The Rumbling

Beneath a tree in the past, a dozing young Eren hears a short-haired Mikasa say she will see him later, then wakes with tears on his face and no memory of the dream. In Marley's present, the refugee boy Ramzi shows his cousin Halil the coins he has been stealing, a fund meant to carry their whole camp through the deadly winters. He has already lost one hand to this trade and jokes about losing the other. Their plans end when the ground shudders and the Wall Titans crest into view.

A flashback returns to Eren's first walk through Liberio, already burdened by the knowledge that everyone around him is doomed by his own future actions. He weighs the alternative, Eldian extinction as the old King of the Walls intended, and cannot stomach it. Recognizing an alley beating from his memories of the future, he intervenes to save Ramzi, hating the hypocrisy of rescuing a boy he will later crush. Gratitude undoes him; Eren sobs out an apology, admitting the world beyond the Walls disappointed him and that some part of him wanted to level it all. In the present, the fleeing refugees are cut off on every side. Halil dies to falling debris, and Ramzi is trampled beneath the advancing Titans, glimpsing an apparition of Ymir in his last moment.

As his march continues over a landscape of corpses, Eren reflects that a wall has always stood in front of him and remembers imagining that whoever saw Armin's fantastic lands would be the freest person alive. His child self turns and asks Armin whether he agrees, pulling the adult Armin briefly into the Paths. Armin comes to on the ship bound for Odiha, where Annie thanks him for the years of one-sided conversations at her crystal and presses him on why he came. Both blush; both recoil from having such feelings now. When she writes him off as simply a good person, Armin objects, reminding her how much blood is on his hands, though he still hopes the world holds something they do not yet know.

The Rumbling reaches and destroys Liberio, killing Ramzi, Halil, and Grisha's imprisoned parents, who realize their judgment day has come. The flashback fixes Eren's timeline: he foresaw the massacre during his first visit to Marley, saved Ramzi in full knowledge of the boy's fate, and concluded the future cannot be changed.

Eren contacts Armin through the Paths without receiving an answer. On the ship, Annie and Armin edge toward mutual attraction before shame interrupts, and Armin rejects the label of good person over the killings in his past. The episode's information segment names Eren's vast skeletal form the Doomsday Titan, a several-hundred-meter body of bone housing the Attack, War Hammer, Founding, and Beast Titans.

Produced by MAPPA under director Yuichiro Hayashi and writer Hiroshi Seko, this 88th episode exists only as part of the episodic version of THE FINAL CHAPTERS Special 1, released on Japanese streaming services on November 5, 2023. It covers the manga chapters To You, 2,000 Years From Now and The Rumbling.

Unlike the original special, the recut carries theme songs: Saigo no Kyojin replaces The Rumbling as the opening, with Itterasshai as the ending. Two further episodes, The Wings of Freedom and In the Depths of Despair, complete the recut of the first special.