It’s understandable if you didn’t understand the intentions behind Mikasa killing Eren (not really).
As the last two chapters of Attack on Titan got more complicated, we thought it couldn’t get any more complicated.
That is until the extra pages for issue 139 were taken away. We suddenly saw connections we hadn’t seen before.
Attack on Titan is just another way to say that something hurts.
Eren’s death wasn’t really a surprise. Eren didn’t want to find a middle ground without a fight, so a bloody end seemed like the only way to go.
So, it makes sense for Mikasa to kill Eren, doesn’t it? How else could Isayama give us one last heart attack?
Because the story has many different parts, there is no one reason why Mikasa killed Eren. Let’s look at the two main reasons Why Mikasa Killed Eren gave the story more weight in this article.
To Stop The Rumbling
When the story skipped ahead four years, a lot of things changed. The most important change was in Eren’s behavior. After a few chapters, it’s clear that there’s a wall between him and the other characters.
As the story goes on, it becomes clear that at the end, Eren will be standing alone, without the help of his friends.
When you think about the previous arcs that showed how much they loved and cared for each other and their shared goal, it really makes your heartache.
Armin couldn’t talk to make things better because there wasn’t any room. To figure out why Mikasa killed Eren, we need to look at how he changed as a person.
Eren ran away from the Survey Corps when they arrived in Liberia. Eren left the convention the group was at when it became clear that nothing would come of it.
He was gone for at least two months before anyone else saw him again. During this time, he joined the military and met Zeke after Yelena pushed him to do so.
Even worse, Eren’s plan to get to the enemy was the exact opposite of Hange’s plan to be careful. Eren attacks Liberio to declare war in his own way because he wants to attack the enemy from the inside. This is a sick play on how Reiner did the same thing to Eren years ago.
After all, actions speak louder than words (this one’s for you, Willy Tybur).
Mikasa went up to him and reminded him that he had hurt innocent children to get back at him. This change to a violent and independent way of acting sets off alarm bells for the other characters.
If Eren and the Corps couldn’t talk to each other less, they do when they get to Paradis. Now that Eren is in jail, he won’t say why he did what he did or what he plans to do.
With the rise of the Yeagerists, who made people dislike the military, Paradis got into a bloody civil fight. Eren talks to his childhood friends Armin and Mikasa one last time in a proper way.
This is the last time we see the three talking in the news.
By the last few chapters of the story, it was clear that Eren was going to die. With the rumbling in tow, it was later found out that Eren killed 80% of the people on the planet.
Eren looks a lot like Macbeth, who said, “I am in blood stepped in so far, if I wade no more, coming back would be as hard as going over.” Eren had reached a point where it was easier for him to finish what he had started than to go back and fix something.
He couldn’t be stopped except by killing him. Eren said the same thing when he called the Alliance to the Paths. Mikasa was the strongest of them all, so it made sense that she would be the one to save the world and Eren.
Mikasa killing Eren is a clear sign that it means a lot. It broke my heart to see Mikasa kill Eren, who she had saved many times by putting her life in danger. A sad love story came to a sad end with that.
Even so, we also know that Eren wouldn’t dare say anything mean to Mikasa as he left. Eren tells her to forget about him and keep living after everything is over by putting a “dream sequence” into her brain.
This helps Mikasa figure something out. She figures out that Eren Jeager’s downfall had to be her fault.
And with this, she set free a girl who was so much like her but so different from her.
Ymir’s Decisive choice
One part of the story that is sometimes overlooked is that Paradis and maybe the rest of the world don’t know the truth. Except for the leading group, no one knows what Eren really wants or what Ymir is going through.
It hurts to think that the conflict could have been solved much more quickly than it was in chapter 139.5.
We finally saw Ymir’s story come together. She was also waiting to be let out. But her complicated relationship with Karl Fritz put her in a situation where she was stuck.
Funny enough, she didn’t “choose” Eren to do the rumbling because she hated the world. Love burdened her. Love has been a big but hidden theme in the story, so Isayama sensei deserves credit for how boldly it came back at the end.
Eren says that Ymir had always been in love with Karl Fritz. After Fritz used her as his concubine, it is possible that she developed Stockholm Syndrome.
In reality, Ymir was waiting to see if another woman, who was also in love, could put aside her feelings and make her lover fall.
With the release of chapter 139.5, it becomes clearer why Ymir had put her hopes on Mikasa: she, too, had killed Fritz instead of letting him live. Mikasa did this with Eren, giving Ymir the emotional stability she had been looking for for a thousand years so she could break free.
Ymir learned that love could free you from its chains.
But in order for her to be free, a 19-year-old boy who was fighting in a war he didn’t understand had to die. Even now, our hearts hurt for Eren. His last talk with Armin shows that Eren was the most important part of Ymir’s journey to freedom, but that he was not the chosen one.
So, whether you call it fate or Ymir’s good luck, Mikasa killing Eren was a lot more than just the end of a conflict like the World War.
In the end
The way Mikasa killed Eren had two sides, just like the story has two different threads going at the same time.
Many people saw the events as nothing more than an eruption that had been building up for a hundred years.
But for the few who knew, it was the end of a tragedy that had been going on for two thousand years.
In short, Mikasa killed Eren to stop the rumbling and put an end to the Power of the Titans. This can only happen when Ymir accepts herself and let’s go.
The titan powers finally left Earth when Ymir did the same thing.
Even though killing Eren and ending this war only brought temporary peace, the Alliance was able to stop the end of the world.
Attack on Titan is beautiful because it mocks sacrifices in a way that is true to life, and the ending shows that wars never really end.
