Attack on Titan needs a movie or more episodes to deliver a satisfying ending

Since its first season, Attack on Titan has remained true to the manga Hajime Isayama, bringing the pages to life with impressive accuracy. And this has continued into the anime’s fourth and final season, which has taken its time building to the story’s closing arc.

However, the announcement that the anime will air its last episode of the season this Sunday, March 28 presents an interesting question: Is this all just hype before announcing more episodes — a season 4B, if you will — or a movie? Or should fans expect an anime-original conclusion to this story?

As it stands, even if the 75th and supposedly final episode of Attack on Titan, titled “Above and Below,” is longer than usual, there’s no way the series could adapt the remainder of the manga. In fact, the final manga chapter hasn’t even been published yet, so if this week’s episode is truly the show’s final go-round, the anime will end well before the manga does. (Just ask Game of Thrones fans how well that tends to work out.)

However, given that platforms like Crunchyroll are calling this episode the season finale — not series finale — many fans suspect that Sunday’s episode will simply be the end of season 4, part 1. Season 3 divided itself into two halves when it aired back in 2018 and 2019, after all. Hopefully, season 4 will follow suit, ideally with less of a wait in between.

Of course, there’s another way to finish out Attack on Titan‘s story, even if this is the last episode to ever air: a movie. After the success of the Demon Slayer movie — which broke the mold of anime movies being “non-canon” and delivered a full manga arc in the form of a film — some fans believe Attack on Titan may follow suit.

The action-packed final chapters of the Attack on Titan manga certainly would make for a compelling cinematic experience. Unfortunately, fans outside of Japan would likely have to wait longer for a film to arrive than they would for another season.

Whatever route Attack on Titan decides to take, one thing seems certain: It’s hard to imagine the story will truly end with this Sunday’s installment.

Is it even possible to end Attack on Titan here?

Perhaps the most perplexing thing about the upcoming episode being touted as the last one is that, even without staying true to the manga, it’s hard to imagine how the show could end where it currently is. After several painstakingly slow episodes setting up the political stakes on Paradis Island, things have just begun to ramp up again. With several characters’ fates already hanging in the balance — and Eren and his comrades no closer to seeing eye to eye than they were when the season started — it’s difficult to see how the anime could wrap this series in just one more episode, even if it was an hour long.

Chapter 116 of the manga, which “Above and Below” will adapt, doesn’t even end on a major development. And although it could, theoretically, mark the end of the anime with a little tweaking, it wouldn’t provide a lot of closure, especially in terms of what comes next for these characters. Ending the series there risks leaving fans dissatisfied with the anime’s ending, which feels like an odd thing to do, especially for a show that’s been so successful and so dedicated to the original source material.

On top of that, the recently released chapter 138 of the manga revealed a major twist toward the end of Isayama’s story, one that the anime has been dutifully foreshadowing. It seems strange the adaptation would go to such great lengths to get these details right, only to render them meaningless in the final stretch.

Ending Attack on Titan prematurely simply doesn’t make sense for the story, and it also would mean taking a risk that hasn’t ended well for other popular anime. Just this year, The Promised Neverland received backlash from longtime manga fans for deviating from the source material and skipping over major plot points. And it’s far from the only series to be met with criticism for taking an anime-only approach. Perhaps one of the most extreme examples of this is Fullmetal Alchemist, which wound up with a second anime adaptation — Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood — after the original created its own ending rather than waiting for the manga to wrap up.

Needless to say, Attack on Titan could be playing with fire if it plans to surprise its fanbase with an early ending. It would be a shame for this series to end a legacy of carefully crafted storytelling just to pass the finish line a little quicker.

Thankfully, the anime hasn’t let fans down before. That’s worth hanging onto as viewers tune in this week and cross their fingers that Attack on Titan is only stopping temporarily before heading into last hurrah.

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