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Interrogated by Dot Pyxis, Yelena concedes that she secretly met Eren Jaeger ten months earlier on the day of the railway celebration, hiding it even from her fellow Anti-Marleyan Volunteers. She claims she never told him to infiltrate Marley, only that she wanted somebody to push an administration she saw as paralyzed by ignorance and endless debate. Pyxis doubts a meeting that risky carried so vague a purpose, and asks her, pointedly, whether she knows how a good lie mixes in pieces of the truth. Elsewhere, over a card game, Onyankopon tells Hange that Yelena built the volunteer organization herself and that comrades who questioned it had a habit of dying in "accidents," though she also pressed Paradis to grant captured Marleyans decent treatment.

At headquarters, Hitch teases Armin after catching him reaching for Annie's crystal, then hands him a newspaper accusing the military of clinging to power by jailing Eren. Protesters ring the compound. Premier Dhalis Zachary refuses to let Armin and Mikasa see their friend, citing the open investigation, and moments after they leave his office a bomb hidden in a newly delivered chair detonates, hurling his corpse into the courtyard. The crowd outside erupts into the Scouts' salute chant. Eren escapes his cell that same day and meets Floch Forster with a crowd of sympathizers who confess to the assassination; Eren's first order is to locate Zeke.

When the brass reconvenes, around a hundred soldiers have vanished into the defection Nile Dawk labels the Jaegerists. Pyxis quells the infighting and proposes a paradoxical course: nominal surrender. Rooting out hidden traitors would drain blood and time they lack, so the military will overlook Zachary's murder and bargain with the one thing the Jaegerists need, knowledge of Zeke's whereabouts. Kiyomi Azumabito retreats to the port for safety, though Mikasa declines her protection, calling Paradis her home. Hange, convinced Zeke and Yelena anticipated all of it, moves to investigate the jobs Yelena arranged for Marleyan prisoners, while Pieck, disguised, sits reading a newspaper inside the Walls.

Yelena admits to a covert meeting with Eren ten months before the Liberio raid, framed as a plea for pressure on the government; Pyxis openly questions whether her account is a constructed lie.

Premier Dhalis Zachary is assassinated by a chair bomb planted by hidden Jaegerists, and Eren escapes confinement, linking up with Floch and ordering his followers to find Zeke.

About one hundred soldiers defect; Nile coins the name Jaegerists for the movement, which aims to reunite the brothers and rebuild the military around Eren.

Pyxis elects to negotiate rather than purge, using Zeke's location as leverage, and Hange begins tracing Yelena's placement of Marleyan prisoners, suspecting a deeper plan already in motion. Pieck has quietly infiltrated the island again.

The episode adapts the chapters Counterfeit and Children of the Forest from the War for Paradis arc. It aired in Japan on March 1, 2021 and in English on April 4, 2021, directed by Kunihiro Mori and written by Hiroshi Seko for MAPPA.

The in-universe information segment introduces the "New Eldian Empire," the banner adopted by islanders sympathetic to Eren's attack on Marley. The closing scenes seed the following episode's restaurant confrontation, with the Braus family, Kaya, Gabi, and Falco arriving where Nicolo works.