Eren Yeager certainly surprised us when he finally showed up in attack on titan’s final season the long-haired unshaven calm character is a long cry from the angry teenage boy we came to know something in Eren has broken and let me tell you this is only the beginning as we’ve seen in his attack on the barrio Eren now navigates a moral grey area and a dark one at that believed to be a typical Shonen hero at first the survey corps soldier turned out to be more complex than anyone anticipated in today’s blog i will go over Eren’s life and discuss moments that made him what he is today this is the incredible evolution of Eren Yeager.

Eren Yeager

The first time we meet Eren Yeager he’s still a child and unaware of the horrors which lie ahead although the first few pages of the manga do hint that unconsciously he might have seen future events even before inheriting the founding titan when he asked Mikasa when did your hair get so long a possible reference to her short hairstyle from the final season his best friend Armin and himself were often harassed by bullies but being hot-headed and in need of some major anger management therapy Eren was always there to protect him at the beginning of the show Eren had everything a typical Shonen hero has he dreamt of exploring the world outside of the walls while joining the survey corps to save the world from all the roaming titans on top of that he was shown to be very protective towards his friends even going to the extent of almost single-handedly sending Mikasa’s captors to the grave in a way that dangerously borders psychopathic territory but as he will slowly realize as he grows older he might act like a Shonen character but this is not fairy tale where the power of friendship saves the day.

The first time we meet Eren Yeager he’s still a child

Eren is stuck in a Shiganshina nightmare and he will become a monster himself the main event of the fall of Shiganshina arc is of course the attack on Wall Maria by the colossal titan which resulted in Eren’s mother Carla being eaten by a titan right in front of him after seeing the armored titan create chaos in the district and his mother die Eren makes the vow to erase every single titan from the face of the earth now this shows how naïve he was at the beginning of the series but also how his ideologies were rather black and white for him the world was divided between good and evil and as we’ve seen with the Marley arc things are a bit more complicated as explained through flashbacks later in the series.

Eren is stuck in a Shiganshina nightmare

Grisha injected him with a titan serum giving him both the powers of the attack titan and the founding titan after working on a farm for two years the trio made out of Eren, Mikasa and Armin joined the military for the simple reason that Eren wanted to a bit older than in the first arc of the anime Eren is not any wiser and still holds on to his goal to end all titans he is more arrogant and hard-headed than ever as he almost gets into a fist fight with Jon over the fact that one wants to join the survey corps while the other the military police brigade while we learn later that Eren’s vertical maneuvering equipment was defective and he wasn’t just awful at balancing himself he felt humiliated in front of everyone else.

Grisha injected him with a titan serum

Since Eren  is a tiny bit stubborn he went through his training with help from no one that is until he bonded with Reiner and Berthold since they apparently shared a similar trauma of course that was a bunch of lies well at least to some extent Reiner and Berthold did go through a lot and Reiner has been seen to slowly slip towards madness as the story unfolds the meeting with the two was meant to solidify his friendship with both which would make things way more complicated later but his training with Annie is one of the most important events that happened during the 104th training corps arc during hand-to-hand combat training Ern kind of felt the exercise was useless since to him it didn’t involve the stubborn goal of killing all titans he gave himself boy was he wrong this is where him and Reiner got totally owned by Annie’s special technique which brought them down in a matter of seconds while he would eventually use the same technique a few times during his career as a survey soldier his first test subject was none other than john the fact that both Annie and john thought that they should improve their skills to stay as far away as possible from the titans just made him furious anyone or anything that did not align with his strict ideology was seen as a threat to him which as we will see in later entries can be a dangerous way of thinking before everyone graduated Reiner told him something that Eren would never forget the only thing to do is just keep moving forward as team attack titan finally graduated from the training corps they were both thrilled and terrified to start the job in Shonen anime the hero’s first mission is always an important one where he usually learns a lot from it but also gets his time to shine on the big stage while Eren did get his moment of glory during the battle of Trost district dark the events felt like something right out of a horror film and on top of that the whole thing was more of an emergency situation than a regular mission since the colossal titan just showed up out of nowhere before vanishing into thin air things did move fast and everyone was rushed into action.

Eren  is a tiny bit stubborn he went through his training with help

But that was Eren’s moment the one that he’s been waiting for he could finally start destroying titans and in a way get some kind of revenge but since Eren is Eren and lacks judgment while also being an awful team player thinking he’s as strong as Goku or Saitama he just attacked without thinking about it twice as he got pissed about Thomas Wagner being eaten alive he rushed to get rid of the titan but lost his leg in the process he did save Armin from being swallowed by one of those giants but ended up in a people soup totally disoriented the only thing that actually saved him was the gift or curse his father gave him as he turned into the attack titan for the first time after everyone freaked out real good Eren was assigned to transform and seal Trost gate with a boulder while he eventually got it done the teenager had a rough time piloting that thing when he almost crushed Mikasa his main issue is that he is fueled by rage and can’t keep a level head most of the time which makes him stomp stuff like an angry giant toddler after the fight he is sent to court where the military police brigade wants to use him as a lab rat and the survey corps enroll him thanks to Erwin and Levi’s strong kicks Darius Zackly agreed with Erwin’s demands sending.

finally start destroying titans

Eren to a specialized and improvised titan training as Eren joins Levi’s special operations squad he is assigned a very important mission cleaning duty Levi being an absolute germophobe asks him to Lysol the whole place while Eren  is playing cinderella in a castle and escaped to the dissection table the military police brigade had in store for him he ended up in the hands of my favorite mad genius Hange Zoe after some trial and a lot of errors Eren learns two important things about titan transformation first he has to injure himself to activate his powers and he does so by biting his hand real hard the important intel he got from training with Hange is that he needs to have a clear goal in mind in order to transform after a month of cleaning and training he is set on his first expedition outside the walls enter the female titan just like the first time Eren faced titans the 57th expedition outside the walls was heavy on casualties during the mission Eren is set on changing and follows orders but as his fellow soldiers fall one by one he loses it and goes full titan during his fight with the female titan we can see how much more control he has but he clearly uses too much of his energy which doesn’t make him last very long after Levi and Mikasa eventually save his titan butt they return to Wall Maria defeated a bit earlier in arc how big of an impact his meeting with Annie was well the events of Stohess district where Annie’s betrayal was revealed broke him in more than one way while he is growing in many ways when all the proof was put on the table by Armin and then by Annie herself who did not deny what she had done.

Eren in shock was still refusing to believe

Eren in shock was still refusing to believe what was happening this stopped him from transforming right away as he couldn’t get his head around fighting Annie the goal did not match his world view to him people were either good or bad and Annie was one of the good guys i think his unchangeable world view was something fans hated about Eren at first well not in the fact that he was a total brat but he slowly transformed he started to move away from the cliche Shonen hero and let his Shonen world change him little by little while the female titan arc shattered Eren’s world views as he witnessed the dark side of humanity the clash of the titans arc breaks him a little more while Eren did look down on the military police brigade he learned about how rotten people within Wall Shiganshina really were from pastor nick as it is revealed he knew about the colossal titans within the walls since Eren is getting better and better at controlling the attack titan Hange wants him to replicate the female titan’s ability in hopes of sealing wall rose while on top of the wall in Trost district.

Reiner accompanied by Bertolt takes Eren

Reiner accompanied by Bertolt takes Eren away from the group and he admits being the armored titan while Bertolt is the colossal titan Reiner wants to convince Eren to come with them back to their hometown promising to stop attacking the walls after everyone transformed into their giant monster versions Eren and Reiner duel on the other side of the wall this is where we notice a stark improvement in Eren as he not only listens to his team while inside the attack titan but also uses Annie’s technique to bring Reiner down after losing because the colossal titan yielded himself at them Eren is captured and taken to a forest with Ymir Reiner and Bertolt there his old psychotic self reemerges as he vows to end them in horrible ways the contrast between his reaction and emir’s usual grumpy self is striking but also in some ways she’s similar to Eren from the final season Ymir’s only goal was to protect Historia and she will do anything in her power to keep doing that even if it means being eaten by Porco Galliard but the Eren that we know the Shonen hero totally disappears in one specific scene when he totally friendzones Mikasa i mean when he defeats the smiling titan unconsciously using the founding titan’s powers from this moment on Eren started being kinder to his friends and his focus switched from wanting to destroy all titans to protecting the ones he loves the uprising starts off with a very shocking moment when Eren actually tells Jon that he is right about something the old Eren would have probably ended this discussion in a fist fight but the new and improved character acknowledged that the worth of having saved him will depend on what he does in the future so in a way.

Eren has matured and listens

Eren has matured and listens to others and he also seems to have a strong case of a superiority complex he believes he is the chosen one and everything will depend on him and on him alone after being kidnapped by rod race who wants to take back the founding titan he begs Historia to just devour him after learning the truth about his father after being touched by two royals he now knows the truth about his father and about himself Eren is completely falling apart asking Historia to let her father now a giant blob of a titan eat him he eventually saves everyone by using his hardening ability powered up by ingesting a serum that race dropped before transforming two months after destroying rod’s titan and putting Historia on the throne Eren experiments with his hardening powers which results in the development of the executioner from hell the device installed on the walls helps defeat titans without the need for soldiers to risk their lives this combines both Eren’s first goal to kill them all as well as his second goal to protect his friends while his first goal will be realized sometime between season 3 and 4.

The second will take quite a dark turn as the story

 The second will take quite a dark turn as the story unfolds the return to Shiganshina arc finally takes us back to Eren’s hometown this is where Grisha’s huge secret lies somewhere under Eren’s childhood home while Eren is set in ending Reiner and Bertolt and his resolve is still quite fueled by hate his attitude is getting more and more calm and to some extent cold pragmatism is creeping its way inside Eren’s head taking the place of a form of passionate anger while Eren might be getting more composed and focused he still cares about his friends as he apologizes to Mikasa about the way he treated her before one moment that defines Eren during this arc is Armin’s sacrifice he accepted Armin’s plan to exhaust the colossal titan until there was almost nothing left but bones even if it meant losing him when he saw Armin barely breathing on top of that rooftop it’s as if just for a moment he understood that he will lose people and there is nothing to do but move forward just like Reiner said back then what i find interesting about this scene is that we both see the future and the old Eren in that particular moment when Levi arrives with what’s left of heroin and has a way to save Armin with the titan serum Eren suddenly goes back to his passion itself he is willing to defy orders and even clash with the best soldier in the whole survey corps he understands he needs Armin to move forward and that the blonde boy will have a major part in what’s to come Eren is starting to master his powers and won’t hesitate to use them to protect the ones he loves in what follows this battle the team learns that everything they knew about the world was a lie and that Annie Reiner and Bertolt came from a place called Marley as if everything he went through already didn’t scar him enough this changed everything the last scene in season 3 showed us the gang having fun at the beach and as all titans have been defeated and Eren is finally seeing the ocean he emotionlessly points forward noting that this is not freedom wondering if they will finally have it once all of their enemies are defeated this is clearly not the reaction we expected and foreshadows one of the most interesting character developments in recent anime history if you’re not up to date with the manga i highly suggest you skip past this part for this last entry i want to discuss the Marley arc that just ended with the shocking death of Sasha aka potato girl in the four year gap between season three and four Eren became a sort of anti-hero with debatable ethics.

Out on a path of destruction

 How Eldians from Marley were advocating for the annihilation of paradise island’s people this set him out on a path of destruction as we have seen in Liberio Eren might have become calm frighteningly calm i would add but one of his main goals remains up until the end protect humanity as he knows it in a way Eren became a distorted reflection of Reiner when he says that they are the same when Sasha died the first thing he remembered was a happy memory which made him smile granted he’s a bit creepy but deep down he still cares now in the ongoing war of paradise arc.

Eren will betray Zeke as others have betrayed him and set out to destroy the entire world

 Eren will betray Zeke as others have betrayed him and set out to destroy the entire world in the name of freedom from Shonen hero to anti-hero and finally to villain Eren has become one complex Shonen anime character do you think Eren will end up destroying the whole world with his army of colossal titans can the survey core even stand a chance against the atrocity that he’s become with attack on titan supplying plot twist after plot twist i think all bets are off on this one.