The Defeated: The 57th Exterior Scouting Mission, Part 6

Chasing the Female Titan, Levi presses Mikasa on whether Eren still lives; she insists the target wanted Eren captured, not eaten. He reminds her that the opposite reading is just as plausible, notes her attachment to Eren, and lays out a plan: she draws attention while he cuts. Levi's assault is overwhelming, blinding the Titan and shredding her arm faster than she can harden her skin. When the nape is exposed, Mikasa disobeys and lunges for the kill, forcing Levi to shield her at the cost of a twisted ankle. He slices open the Titan's mouth, retrieves an unconscious Eren, and chides Mikasa for letting her feelings override orders. As they withdraw, he glimpses tears running down the Female Titan's face.

The retreat turns grim. Erwin orders unrecovered corpses reported as missing, drawing accusations of heartlessness from a soldier named Dieter, who secretly hauls his friend Ivan's body along anyway. Pursuing Titans catch the convoy, another comrade dies, and Levi commands the wagons lightened by casting the dead overboard, his own squad's bodies among them. The gambit works. At a rest stop he hands Dieter a Scout Regiment emblem, letting the man believe it was Ivan's, proof his friend once lived.

Eren dreams of his childhood, watching a past expedition's broken return with a young Mikasa, then wakes to learn the mission failed. Back inside Calaneth District, crowds jeer the battered column as a waste of taxes. Two awestruck children complicate the picture, admiring the soldiers with the same awe a young Eren and Mikasa once felt. Petra's father approaches Levi, unaware his daughter is dead, chattering about her letters and her devotion to the captain. Levi says nothing. Eren finally breaks down in tears, and orders arrive: the capital summons Erwin, and Eren must be surrendered.

Levi rescues Eren from inside the Female Titan's mouth, injuring his ankle when Mikasa's unauthorized kill attempt forces him to intervene. The Female Titan weeps as they escape, a detail Levi alone witnesses. During the retreat the Scouts jettison their dead, including Petra Rall and the rest of Levi's squad, to outrun pursuing Titans after Dieter's smuggled corpse draws them in.

Levi consoles Dieter with an emblem passed off as Ivan's. The expedition returns to Calaneth in disgrace, its losses severe enough to threaten the Scout Regiment's political support. Petra's father unknowingly speaks to Levi about his dead daughter's future, and the episode closes with orders transferring Eren to the capital ahead of a tribunal on the regiment's fate.

Wit Studio and Production I.G produced this 22nd episode, directed by Makoto Bessho and Shinpei Ezaki from a Noboru Takagi script. It adapts the manga chapter Losers and aired in Japan on September 8, 2013, reaching American broadcast on October 11, 2014. Crunchyroll lists it under the alternate title The Defeated - 57th Expedition Beyond the Walls (6).

The opening is Die Flügel der Freiheit and the ending is great escape. An in-episode information segment details the Scout Regiment's carriages, built with Ultrahard steel suspension from the Industrial City and capable of roughly 20 kilometers per hour over rough ground. The next episode shifts the story to Stohess District.