Eren, now in full control of his Titan form, carries the boulder towards the breach in Trost. With this the operation is now ready to resume. On the battlefield soldiers lay down their lives in order to achieve their first true victory against the Titan armada.
Tropes:
- Big Damn Heroes:
- Marco, Connie and Annie all arrive into Trost to distract the Titans surrounding Jean and allow him to escape. Special mention goes to Annie who drops on a Titan that was in mid-air in order to force it on the ground.
- Just when Eren reaches the breach a Titan appears and tries to grab him. Fortunately Rico arrives and slashes out its eye, distracting it long enough for Mikasa to kill it.
- After the breach is secured Eren is unconscious and can't defend himself from two Titans aiming to eat him. Fortunately Captain Levi appears and easily kills both of them.
- Body Sled: Annie, when she saves Jean from getting eaten, jumps onto a Titans chin (who had been flying on its back to eat him). The result of this is that the momentum causes her to ride the Titan to the ground like she is surfing it.
- Escort Mission: While Eren in Titan form carries the massive boulder to plug the hole in the wall, the rest of the regiment have to keep the other Titans away from him, even if it means using themselves as live bait to draw their attention.
- Foreshadowing
- While Eren is in the middle of dragging the boulder to Trost's gate suddenly the show cuts to Marco looking at something. Next time we see Marco he has been eaten in half.
- While the 104th are preforming clean-up duty Annie is looking at one of the corpses and apologizes to it with a Thousand-Yard Stare.
- Game Changer: Having a Titan on their side means humanity can now fight back against their gigantic enemies.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Poor Marco was eaten diagonally in half at some point in the battle and Jean ends up finding his dead body.
- Heroic Sacrifice: The majority of the Garrison regiment sacrifices their lives, even willingly going onto the ground without leverage, to distract the various Titan surrounding Eren so he can plug up the breach. Special mention goes to Ian, who jumps into the mouth of one of the Titans in order to drag another soldier out and save his life.
- Killed Offscreen: After the battle is over Jean runs into Marco's dead body. Jean is horrified to realize that not only did he die, no one was around to see it either.
- No One Gets Left Behind: Jean is still stuck on the ground at the start of the episode and is desperately trying to escape with the ODM gear he has taken from one of the fallen soldiers. Fortunately Marco, Connie and Annie arrive on the battlefield and save him from several Titans.
- Pyrrhic Victory: Although Trost counts as the first real victory humans have ever had against the Titans, Armin notes that with roughly 200 soldiers dead and nearly 900 more injured, the survivors aren't in much of a mood to celebrate.
- Sole Survivor: Rico ends up being the only member of the Elite Squad of Garrison troops to make it out of the Trost recovery operation alive.
- Tears of Joy: After Eren successfully plugs the breach, Rico sheds a few of these, both for the fact that this marks humanity's first real victory against the Titans, and also that it means that all of the other soldiers who sacrificed themselves didn't die in vain.
