Hero

Atop Wall Maria, Eren wakes and Armin finishes laying out his gambit against Bertolt. Below, Squad Levi tries to hold Reiner's attention, but the Armored Titan brushes past them toward Eren until Mikasa's Thunder Spear detonates against his knee and cripples him. Inside the armor, Reiner is disoriented: his memories cut off at his parting from Bertolt, and he cannot fathom what pierced him. He resolves that victory is still possible if the two of them escape with Eren.

Armin warns Eren that everything hinges on how much punishment he can endure, promises he will not die before seeing the ocean, and orders him to follow the plan whatever happens. Eren tumbles from the Wall in apparent defeat, which Bertolt reads as a concussion. Armin then fires his anchors into the Colossus Titan and clings on while Bertolt vents scalding steam, having correctly guessed that Bertolt's actual skeleton, unlike the Titan's evaporating muscle, would hold his hooks. Stunned that his friend's whole strategy is to let himself burn, Bertolt unleashes a final blast to end it mercifully. As his body chars, Armin wills himself not to let go, entrusting his dreams and his life to Eren, certain that Eren will reach the ocean for them both.

Against the Armored Titan, Jean baits Reiner while Connie and Sasha fire Thunder Spears into his jaw; flying debris from a shattered house takes Jean and Sasha out of the fight. With the jaw only half open, Hange arrives unannounced and blows apart the other hinge, and Mikasa sends her spear straight down Reiner's throat, blasting him out of the nape. Bertolt, gazing at Armin's scorched form, turns to claim Eren, only to find the fallen Titan is an empty hardened shell. Eren, on his maneuvering gear behind him, carves Bertolt out of the Colossus Titan's neck, then kneels beside his burned friend and calls Armin the bravest of them all.

Armin's decoy plan works: his endurance of the Colossus Titan's steam buys the seconds Eren needs to flank Bertolt, whose Titan is left headless as Eren rips him from the nape. Armin is burned beyond recognition and appears to die entrusting the dream of the ocean to Eren.

Mikasa cripples the Armored Titan with a Thunder Spear to the knee, and the coordinated jaw assault by Jean, Connie, Sasha, and the returning Hange lets her fire into Reiner's mouth and eject him from his Titan.

Both Warriors are defeated and in Survey Corps hands, marking the effective end of the fighting in Shiganshina. Reiner's memory loss since parting from Bertolt goes unexplained within the chapter.

Two weeks before publication, the series' editor urged fans on X to revisit volume 1, and the payoffs are deliberate: Eren's leaping strike on the Colossus Titan restages the volume 1 cover, the ocean dream and Armin's philosophy of sacrifice both debut in Chapter 4, and Armin's self-immolation mirrors Eren's own rescue of him in that chapter. Mikasa's terse challenge to Reiner also parallels her final words to Annie in Chapter 33, and Armin's ploy repeats Erwin's Chapter 80 tactic of offering himself as bait for a flanking kill.

Isayama once planned to end the manga at volume 20, which would have made this its final chapter. It is the first chapter without Levi since Chapter 50 and without Erwin since Chapter 66, and its US release fell on both World Oceans Day and Best Friend Day. The chapter closes volume 20, is adapted in the anime episode "Hero", and sits between "Promise" and "Cleaver".