Attack on Titan has just shocked anime fans by unleashing the dreaded event known as “The Rumbling”, which saw the Founding Titan activate all the Wall Titans embedded in the walls of Paradis Island. However, Armin and Mikasa learn to their shared horror that their friend Eren Jaeger hasn’t just released a battalion of Wall Titans to smash the leadership of Marley and its coalition of armies battling Paradis Island: Eren intends to wipe out any and everyone who is threatening the lives and freedom of the Subject of Ymir!
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Now Attack on Titan fans are reeling with doubt. Have they been idolizing a villain in Eren Jaeger, all along? The answer is not so simple, in a world of relativity. So this is why unleashing The Rumbling makes sense for Eren Jaeger:
The key to understanding why Eren’s choice to unleash The Rumbling was sensible for his character is found in understanding why Ymir ever gave him the opportunity in the first place. Eren’s and his brother Zeke both were competing for Ymir’s attention within the Paths dimension that links the Titan users to Ymir. Zeke had the edge, as his bloodline connection to the Fritz family royals allowed him to command Ymir; however, Eren won the argument by not trying to command Ymir: instead, Eren actually connected with Ymir.
Upon visiting Ymir’s memories, Eren saw how she started as a simple girl in a rural village, only to have her life turned upside-down by the violence and greed of others. King Frintz slaughtered and enslaved Ymir, then tried to savagely murder her. Even when Ymir gained the Titan power, Fritz still enslaved her as a weapon, making her fight legions of armies like those in Marley and pass that legacy on to her Titan descendants – all to make King Fritz’s Eldian empire a world power.
it’s not hard to see the connections between Ymir’s origin story and the saga of Eren Jaeger we’ve seen during Attack on Titan. Eren was born and bred to be a weapon of vengeance and was caught up in (Karmic) cycles of violence and grief turning before he was ever born. That cycle is made clear through connections in the series like Grisha’s first wife, DIna Fritz, being the Titan who eats Eren’s mother, Carla, forever scarring him – despite Grisha’s efforts to give up the past. It’s a cycle that Eren doesn’t truly understand that cycle on a personal level until he touches Historia Reiss’s hand and can once again activate the Founding TItan’s memory access powers.
When Eren kisses Historia’s hand at her coronation ceremony, he saw what is essentially a rippling of time-crossings: Eren sees Grisha’s memory of murdering the Reiss family – but he also sees Grisha’s memory of an older, future version of Eren coming back to that moment to force his father to carry the slaughter out. Eren also sees the select memory his future self shares with Grisha of a world with Eldian’s are safe and free. In short, Eren learns – better than anyone else in the world – just how deep and tragic the cycle of violence around the Titans has been.
When he finally meets Ymir as his future self, Eren is the only one who grasps her millennia-long cycle of service to this violence has meant for Ymir, as a person (not a tool, not a slave). It’s not surprising that the weight of that perspective leads the pair to a united conclusion: the cycle must be broken, once and for all.
In Eren Jaeger’s mind (and with Ymir’s endorsement), the only way to end that cycle of violence over the ultimate weapons of mass destruction (Titans), is to have the world that welcomed and manipulated those weapons in a struggle for power have those same weapons ultimately be their annihilation (Karma). But unlike nuclear arms, the Subjects of Ymir are living beings, which is why Eren is sparing those of his homeland (Paradis Island).
This explanation of the character’s psyche in no way eases the debate over the morality of what it will mean if Eren Jaeger truly makes good on his threat to world.
Attack on Titan Season 4 is now streaming on Hulu and Funimation
