A new flashback in Attack on Titan confirmed that Eren’s cruel words to Mikasa in Season 4 were an outright lie.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Attack on Titan Season 4, Episode 28, “The Dawn of Humanity,” now streaming on Funimation, Hulu, and Crunchyroll.
Eren Jaeger has done some pretty terrible things in the final season of attack on titan and telling his adoptive sister, Mikasa Ackerman, that he’s always hated her is easily second worst. The ending of The Final Season: Part Two included a flashback that added another layer of cruelty to Eren’s harsh words for her by revealing that he was outright lying. Armin Arlert was certainly right to jump on a table to assault Eren for hurting Mikasa, and it turns out he was also right in his belief that Eren made it all up when he berated them both.
The whole Eren thing in attack on titan it is freedom: freedom for the Titans and freedom for the Eldians. As a result of feeling like she has lived in a cage her entire life, she has developed an intense hatred for anyone who submits to oppression. After Eren padded his villainy stat sheet by slaughtering innocents on Marley and overthrowing Paradis Island’s army through murder and poisoning, he decided to cement his case as the world’s biggest idiot by telling Mikasa that he always hated her. Mikasa had spent all of her time in the final season up to that point defending Eren by saying that Zeke and Yelena should brainwash him, and her reward was a slap in the face from the person she loved the most.
A good lie has a bit of truth mixed in, and Eren used Mikasa’s long history of sudden headaches to support his gaslighting. As a descendant of the Ackerman clan, a group of warriors who protected the king by manifesting the power of the titans in human form, Mikasa had an awakening of her power when Eren saved her from thieves when they were children. While it’s true that Mikasa’s power was awakened in response to Eren’s call to action, it wasn’t because she mistook him for her host that she is genetically programmed to protect from her. Rather, it was because Eren inspired her and when she gave him her scarf, she devoted herself to him not out of compulsion, but out of love.
During that infamous table scene, Eren told Mikasa that her supposed compulsion to protect him makes her nothing more than a mindless slave with no will of her own. Eren’s hatred of slavery is well known, so her supposed reason for hating Mikasa was very convincing, so much so that she brought Mikasa to tears and made the famous pacifist Armin ready to throw hands at her. Eren even claimed that her half-brother, Zeke Jaeger, was the one who confirmed that the Ackermans “activate” to defend their host. However, a flashback to the actual conversation revealed that Zeke said no such thing.
In fact, Zeke said the exact opposite of what Eren claimed he did in a heart-to-heart brotherhood that, tragically, was everything Zeke had ever wanted with Eren. When Eren expressed his insecurity about why Mikasa is so devoted to him as an Ackerman, Zeke told him that he had never heard of this “activation to defend a host” that Eren was talking about. What Zeke actually said was that Mikasa is more likely to like Eren so much that she would tear the titans apart for him. It’s still unclear why Eren was here just making up mean things to say to people, but the truth is he has plenty of apologies to make once the Rumor is over, assuming he or anyone else survives, that is.
The picture of why Eren has decided to destroy the entire world beyond Paradis Island is becoming clearer. However, it is still unclear why telling Mikasa that she has always hated her was a necessary part of her plan. Obviously not true, given that she once tried to fist fight a Titan in her human form to protect her from her. Eren and Mikasa have always had a complex relationship, as she played the role of her protector while he didn’t like feeling inferior to her, but to say that he always hated her is false. Hopefully when attack on titan‘s Final Season: Part Three premieres in 2023, an explanation will be given as to why Eren lied to Mikasa about always hating her.
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