In his letter Grisha Jeager reveals the day that changed everything and showed him the truth of the world. He and his sister Faye had snuck out of the Liberio internment camp they lived in so they could see where the airships landed. However they were found by two members of the Marley Public Security Bureau and identified as Eldians that had left their ghetto without permission. Grisha was beaten to a pulp by a man named Kruger while another, Gross, led Faye away to supposedly take her home. After he awakened again Kruger complemented the young man for not taking off his armband and allowed him to stay and watch the airships take off.
Unfortunately this reprieve of peace was short lived as later that day Faye's body was found by a river. Despite knowing the truth, that Gross murdered his sister, Grisha could do nothing and watching his father grovel before him caused Grisha to build up hatred and resentment for the world around him. This hatred was harnessed by the Eldian Restoration Movement who recruited him to join their cause at eighteen.
While a part of the Restorationists Grisha met his eventual first wife Dina, the last member of the royal family still living in Marley, and together the two formed a plan to go to the island of Paradis that was surrounded by three walls in order to retrieve the Founding Titan. Their son Zeke would join the Marleyan Warrior program and infiltrate their organisation and capture the Founding Titan when Marley decided to infiltrate the walls. However Zeke betrayed his family and sold out the Restorationists to the Marley higherups who were rounded up and arrested.
After being tortured for information on the Restorationists’ mysterious leader Owl, Grisha and the rest of his comrades were taken to "paradise" aka the penal colony of Paradis Island were the walls are located. Grisha recognises two of the members of the Marleyan military who have escorted him and his comrades here; Kruger and Gross, the latter of whom throws Grice, the member who recruited him in the first place, off the walls and orders his men to turn the rest of the Restorationists into Titans to chase after Grice for sick entertainment.
Suddenly Dina is dragged onto the wall to be transformed into a Titan. Grisha is in shock as he told the Marleyans that she was of royal blood and is silenced by Kruger when he tries to inform the other Marleyans of this fact. Grisha realises that Kruger must have supressed the truth of Dina's origin. Right before she is turned into a Titan Dina gives one last smile to her husband and promises that she will find him again before she is shoved off the wall and transforms into the Smiling Titan.
Eren suddenly wakes up in his cell screaming from the memories he has received. Mikasa, in the cell next to him, and Armin, outside, explain that Eren and Mikasa are being detained for insubordination. Eren tries to rationalise what he saw as a dream but admits the truth that he was seeing his father’s memories. Realising that the Titan who murdered his mother was his father’s first wife Eren weeps for Dina as the memories return.
Grisha, broken beyond repair, demands to know how Gross and the rest of the Marleyans can be so cruel to the Eldians and why his sister had to die. Gross then turns the last Restorationist into a 3-4 metre Titan and tells Grisha that his people are despised by the world for their ability to turn into monsters and that their crimes mean they deserve all of the punishment they can get. Gross even gives faux sympathy towards Faye and Grisha noting that they could have had better lives if they weren't born Eldian.
Gross prepares to throw Grisha off the wall to be eaten by the last Titan but is shoved instead by Kruger. Gross falls and is eaten by the very same Titan he tried to feed Grisha to; a well deserved karmic fate. Kruger reveals that he was Owl all along and tells Grisha to watch him so he will know how to become a Titan. Kruger slashes open his hand, becomes the Rogue Titan, and lays siege to the Marleyans who transported the Restorationists to Paradis Island.
Tropes:
- Asshole Victim: Nobody is even remotely sad to see Gross get devoured.
- Deadly Euphemism: Being "sent to paradise" means being turned into a Titan outside the Walls, which we know thanks to the information gained from Ymir in the present, is a Fate Worse than Death.
- Death of a Child: Faye Jeager, Grisha's little sister, is brutally murdered by Gross who fed her to his son’s dogs. Grisha learning the truth is what led him to join the Eldian Restorationists.
- Enemy to All Living Things: Invoked by Gross during his Breaking Speech to Grisha who tells him that due to their people’s sins of the past and their ability to transform into Titans, all of humanity wishes to see Eldians extinct.
- Fantastic Racism: The episode lays out that the Eldians are facing extreme amounts of prejudice and discrimination, ostensibly for their ability to turn into Titans and the supposed crimes of their forebearers.
- Fingore: Implied Trope. Thanks to the anime's censorship, we're not shown what torture that the Eldian Restorationalists undergo, but if you look closely at their hands afterwards, their fingers are bandaged and shortened.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Gross directly faces the camera when he gives his Breaking Speech about the terrible nature of Eldians, seemingly calling out the audience for being so far removed from violence that they enjoy seeing people get eaten by Titans. Isayama (the manga's author) specifically asked for this stylistic choice.
- Godzilla Threshold: It's claimed that King Fritz within the Walls has maintained a stalemate with the outside world by threatening to use the Founding Titan to awaken the many Colossus-sized Titans within the walls. If provoked, they would trample the earth underfoot.
- History Repeats: As Grisha notes in dismay, just as his own father’s attempts to indoctrinate him into Marleyan propaganda led him to rebel and join the Restorationists, Grisha's own attempt to mould Zeke into a weapon against Marley led him to rebel and betray his parents.
- Human Resources: In a twisted way. It's now confirmed that an outside force (Marley) used rebellious or seditious Eldians to turn them into mindless Titans and send them toward Wall Maria.
- I Will Find You: Right before she is turned into a Titan, Dina promises Grisha that she will find him again. Considering the fact that the Smiling Titan went to the house that Grisha lived in with Carla apparently she kept her promise.
- La Résistance: The Eldian Restorationists who intended to return Eldia to glory by sneaking behind the Walls and regaining the Founding Titan. Unfortunately Zeke's betrayal led to the Restorationists ruin long before they could enact the plan.
- The Mole:
- The mysterious "Owl" is a mole within the Marleyan military who secretly led the Restorationists without ever meeting them face to face. The end of the episode reveals the Owl is none other then Kruger the member of the Public Security Bureau who beat up Grisha as a kid and watched the aircraft lift off with him afterwards.
- Zeke was intended to join the Warriors in order to use his position to eventually infiltrate Paradis Island and find the Founding Titan for the Restorationists. Instead he betrayed his parents and went on to become one of Marley's most dangerous assets.
- Morphic Resonance: As we've seen before, the Eldian Restorationalists got turned into Mindless Titans that strongly resembled their human forms' hair and faces, revealing that they were the ones that entered Trost after the outer gate was breached.
- Mr. Exposition: Grisha's father gives his son a run down on the Marleyan governments take on the history of the Eldian people which has the benefit of explaining to the audience how the Titans, supposedly, came to be and why the Eldians are persecuted.
- Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Until this point in the story, the prevailing theme was "What do you do when you're the last surviving bastion of Humanity against the end?" But with the shocking reveal that Humanity still lives across the ocean and it's only the Eldians that are stuck in this nightmare, the theme changes to something less intimate but more horrific overall: "What do you do when the entire world hates that you exist?"
- The Paragon Always Rebels: Grisha and Dina intended Zeke to infiltrate the Warriors and someday lead their people to victory, possibly involving his royal blood. He ends up selling his parents and the entire resistance movement out and became the Beast Titan, seemingly throwing in his lot with Marley.
- The Reveal: So much so that the entire episode can be regarded as one long one. Most notably:
- Everyone within the walls belongs to a race called the Eldians, who can be turned into Titans, and the rest of the world seems to hate them for some past crime their ancestors committed.
- Though this was hinted at by Ymir's backstory, we receive confirmation that the mindless Titans outside the walls were once Eldians living in the country of Marley, forcibly turned into that state as a form of punishment.
- Marley's child soldier program for Eldians are called the Warriors, which clarifies what organization Reiner, Bertolt, Annie, and Zeke are a part of. At their inception, they possessed 7 of 9 discrete Titan powers, confirming how many of such powers exist.
- Grisha's first family was with Dina, another royal family descendant, which produced Zeke. Zeke ends up betraying the resistance movement that doomed Dina and everyone else to become mindless Titans. This explains why Zeke is so interested in Eren (his half-brother) and his previous remarks about not being like his father.
- The episode reveals that the Titans that attacked Trost District when the Colossal Titan kicked down that wall were all former members of the Restorationists. Also rather heartbreakingly the Smiling Titan that ate Eren's mother is revealed to formerly be Dina, Grisha's first wife.
- Sins of Our Fathers: Apparently the Eldians are being oppressed heavily for the crimes against humanity that the former Eldian Empire carried out against the world.
- Strong Family Resemblance: This episode reveals that Zeke was Grisha's first son, retroactively explaining why Zeke looks so much like a blonde version of his father, and moreover why Zeke was so shocked that Eren doesn't.
- Unreliable Narrator: According to the Marleyan government, Ymir Fritz, the progenitor of the Eldian people, made a deal with the Devil of All Earth for the power to become a Titan and passed that power to her people when she died so they could subjugate the entire world. Meanwhile the Eldian Restorationists believe that Ymir was actually a benevolent goddess who built roads, cultivated the wilds and bridged the mountains in order to develop the continent. Considering the prejudice on both sides it’s likely that neither of these interpretations are 100% accurate.
- Wham Shot:
- The world map given to the civilians of Marley reveals that the 3 walls and in fact the entire setting of the main story was all in the middle of Paradis, a relatively small island off the coast of the continent Marley is in.
- Dina being injected by the serum and transforming into the Smiling Titan.
- Whole Episode Flashback: Aside from a few minutes about 3/4ths of the way through the entire episode details Grisha's past growing up in Marley.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Marleyans are perfectly willing to beat Grisha for venturing outside the containment zone, as well as outright murder Faye and feed her to dogs.
