Traitor

From a hillside overlook, Hange and Magath study the harbor the Yeagerists now control. The flying boat sits untouched, spared, Hange guesses, because the occupiers value Azumabito technology too much to wreck it, though discovery of the group outside would change that instantly. Steam plumes on the horizon confirm the worst: the Wall Titans have crossed the sea and Marley's coastal cities are already dying. Planning turns grim. Onyankopon insists the Azumabito engineers must survive, since without them the craft cannot fly, but the Paradis natives balk at slaughtering their own countrymen. Annie reflects that these soldiers, unlike the Warriors in their youth, would never have chosen to breach the Wall, and she and Reiner agree to shoulder the killing themselves. Magath, after wrenching a location for Eren out of Yelena by force, apologizes to the Warriors for the previous night and admits the islanders should not answer for their ancestors, though Armin refuses to pretend the arrangement leaves anyone's hands clean.

Inside the harbor building, Floch holds Kiyomi and her engineers at gunpoint, lecturing her on accepting the reborn world the Rumbling will leave behind. Armin and Connie ride in with a fabricated emergency, claiming the Cart and Armored Titans have fled south with Jean and Onyankopon dead, and beg for engineers to ready the boat for pursuit. At the dock they find old cadet comrades Daz and Samuel guarding explosives wired to the hull. Trading on that friendship, they talk Daz into disconnecting the detonator.

Floch never believes the story. When he moves to execute an engineer, Kiyomi wrestles him down, the gunshot betrays everything, and Mikasa crashes through a window to shield the hostages while Floch escapes outside screaming of traitors. As Thunder Spears fly, the defenders herd the Azumabitos to the basement, and Reiner and Annie rise as the Armored and Female Titans to scatter the Yeagerists. At the boat, Samuel puts three bullets into Armin and holds Connie at gunpoint while Daz scrambles to rewire the charges. Memories of Bertolt's anguished question from years before surface in Connie and Armin as Samuel demands to know how things came to this. Connie tears the rifle away and shoots both of his old friends dead, weeping as he saves Armin and the flying boat.

Hange and Magath spot steam over the ocean, proof that the Wall Titans have begun destroying northeastern Marley.

Annie and Reiner volunteer the Warriors for the killing so the Survey Corps veterans can avoid slaughtering fellow islanders; Magath breaks Yelena's arm interrogating her about Eren's whereabouts.

Armin and Connie's ruse gets the flying boat's explosives disarmed, but Floch sees through the deception and the harbor erupts into open combat.

Mikasa reveals the infiltration by defending Kiyomi, and Reiner and Annie transform to engage the Yeagerists.

Samuel shoots Armin three times; Connie kills both Samuel and Daz, former 104th cadet comrades, to protect the boat.

Volume 32 opens its second chapter here, number 128 in Hajime Isayama's overall run. The Japanese release landed April 9, 2020, one day after the English simulpub, within the War for Paradis arc. The anime adapted it under the same title, Traitor.

The chapter's namesake cuts several ways: the Yeagerists brand Mikasa's group traitors to the island, while Connie and Armin relive the question Bertolt once screamed at them, having now traded places with the Warriors who betrayed their class. Annie's quote acknowledging that her new comrades would never have breached the Wall frames that inversion directly.