Attack on Titan: The Final Season Part 2 Episode 78

Attack on Titan: The Final Season Part 2 Episode 78

Falco’s Jaws

I’ll say it. The manga did Falco being turned into a titan better than the anime did. I know people are going to say how great this episode of the anime was. But in reality, the manga did it all better.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s actually get into the scene of Falco being turned into a titan. Despite all the other stuff that happened in the episode, I think this is the most interesting.

As we can tell from Falco’s appearance, he’s not your average titan. He has a very distinct profile that reminds me of a featherless chicken. But, the most defining feature of his titan form is the mouth. What a nice set of chompers he has there.

Falco in titan form about to eat Galliard from the anime series Attack on Titan: The Final Season Part 2
Falco in titan form about to eat Galliard

While it might not be much foreshadowing, I do think Falco’s distinct mouth was supposed to be foreshadowing. Why? Because Falco is going to be the next holder of the Jaw Titan. He ate Galliard, the current holder of the Jaw Titan. So that makes him the next Jaw Titan.

If Falco had eaten Reiner, he would become the next Armored Titan. It’s as simple as that, and I think we all understand how this works by now. But, what makes this interesting is that Falco isn’t really sided with any one faction currently.

He’s not fighting for Marley anymore. He’s not with the Yeagerists. And he’s not with the Paradis Island Alliance either. For now, at least, I’d say that Falco is the only neutral Titan shifter in this conflict. The Yeagerists “technically” have four (not really anymore), Marley has two, Paradis has one, and Annie is still sealed away.

The Best Cliffhanger, Ruined

In my review of Episode 77, I mentioned that this week’s episode should end where I think the first part of the Final Season should have ended. That didn’t happen. When I wrote that, I was expecting Episode 78 to end where Chapter 119 did. Instead, Episode 78 ended halfway through Chapter 120.

The fact that we got that far in this episode is a good sign for maybe finishing the series within this season of the anime. However, it also means the episode didn’t conclude with Eren being decapitated.

In the manga, Chapter 119 ends with the panel of Eren’s head flying off his body. We don’t see that Zeke catches it until the following chapter. It was a great cliffhanger in the manga, so just imagine how crazy that would have been as a cliffhanger in the anime. I think they really missed out by not finishing the first cour of this season like that.

Zeke catching Eren's head from the anime series Attack on Titan: The Final Season Part 2 Episode 78
Zeke catching Eren’s head

But, what’s worse than not using Eren’s decapitation as a cour-ending cliffhanger is not even using it as a cliffhanger at all. Okay, sure, we still don’t know what Eren’s ultimate fate is in the anime. However, I don’t think you can say his decapitation was used as a cliffhanger in any way.

I know it’s going to be an unpopular opinion — as anything critical of the Attack on Titan anime is — but I genuinely think the way this scene was used ruined it. If you have a defense for why it’s okay to place this scene in the middle of an episode, I’d love to hear it.

I’m sure there are some who will try to defend it. After all, there were plenty of people willing to do extreme mental gymnastics to convince themselves the end of the Attack on Titan manga was good too (it wasn’t).

Unraveling the Paths

From what I remember, we’ve seen the inside of Paths in the previous cour of the final season. It’s basically a world inside the minds of the Titan shifters that connects them all to the Founder Ymir. I don’t believe any of that is new information.

Before we entered Paths in this episode, there was another small piece of foreshadowing. In the flashback of when Zeke and Eren first met, Zeke tosses a baseball to Eren which he drops. This was foreshadowing how Eren was going to betray Zeke.

Within Paths, we saw this betrayal play out. Eren declares that he only went along with Zeke’s plan to use him. But then, Zeke reveals that he actually doesn’t need Eren to use the power of the Founding Titan. As long as the two of them came in contact, Zeke can use Eren’s Founding Titan power — or so he claims.

Ymir, Eren, and Zeke within Paths from the anime series Attack on Titan: The Final Season Part 2 Episode 78
Ymir, Eren, and Zeke within Paths

If you thought that was a bit of an odd development, you’re not alone. From this point on, there are going to be a lot of strange developments throughout the series. And, in fact, one of them already happened earlier in the anime than it did in the manga.

In Episode 77, there was some dialogue added to “tie up” a plotline earlier than in the manga. I won’t say what it is just yet in case the anime does more with it. But in the manga, this plotline was left around for longer and then turned out to be nothing. The anime “fixed” it by cutting it short.

I’m curious to see if this happens with more of the random developments that happened in the manga. Obviously, this whole thing with Eren and Zeke in Paths is major enough to not be retconned. But I think Eren saying “I was just using you” to Zeke only for Zeke to respond with “I knew you were using me so I was actually using you” is pretty lame.

Conclusion

What do you think of Attack on Titan: The Final Season Part 2 Episode 78? Did you think Falco would become the Armored Titan? Should Eren’s decapitation have been an episode-ending cliffhanger? And do you know what plotline was snuffed out early in the previous episode? Let me know in the comments.

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My review of Episode 79 is available now.

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