Welcome back to the titan war! The time has come to end things. We are finally watching the final season of Attack on Titan, and I got a feeling that not everyone is making it out of this one alive. If you are new to our coverage, this is the part where I explain to you that I’ve never been what you’d call a regular anime watcher, but something about this strange and at times horrifying has never failed to captivate me. And really, we should appreciate what time we have left. It’s one of those episodes! So let’s charge into Attack on Titan season 4, episode 8, “Assassin’s Bullet.”
1. Reversal of fortune reverses
When will I learn? Instead of an epic showdown between Eren and Reiner, this fight ends in two blows as Eren smashes Reiner to bits and retreats into Hange Zoe’s airship. Every episode has changed the momentum of this fight. I thought that for sure, the great Reiner joining the fray would mean at least a challenge for Eren, but this episode isn’t really about that. In fact, the fight is pretty much over, now it’s time to cast doubt on everything you think you know. It’s kind of brilliant. In the tumult of battle, I was left to make a bunch of assumptions. The show knew that I would do that, even predicted what I would guess, and now I’m being steered in the opposite direction. Is ‘ol Willy Tybur really dead? Or the Titan Warriors? Now I’m scared to make predictions.
Also, I may only have recently hopped on board the Brauntrain but… Reiner is looking good! Well, he’s looking spiky. His titan form now looks a lot more like his regular self, and that feels significant to me. Meaningful in some way. Let’s put a pin in this for now.
2. Poise and confidence
After seeing Eren loom so large and in charge it turns out that he’s.. not. Based on the argument he has with Levi and Hange Zoe, it sounds like he’s been getting himself stuck behind enemy lines on purpose. Why would he do something like that? Well, we know Eren is a bloodthirsty freak. He wants to draw his own troops into a battle. He’s such an important military asset that he knows they are going to come looking for him, and then he gets to kill Marleyan troops, which seems to be his main goal.
It’s all so shocking because it really seemed like Eren was in charge. He just had so much in the way of gravitas, I thought he was giving the orders now. But Levi sure isn’t scared of insulting him and reminding him of the time he kicked the him half to death back in season one. And honestly, this makes so much more sense. Eren didn’t mature into a leader of men. He’s an unlikable maverick, with a tendency to go AWOL and get a lot of people killed. The “hero” of this story is fairly detestable, in a way that I can’t stop thinking about. It’s what keeps me obsessed, even after all these years.
3. Gaby’s fury
I guess we have to talk about the main event in this episode, the assassin alluded to in the title. The show has taken great pains to show Gaby as parallel to Eren- only in Gaby’s horror story, Eren is the cause of all her pain. The parts of the episode that followed Gaby were propulsive, and that was before I knew that she was going to kill Sasha Blaus. You know the last season is getting serious when they start killing off the comic relief.
It was thrilling. Gaby has been on an armed rampage since watching her friends horrifically die right in front of her. So when she gets a chance to shoot a Paradisian named Lobov, she doesn’t hesitate. He does, and he falls out of the airship to the ground. And what do Paradisians have that everybody wants? 3D-maneuver gear! So Gaby boards the ship like a crazy superhero. Crazier though is Falco, who grabs the line too! And your heart makes the connection before your brain does, you can feel something terrible is about to happen. So when Gaby aims her rifle and pulls the trigger, you aren’t expecting to see Sasha of all people go down with a bullet right in her heart! Sweet, wonderful, fan-favorite Sasha dies in Connie and Jean’s arms asking when the next mealtime is.
Continued below4. “Meat”
When Sasha dies, we see a flashback to the moment before their first battle, when she stole the meat for her friends. They were so young! I wish I could put my finger on exactly how Attack on Titan always pulls these scenes off for me. The surprise twists always shock me, and the emotional sendoffs always make me emotional without ever feeling cheap. And maybe it’s because I’ve really fallen in love with Ashly Burch’s character on Mythic Quest, but knowing she voices Sasha in the dub (which she hasn’t even made yet for this episode) made the wound hurt even more.
Having the comic relief character play memories of her greatest hits as she dies is the obvious storytelling move. I guess it’s that Sasha has been so much more than comic relief. With just a few details about her life, a whole backstory is implied. She grew up poor and rural, a hunting for sustenance and becoming a desperate oddball in the army. But she was always talented, a little reckless, and like everybody who has made it this far, incredibly loyal. I thought we’d have to wait the rest of the season for Gaby to exact her revenge but now she and Falco are captives, and I have no idea what’s going to happen next.
5. Warrior and hippy
“If we toss kids out of the airship, will the killing ever end?” asks Jean, cementing him as the most moral standup dude on this show. The loss of Sasha is going to stick with me, but Jean is my favorite character, and he is still in the game. As it were. There’s a pointed moment where the young soldiers are celebrating their victory in battle, but the hardened vets just exchange solemn looks. Chief among them? Jean and Sasha. Jean has totally become the conscience of his side of the war.
Also seeming to find some sort of conscience is the beast titan. The episode ends with a shocking reveal. The mastermind behind this attack turns out to be not Eren, Hange Zoe, Levi, or anyone you’d assume. It was Zeke all along! Why is the guy who sold his parents out to fascists suddenly helping his sworn enemy? That’s what I hope we will find out next week. Until then!
