I suppose one can’t bury the lead here, and there’s no question what the lead is.  And what it isn’t – which is to say, anything that happened in this episode itself.  The big news of the day is that Shingeki no Kyoujin is returning, but not until Fall 2020.  And that return is being billed as “The Final Season”, which presumably means Isayama Hajime will end the manga by the end of next year at the latest.  As for what studio will be producing that final season, there’s no info yet – and in fact, Wit has never officially acknowledged what members of its staff leaked, that the studio was finished with Attack on Titan after this season.

When a franchise is as massively popular as this one, nothing about it tends to be straightforward.  And that’s certainly accentuated by the fact that Isayama decided to grab the third rail he’d been dancing around for almost five cours worth of material with both hands and not let go.  I have my own theories on why Isayama did what he did – part of it was a reflection of his genuine beliefs, and part of it was ignorance (I think he was trying to avoid being controversial in one way, and ended up being way more controversial in another as a result).

But that’s probably a discourse for another day.  Because Shingeki, for the most part, avoids the ugly cultural and historical implications of its plot in this finale and concentrates on the plot itself.  And the characters, too.  As much as any of its various season finales has, this episode of AoT plays like a finale – there’s something contemplative and quite conclusive about it.  It feels very much as if the story as we know it is ending, even if the larger plot threads are largely still a tangle.

There are a couple of important developments here, I think.  The first of them is that Historia decides to share the information that was found in the basement with the people, as an intentional contrast with what the old regime would have done.  What would the junta that placed her in power have done, had the decision been left up to them?  We know how Pyxis felt, though whether his view would have carried the day is very much an open question in my book.  The reaction of the populace is predictably scattershot, but based on appearances it doesn’t seem to have turned the lives of the masses upside down.

We also see that there are continuing ramifications from the decision to use the titan injection to save Armin rather than Erwin, not least in Armin’s own mind.  This I chalk up to author indulgence – basically, one has to stipulate to the whole myth that Erwin was a great leader or the whole plot structure kind of falls apart (even dead, he still manages to be an annoying pain in the ass).  And not insignificantly, sparks fly when Eren comes in contact with Historia when the surviving members of the Survey Corps get their medals for destroying the Death Star.  Stay tuned for more developments on that front.

Really, though, everything in this finale pales in comparison to the sequence where the survivors go on their first mission beyond Wall Maria, and finally come in contact with the sea.  This is kind of beautiful actually, not least because it serves as a sort of vindication for those 0f us who’ve felt all along that Armin was the real protagonist of Shingeki no Kyoujin.  Or at the very least its heart – and indeed, Armin has rather a beautiful soul, which makes him stand out in this cast almost as much as his relentless intellectual curiosity.  More than that, though, the scene itself is beautiful – quite elegiac in a way Attack on Titan has almost never been in four seasons worth of episodes.

There’s little time to savor this moment – to bask in the wonder the group, even jaded Hange, feels as they encounter the sea for the first time.  Yes it’s a vindication of everything Armin believed and taught and encouraged his friends to strive for, but it’s also a reminder that what Eren has seen changes everything.  I get a lot of irony here – on both sides of the fourth wall, what’s noble and beautiful in Shingeki is covered by the looming shadow of what’s ugly and despairing.  There’s no escaping it either for them or for us – just a brief respite, as we wait for it to arrive.