What Happened to Eren Yeager In Attack On Titan's Finale? (2024)

Hajime Isayama's iconic shonen manga, Attack on Titan, ended in 2021, bringing the emotional roller coaster of Paradis to a shocking end. In Chapter 139, "Final Chapter: Toward the Tree on That Hill," the story reached a climactic and emotional conclusion, and in the Fall of 2023, the series' anime adaptation followed suit with its own finale.

As bleak as Attack on Titan is, there is still light at the end of the tunnel for many members of the core cast. However, not everyone made it out alive, nor were they expected to. That said, their sacrifices were not in vain — the Rumbling might have destroyed 80% of the living world, but everyone else survived because of a select group of heroes. Here's a look at the Attack on Titan ending, and what fate ultimately had in store for Eren Yeager and the people of Paradis.

Updated on May 24, 2024, by Arthur Goyaz: Attack on Titan is a revered modern anime whose ending divided audiences. Part of the reason why is related to the huge transformation the protagonist Eren Yeager goes through. This list was updated to add more information about Attack on Titan's ending and to meet CBR's current formatting standards.

Eren Yeager's Ultimate Fate In Attack On Titan

In the penultimate chapter of Attack on Titan, Mikasa, Armin, Levi, and the remaining warriors battle Eren and the Shining Centipede, the source of all Titans. After making it inside Eren's Titan mouth with assistance from Levi, Mikasa decapitates Eren's human body and kisses him for the first and last time. This final chapter confirms Eren's death in Attack on Titan — and for good this time. As the dust settles, Mikasa brings his head to Armin, who tearfully mourns his loss with her. She then leaves the battlefield with Eren's head, knowing a proper burial wouldn't be afforded to Eren after the devastation he caused via the Rumbling.

The final pages of Attack on Titan, as well as the final moments of its anime adaptation, reveal that three years have passed since the apocalypse, and Eren's grave site now sits underneath the tree on Paradis where he often napped as a child. Mikasa mentions that their friends Armin, Jean, Connie, Annie, and Pieck would soon arrive to visit him. Wistfully, she asks if he is happy before confessing that she wants to meet him again, and when she says this, the scarf that Eren gave Mikasa when they first met slips from around her neck. To her surprise, a bird appears in front of her and ties it around her again. Smiling up at it as it continues its flight, she says, "Thank you for wrapping this scarf around me, Eren," reminding fans one final time of the impact that he had on her life.

Since Attack on Titan ended, there have been many jokes about Eren coming back as a bird, but there's beautiful symbolism behind this bird's sighting. It represents the everlasting bond between the two siblings, who, despite fighting for different causes, will ever share a love that surpasses all boundaries, be they physical or spiritual. Having a bird to represent Eren's spirit is a perfect choice to illustrate the virtue he pursued all his life: indomitable freedom of the mind and the body, the ability to fly wherever he goes.

Mikasa Liberated Ymir And Turned All Titans To Dust

Eren's endgame is to rid the world of Titans, and in the final moments of Attack on Titan's narrative, he reveals the full conversation he once had with Armin. When Armin asks Eren if he needs to take things to such an extreme, Eren shows him a vision of a volcanic, primordial land. According to Eren Yeager's own words, "The power of the Titans continues to exist because Ymir has been obeying King Fritz for 2,000 years." Despite the violence the monarch committed against her village, parents, and even her own body, the First Titan still loved her abuser, Karl Fritz, for thousands of years. In fact, it was this bond that kept her bound to him and his descendants for two millennia.

Up until Eren reveals the bond between Ymir and Karl Fritz, many believed that Attack on Titan's protagonist was the one who freed her of her burden; however, this conversation hints that Ymir's savior was actually Mikasa, who was able to cut her own ties with Eren. Ymir smiles at the end of the series when Mikasa chooses to kill Eren because she now understands how to separate her own identity from someone that she loves. Once Eren and Armin's conversation concludes, he erases Armin's memory of it, which Armin only recovers after Eren's death. Eren's death and Ymir's liberation by Mikasa causes every Titan body to turn to dust, and those who are transformed are restored to human form.

The Differences Between Attack On Titan's Manga and Anime Ending, Explained

The conclusion of the Attack on Titan manga ends with the aforementioned three-year time skip, and the day that the Rumbling was stopped is now called the Battle of Heaven and Earth. Though the Titans are gone for good, the Islanders remain fearful of what the rest of the world might do in retaliation. The new nation of Eldia establishes its military under the Yeagerist banner. In a letter to Armin, Queen Historia, now the mother of a three-year-old girl, writes:

Armin, Reiner, Annie, Jean, Connie, and Pieck are left to hope that upon their return to the Island — having destroyed the Walls and killed Eren — they can broker a peace treaty as the Allied Nations' Ambassadors for Peace Talks. Many fans have noted their displeasure with this ending due to the extreme measures and lack of closure for many of the dead. However, Connie's faith in Historia and her baby, and Armin's assurance that telling their side of the story will be enough means that things end on a hopeful note for Attack on Titan.

One of the biggest changes between the manga and the anime is how the latter suggests an even more ambiguous windup for the fate that awaits these characters on Paradis Island. Historia's protection is the focal point of their conversation in the manga, and the conclusion is that as long as she's respected by her people, they will remain untouched. In the anime, the sense of danger as they approach Paradis Island is much more elevated, enveloping these beloved Attack on Titan characters in a cloud of uncertainty that hints their suffering isn't finished yet.

The Attack On Titan Anime Follows (Mostly) The Same Plot And Runs 85 Minutes

The Attack on Titan anime mostly follows the same general narrative as the manga, and in its conclusion, Eren comes to understand exactly what he needs to do to finally end the suffering of his people. Right before Attack On Titan: The Final Chapter - Special 1, Eren realizes the only way to achieve peace and destroy the Titans is to exploit the Rumbling, confirming in his mind that he must become the ultimate villain to liberate the people he loves.

The third, fourth, and final chapters of Attack on Titan are presented in The Final Chapter - Special 2 — the longest episode of the series with an 85-minute runtime. Chapter 3 covers the Battle of Heaven and Earth, which takes place on the Founding Titan's back, whereas Chapter 4, A Long Dream, ends with Mikasa beheading Eren. The Final Chapter showcases the aftereffects of the Rumbling. Paradis escapes retribution only because Armin openly claims to be "the man who killed Eren Yeager." A mysterious bird visits Mikasa at Eren's grave, and she takes its presence as a sign that her beloved has returned for one final farewell.

After everything that's happened and all he's done, the only true redemption for Eren Yeager is sacrifice. However, there's more to the Attack on Titan ending. Hajime Isayama later released a supplementary chapter, unofficially titled Chapter 139.5, which offers a perspective of Paradis Island for the next few centuries. Fans get to see Paradis develop into a cosmopolitan city before being razed to the ground, with a large forest growing among the destroyed buildings.

Here, a small boy and his dog companion discover the enormous tree growing directly over Eren's grave, and it looks exactly like the one in which Ymir Fritz had merged with the Shining Centipede. There can be only one takeaway from this: the path taken by history will always be a circle. Strangely enough, The Final Chapter - Special 2 incorporates this epilogue storyline as part of its post-credits sequence, although it seems to be set many years after the one that appears in the manga. Regardless, it seems like Paradis and its people are bound for conflict, no matter how many sacrifices are made beforehand.

Attack on Titan's Ending Offers A Pessimist Look at Humanity

Attack on Titan is far from being just another conventional fantasy anime: it actually has plenty of insightful things to say about humanity's self-destructive nature. Take a look at Eren, an anti-hero in the most literal sense of the world. A boy raised in the ruins of his family and his home village, bound to inflict this same ruin on those who once charged against him. Eren's idea of a hero is someone who successfully frees his people. By the time viewers to Attack on Titan's ending, this ideal has changed: a true hero is someone who can free himself.

There are fascinating pieces of dialogue between Eren, Mikasa, and Armin in Attack on Titan's final episodes. Eren censured them because their freedom had always depended on Eren's goodwill: they did nothing for the sake of themselves. Ironically, Attack on Titan opens with Eren waking up from a dream with tears in his eyes. For someone so obsessed with freedom, Eren had always been a person tied to an inevitable fate: he saw what humanity's worst tendencies had in store for him and his friends a long time ago, and carried on until his demise for sheer fear of looking back at what he'd done.

Attack on Titan lays out humanity's propensity to destroy themselves as a result of failed attempts to communicate to each other, understand each other. The anime is constantly referencing tragedies that have already afflicted humanity in real life, from ethical cleansing to genocide. It's somewhat ironic how, by the end of Attack on Titan, most characters fans learned to perceive as villains are on the same level as heroes fans learned to revere. These are people who understood the vulnerability of their cause and how obsolete their motivations were in the face of humanity's ultimate doom. However, even when humanity is faced with obliteration, the scar of this tragedy is used as the catalyst for yet another war.

Attack on Titan's ending hints at a new conflict emerging on Paradis Island, delivering a pessimistic look at humanity. Eren knew that as long as humanity lived, there would be wars and suffering. Perhaps he thought that with the Rumbling's catastrophic results, humanity would spend hundreds of years distracted with the need to reconstruct all that was wrecked before springing into conflicts once again. That's precisely why Attack on Titan's ending picks up three years after the apocalypse: humanity has rushed into cleaning the mess just so they could finally get back to what they do best: destroy each other.

Attack On Titan

TV-MA

Action

Adventure

Original title: Shingeki no Kyojin.
After his hometown is destroyed and his mother is killed, young Eren Jaeger vows to cleanse the earth of the giant humanoid Titans that have brought humanity to the brink of extinction in Attack on Titan.

Release Date

September 28, 2013

Cast

Bryce Papenbrook , Yûki Kaji , Marina Inoue , Hiro Shimono , Takehito Koyasu , Jessie James Grelle

Main Genre

Animation

Seasons

4 Seasons