From You, 2,000 Years Ago

Ejected from their father's memories, Zeke Jaeger confronts what he has just witnessed: Eren steered Grisha into slaughtering the Reiss family by feeding him glimpses of the future through the Attack Titan's power. Grisha, unable to wield the Founding Titan himself, stole it so it could one day pass to Eren. Eren even thanks his brother, since touring Grisha's memories together made the manipulation possible. Shaken but still holding command over Ymir Fritz, Zeke orders her to strip every Eldian of the ability to bear children. As she walks toward the Coordinate, Eren tears free of his chains, severing both hands, and sprints after her, plunging into her past.

Two thousand years earlier, Ymir is a village girl whose home is destroyed by a warlord's tribe. Enslaved and mute after her tongue is cut out, she is blamed when a pig escapes and is released to be run down by hunters. Fleeing with arrows in her body, she stumbles into a hollow beneath an enormous tree and sinks into the water below, where a glowing, spine-like creature fuses with her. She rises as a colossal Titan. Fritz, the chieftain, exploits her power for years: she raises roads, tames wilderness, crushes Marley, and bears him three daughters, Maria, Rose, and Sina. When a captured officer hurls a spear at Fritz, Ymir takes it through the heart and dies. Refusing to lose her power, Fritz forces the daughters to eat their mother's corpse and decrees that the bloodline pass her spine down forever. Even in death Ymir labors on, shaping Titans from sand in the Paths without end.

In the present, Eren embraces her and tells her she is neither god nor slave but a person free to decide, asking whether she has spent two thousand years waiting for someone. Ymir weeps. In Shiganshina, light erupts, the Walls disintegrate, and hundreds of Wall Titans step forth with Eren leading them in a gargantuan new form. Speaking into the minds of every Subject of Ymir, he announces that the hardening is undone and that the Titans will trample every corner of the world beyond Paradis until nothing outside the island survives.

Zeke learns that Eren used the Attack Titan's ability to send memories backward, pushing Grisha into taking the Founding Titan from Frieda Reiss; Eren saw his own future through Grisha's memories four years prior.

Zeke commands Ymir Fritz to sterilize all Eldians, and Eren rips off his own hands escaping his chains to stop her.

Ymir's origin is revealed: an enslaved girl who gained the power of the Titans from a spine-like creature in a hollow tree, served King Fritz in life, died shielding him from a spear, and was consumed by her three daughters so the power would persist.

Eren tells Ymir the choice is hers, and she grants him the Founding Titan's full power. The Walls collapse, the Wall Titans march, and Eren declares to every Subject of Ymir that he will flatten the entire world outside Paradis Island.

This episode adapts four manga chapters, Memories of the Future, From You, 2,000 Years Ago, Island Devils, and Thaw, all within the War for Paradis arc. Naoki Matsuura directed, Hiroshi Seko wrote the script, and MAPPA produced. The Japanese broadcast fell on February 7, 2022, followed by the English airing on March 13, 2022.

The title mirrors the series premiere, To You, in 2000 Years, inverting its direction. Chiyuki Miura voices the Founder Ymir in Japanese and Apphia Yu in English; the sequence where Ymir touches the source of all living matter is scored with an insert song sharing the episode's name, and the Rumbling's activation plays over the track Footsteps of Doom.