A Long Dream

Armin explains that the friendly Titans fighting beside them are past inheritors, roused in the Paths by Zeke, and guesses that Ymir Fritz herself craves connection. Zeke, still wired into the Founding Titan, gazes at the sky and admits he never noticed how beautiful a day could be, then Levi's blades take his head. The Wall Titans freeze mid-march, but Eren's colossal skeleton keeps crawling, so Reiner hurls Jean toward the nape and Pieck clears his way to the detonator. Calling Eren a suicidal blockhead one last time, Jean triggers the charges and blows the Founding Titan's head off.

A glowing, centipede-like organism, the source of all living matter, slithers from the stump and strains to reattach the head. Armin transforms atop it in a Colossal Titan blast while Falco flies the others to Fort Salta, where Gabi, Falco, and Pieck find their families among the refugees and Conny decides that, regrets and all, stopping the Rumbling was right. The relief is short. The creature survives the explosion, Eren re-emerges in a bipedal Founding Titan the size of Armin's Colossal, and the centipede exhales a mist over the crowd. Conny recognizes it too late as the Ragako method: every Eldian without Titan powers or Ackermann blood, Jean and Conny included, becomes a Pure Titan. Only Mikasa, Levi, Pieck, and Falco escape on the Jaw Titan's back.

While Armin grapples with Eren and the Warriors hold off the centipede, Mikasa's chronic headache pulls her into a vision of another life: a quiet mountain cabin where she and Eren fled Marley together, abandoned the war, and spent his last four years alone with each other. When the dream-Eren asks her to discard her scarf and forget him after he dies, she wakes knowing she never could. She knots the scarf tight, tells Levi and Falco that Eren is inside his Titan's mouth, and rides through the opening Levi's Thunder Spear tears open. Inside she finds Eren's head hanging from a length of spine, smiles at him, severs it, and kisses him while Ymir Fritz looks on, smiling too. In the Paths, a child-formed Eren confesses to Armin that the cruelty was calculated, meant to cast his friends as humanity's saviors, and shares what he learned when he touched Ymir: love for King Fritz, not chains, held her in bondage for two thousand years.

Levi decapitates Zeke, severing Eren's link to the Wall Titans and ending the Rumbling. Jean detonates the charges that behead the Founding Titan, and the source of all living matter emerges to restore it. Armin's transformation fails to destroy the creature, whose mist converts Jean, Conny, and the Eldian refugees into Pure Titans. Eren returns in a bipedal, Colossal-scale Founding Titan and battles Armin. Mikasa experiences the alternate life she might have shared with Eren, refuses his plea to forget him, and kills him inside his Titan's mouth. In the Paths, Eren reveals his plan to make his friends heroes and the truth of Ymir's devotion to King Fritz.

Produced by MAPPA, this is the 34th episode of Season 4 and the 93rd overall, adapting In the Depths of Despair, Titans, A Long Dream, and Toward the Tree on That Hill from the War for Paradis arc. Yuichiro Hayashi and Kiou Igarashi directed with Hiroshi Seko writing; it streamed in Japan on November 19, 2023 as the third of the four episodic-version installments of THE FINAL CHAPTERS Special 2, released solely to Japanese streaming platforms. The information segment dubs Eren's new form the Doomsday Titan, Colossal Titan version, noting it matches a Colossal Titan's size, likely retains the Attack Titan's abilities, and presses on even stripped of the Rumbling, the royal blood, and most of its former body.