Attack On Titan Season Finale Unanswered Questions - Collider

Well, here we are. Another season of Attack on Titan has come and gone. While some fans expected the series’ most recent episode, titled “The Dawn of Humanity,” to be the actual finale, that certainly wasn’t the case (which was more apparent considering that there’s around ten chapters left to adapt from the manga). Attack on Titan: The Final Season, Part 3 is slated to release sometime in 2023, and despite the fact that the epic manga by Hajime Isayama has already ended, there are plenty of questions that the adaptation has yet to answer for us “anime-only” folk. Let’s look at seven crucial questions that are still unresolved after the show’s season finale.

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Who exactly is the father of Historia’s child?

Image via WIT Studio

Attack on Titan’s fourth season has given us plenty of amazing action and character moments that fans of the show have come to expect, much to the chagrin for fans of one specific character in the series: Historia Reiss (Shiori Mikami). The queen of the walls has been seen on the sidelines while her squad mates have been at war with the Marleyans throughout the season, due to both her elite status within the walls and sudden pregnancy. The true identity of Historia’s baby daddy currently remains a mystery, with the only clue being that he’s a childhood friend who works in the walls as a farmer. While this could actually be the case, fans of the show know better than to expect the farmer to be just some dude, and given the lengths that Eren (Yuki Kaji) has taken to protect his people, it wouldn’t be surprising to know if he had something to do with the creation of her child.

What is that place in the end credits?

Image via Cartoon Network

If there’s one thing that every Attack on Titan fan can agree on, it’s that the show is extremely meticulous in its foreshadowing, especially when the credits are rolling. The show’s latest ending sequence (set to Akuma no Ko by Ai Higuchi) bounces back and forth on a younger and present-day Eren Yeageras he walks around a vast flowerbed. The flowers appear white at first before we see a shiny bird fly up to reveal a giant, cage-like structure that seems to be holding this bird and Eren. The bird evaporates into sparkles that fall to the ground, changing the landscape into a vibrant, colorful world with petals blowing in the wind and a town we’ve never seen before. Young Eren walks into the new world with wonder before it cuts to present-day Eren, taking a moment to see the sunrise before becoming enveloped in multicolored flames and disappearing with it to the flow of the wind. Poignant stuff.

The ending sequences in the series have always held cryptic clues to the show’s world that are only revealed later down the line (see: the clues about the founder Ymir during the ending for season two), so it only makes sense that something from this sequence is alluding to whatever happens at the end of Eren’s journey. Will he time travel and change the past? Is that flower garden even in the past and not some extension of the Paths reality that he and his brother Zeke (Takehito Koyasu) are currently in? Time will tell (unless you read the manga).

Can Levi get back in the fight one last time?

Image via Cartoon Network

If we as a society were to collectively rank the most “too angry to die” characters in all of fiction, Levi Ackerman(Hiroshi Kamiya) may just be at the very top of that list (or at least be placed in a tie with Gutsfrom Berserk). The last time we saw some action from the head of the Survey Corps, he was unfortunately caught in an explosion caused by mortal enemy Zeke Yeager, leaving him in a state that should’ve put the good soldier down for good. That certainly wasn’t the case, however, when Hange Zoë (Romi Park) was able to bandage him up and keep him alive amidst the Yeagerist insurrection and rumbling. Despite the season finale showing Levi in a state where he still can’t walk, the promo art for part three shows him standing tall among his comrades, serving as potential proof that humanity's most powerful soldier might have enough strength to help finish the fight (and maybe put an end to his most hated enemy).

What’s the deal with that scene with Jean?

Image via Cartoon Network

In Season 4, Episode 25 “Night of the End”, we’re shown a scene where Jean Kirstein (Kishō Taniyama) imagines a world after his time as a scout, enjoying a drink on a balcony with his wife and child nearby. That dream sequence is abruptly cut short when Hange asks him to come with her, much to his dismay. The series doesn’t have a hard time showing the characters deal with the weight of war and potential apocalypse, with Jean being a notable standout with this part of the final season. He, like many others, has seen enough death and destruction to last a lifetime, and would like nothing else but to relax and finally put an end to the war. Since the show loves to play around with time, it wouldn’t be surprising to see more from this potential reality (and maybe allude to the young leader getting a much-deserved happy ending).

Where exactly is Zeke right now?

Image via Cartoon Network

Zeke Yeager, Eren’s half-brother and self-proclaimed hero of the world, is in a very *weird* spot at this point in the anime. After establishing contact with Eren to enact the rumbling and losing possession of the founder’s powers, little has currently been revealed about Zeke’s place in the world post-rumbling. Is he locked up in the Paths reality with Eren? Has he merged with Eren in this current state of the Founder Titan? Or is he somewhere else entirely? There’s no doubt that we’ll have an answer to this once the show returns next year.

Is the ending going to change?

Possibly the biggest question surrounding the Attack on Titan fandom right now is whether the anime will go forward with the ending of the manga, which was met with a very polarizing reception depending on who you ask. The final chapter of the manga was published in April 2021, leaving the animation team at MAPPA the possibility to either go straight ahead with the original ending or create a new one and send fans everywhere to another Fullmetal Alchemist-esque state of wild discourse. The anime so far has been a mostly faithful adaptation of the source material, with current signs pointing to no significant deviation from the manga’s finale. Whether you liked the ending or not, we won’t know what will really transpire in the anime until we finally get to see it ourselves in 2023.

Will the next OP be an even bigger banger?

Image via Funimation

Seriously: Rumbling by SiM is a modern OP masterpiece. It’s quite possibly the closest that audiophiles and otaku have felt to divine bliss. Whatever song comes next for the final part of the season has a lot going for it.