“Two Brothers” is the most shocking episode of Attack on Titan season 4

Dude, Gabi just blew Eren Yeager’s head clean off his body. I knew I liked that girl. I think she may legit be my favorite character right now.

I love moments that make me involuntarily go “what?!” and Gabi blasting Eren straight in the neck was definitely one of them. And then his head goes flying across the square until a nearly-dead Zeke catches it in his nearly-dead hands. Moments like this are how Attack on Titan stays exciting even though each episode is pretty short and almost always ends on a cliffhanger. This is also why the show could drag when it wasn’t in the midst of a big climactic segment like this one, when the twists and turns are coming fast and furious. I enjoy watching Attack on Titan on a week-to-week basis, but I think this show will be at its best when the whole thing is out and people can binge it.

Anyway, Gabi decapitating Eren (O_O) wasn’t the only huge moment of the episode. We also get Zeke, the rat bastard, screaming and turning every Eldian who imbibed his spinal fluid into a pure titan, causing more chaos in the city streets. This is an especially dick move since Falco is among the people transformed…into a terrifying long-necked titan who tries to tear Reiner out of the Armored Titan.

It was around this point when I remembered what drew me to Attack on Titan in the first place: as fun as the titan shifter plotline is, the show has never produced anything as terrifying as the pure titans. I think it’s their vacant eyes, and their rictus grins, and the unpredictability of their movements. There’s something horrible about their innocence: all titans want to do is chomp on human flesh, which terrifying to us but as natural as breathing to them. It’s unsettling and I miss it.

Happily, we don’t have to spent too much time with titan Falco before Porco Galliard, who’s been an interesting background character for a while now, sacrifices himself so Falco can inherit the Jaw Titan and return to human form. I always liked Galliard, even if he wasn’t developed as much as some of the other characters; this is a good way for him to go out.

Eren and Zeke hang out in a boring void

All of this is very thrilling, as is the Survey Corps helping Eren by taking on Pieck and the Marleyan soldiers. (Who wants to bet they’ll live to regret this choice?) The weakest part of the episode comes at the end, after Zeke catches Eren’s head (snerk), which apparently fulfills whatever magical mumbo-jumbo contract is in place. They both end up in a strange void space where Ymir is making Titans, or something, and Eren is able to command her to carry out Zeke’s plan to render all Eldians incapable of having children, thus ridding the world of Titans. Only Eren never intended to go along with this plan; he was only pretending so he could tell Ymir to do some other f**ked up thing we’ll probably learn about next week, only he can’t command her, because time works differently in the void and Zeke has been here a while and has figured out how to command Ymir himself, I think. So they bump heads and there’s a spark and that means something.

I’ve always thought the show’s mythology was overly complicated: too many rules, too many provisos, too much time wasted explaining the particulars and not enough developing the characters or watching them get eaten alive by giants. I do continue to enjoy how we’re deepening Zeke’s character — his relationship with Mr. Ksaver was finally the key to unlocking his personality — but I was looking at my watch during this section.

But that’s the thing about Attack on Titan: if some part isn’t working, you usually only have to wait a minute for things to pick up again.

Episode Review: B

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