Trying to decide if I like the ending at all. I can appreciate the rendering of devout love as shackling. It do be feeling like that. But how much of that really lends to the rest of the narrative? Did all this fail to happen if Eren just leaned into his feelings for Mikasa? Or if she pushed more? It's extremely hyperbolic. The better throughline was this highlighting on the need to connect with and experience life with others, which I guess that central relationship still builds towards as well. Frankly just seems a touch dramatic to me. There's a good symbolism to "building a wall around yourself to protect against others" that strikes to the heart of a lot of these characters, and maybe with a little bit more intentioned development to that idea, and leading it back to Eren, it would resonate a bit more loudly. He does seem to constantly push people away and rely only on himself, and there's a lot of early talk of him depending on his comrades. But he's constantly shown that doing so leads to their deaths, and after enough repetitions and betrayals he just decides he can't possibly let anybody else in. We even get glimpse of this in the final season with the anti-Rumbling squad squabbling over their differences before rectifying the ways they've harmed each other. The pieces are certainly there, but they're not utilized to their fullest potential.

Some of the characters felt squandered as well. Like Annie really felt shoehorned at the end and didn't need to be treated in that manner. Her romantic feelings with Armin came out of left field, and the notion that Bertholdt's feelings were seeping into Armin were mentioned once and swiftly forgotten about. Felt like bro just never figured out how to get her out of the ice, but had to get all the 9 Titans together for the finale so here she goes! Falco and Historia just disappeared from the narrative. Maybe their arcs were done but it doesn't feel like it really? Historia most certainly was not finished; she becomes queen and yet never has another say in the happenings of the story because Eren said so? Huh?? Falco takes up the titan mantle of multiple people but never seems to actually change in any way beyond that? Huh? Floch randomly became this callous, blind loyalist to the dude he thought was ruining everything?? Huhhh???? These aren't the things people bitch about at all but they really bug me a lot. Complaining aside, the final set piece was magnificent and everyone else closed out well. The first part of season 4 was definitely the peak of the series overall. The mind fuck of Eren's infiltration was performed to perfection. His conversation with Reiner had me hanging off of each word. The fight scenes in Marley were really cool. The insidiousness of what was to come is probably dripping all over every scene (i'd have to rewatch it honestly because i didn't know where it was going at all). Felt like the first season again. The time in Marley was the freshest bit since the very start.

k i'm reading more about the response to the ending others have had and... y'all don't get why Mikasa was the one to liberate Ymir? The two women in the series who hopelessly devoted themselves wholly and completely to the ideals of a man that treated them like garbage? The ones enslaving them??? It's made so abundantly obvious in their final scene together, with Fritz being impaled by the spear that Ymir shouldn't have protected him from: paralleling how Mikasa stopped protecting Eren and killed him. She chose the world over the one she loved, something Ymir couldn't do. I'm actually mad! And then people thought Eren's love for Mikasa was out of left field? From the end of Season 3 Eren's mind is totally enslaved by the founding titan. He can't differentiate past and future properly and loses sense of cause and effect. We don't see FOUR YEARS of him dealing with this but we do know that Mikasa was absolutely right there by his side supporting him. The whole way through. Without a doubt. That's her role. That's who she it. Her and Armin are the only ones constantly in his corner. He shows such a massive growth of humanity and emotional depth in Marley. It might not be love persay, but he owes his sanity to her. It certainly feels more realistic and believable than Armin and Annie??? Hello?

And so far as "i did the bad thing because i'm an idiot" goes: there's a clear subtext that Eren does not know how to utilize the powers bestowed upon him throughout the whole series. He struggles at every step, and even when given literal time-warping powers, he still can't find a peaceful way out. He's not saying there's no good reason for what he did: he's saying he could not find a different outcome no matter how much effort he put in. It's clearly stated he rehashed the timeline over and over again looking for a different method and nothing ever changed the outcome. He's frustrated as hell. It's most likely a commentary on the futility of peace and the nature of mankind to hurt each other. But Eren doesn't want to believe that to be the case. He wants to be able to trust other people and rely on them and love them, but the world and timeline he's manipulating time and again tell him otherwise. So he's sad as hell. He wanted to experience the totality of the world and realized that everybody in the world wants him dead because of the circumstances of his birth! And not just him, every single person he's ever loved and cared for too! That sucks!

Him talking to Armin specifically just further highlights this inability of his. Armin's the genius tactician who pulled rabbits out of hats for the entire series, even when seasoned military commanders couldn't! I think there's some clear pitfalls in the story writing but the central narrative is NOT one of them, actually? This all fits pretty neatly really and doesn't take a lot of deep contemplation to arrive at.

Also Armin's saying he chose to help!! That's why they're both going to hell! He could have, at any point, given up on Eren. He always had that choice but he never took it. And that's on him.