killing his own mom because "no choice"... peak 4D chess.

In Short: Eren kills 80% to "equalize", runs a memory-eraser plot device with Google Calendar, Mikasa's scarf-love frees Ymir, his friends cry and thank him with "you sure are something", and then a glowing bug dies, so titans just vanish... peak fanfic logic.

And Isayama really said "freedom" 300 times and still wrote the most chained-up ending possible. He wrote plot like Shakespeare until the finale, then switched to fanfiction.net drafts. Turned a war epic into a therapy session with extra steps and no sense. He really built a universe, gave it lore, rules, logic... then tossed it all in the Paths dimension and said "figure it out". Attack on Titan could've been legendary, but Isayama got lost in the Paths and never came back. In the end, the only thing Isayama freed was my will to never touch this finale mess again.

I get the idea that AoT deserved a messy ending, the world inside the story is chaotic, full of hate, and there was never going to be a neat happy ever after. That part I completely agree with. A villain arc where Eren destroys the world and gets stopped by his friends would already be messy and tragic enough.

The issue is how it was executed. Instead of showing the mess through war, betrayal, and choices, we got Paths as a third-dimension plot device, demigod Eren pulling strings across time, and long therapy-style speeches while bodies piled up. That does not feel messy in a realistic sense, it feels messy because the writing bent logic and character arcs to force symbolism.

Eren as demigod, controlling past and future events, deciding who dies (including his own mom), and knowing everything yet pretending not to, that is more than just full power. That turns earlier arcs into contradictions. If it was all part of the plan, then his grief, rage, and growth look like either an act or a memory eraser gimmick. That cheapens the entire struggle.

This is where Paths, memories, and the "already planned" explanation really hurt the story. By making everything pre-decided, it erases the sense of struggle that carried the earlier arcs. Eren's anger at his mother's death, the discoveries, the fights for survival, even the idea of choosing between different futures, all of it feels meaningless if he was simply acting out a plan he already saw. What started as a story about human will and choices was overwritten by a memory-loop device that nullifies the emotional weight of everything before it.

Ymir cannot resurrect or step into the world, she only works through Paths on living Eldians. That is why she did not come back in Fritz's time and why Eren could trigger the Walls but not summon dead titans as backup. The story frames her as bound, then says she chooses to enable Eren so Mikasa's choice can free her. The problem is consistency. If Ymir really had that much discretion, centuries of silence make no sense. If she had none, helping the Rumbling makes no sense. Same with Eren's foreknowledge, either it is full determinism that cheapens all his earlier struggle, or it is limited agency that needed clear rules the story never gave. That gap is why the finale feels like symbolism bending the mechanics, instead of the mechanics carrying the symbolism.

And Ymir being freed through Mikasa's love might have been meant as symbolic, but it feels like the wrong keystone to end a war epic. That is why it comes across as misplaced melodrama rather than the tragic but grounded ending the series had built toward.

So yes, a complicated ending was fine. What broke it was replacing grounded tragedy with Paths, demigod nonsense, and heavy-handed philosophy, instead of letting the villain arc stand on its own.