Wow! This episode was intense!

The first half of the episode focuses a lot on the fighting, and we see both Zeke and Eren's Titans take a beating. But things really take a turn when Colt, Falco, and Gabi come running up to Zeke, and Colt beginning Zeke not to scream until Falco can get away (since he had accidentally ingested some of the wine with Zeke's spinal fluid in it). While Zeke sympathizes with Colt, Zeke still screams anyway... and suddenly, Titans are popping up all over. But seeing Falco turn into a Titan in front of Gabi and going after Reiner's Titan was the part that really grabbed me when characters were turning into Titans.

The body count gets high in the first half of the episode. Both unnamed characters and characters that the audience has come to know are among those numbers. And to go along with the body count, the animators made sure to highlight the blood and gore. While I did see the occasional still shots or camera panning over a shot to mimic the appearance of movement, what stood out to me was the blood and gore. The animators really wanted to emphasize the brutality and the chaos of the action.

But then, something shocking happens right before the commercial break. Gabi gets a hold of a gun and shoots at Eren, and her accuracy with her shot creates a shocking moment to end the first half of the episode. Since I haven't read this part of the manga, I had no idea that this scene was coming. Let's just say that it threw me for a loop.

At the beginning of the second half, it retreads a little bit of what we saw leading up to the shocking scene, but everything is done in slow motion. I thought this was effective, and made sense to do in order to lead up to the next scene.

We see Eren standing in the sandy area where the Founder Ymir resides. Zeke is next to him, sitting on the ground in chains. Through Zeke, we learn that Eren passed away but that they managed to make contact with each other before his passing. Apparently, Zeke has been waiting a while for Eren to arrive in this location. At this point, Eren proves that Armin's faith in him wasn't misplaced, because Eren only pretended to believe in Zeke's plan in order to make it to this point. But just when the tables seem to have turned in Eren's favor, the Founder Ymir passes him by and goes to Zeke. It turns out Zeke learned some things while waiting for Eren, and that the Founder Ymir believes she serves those with royal blood. With what Zeke reveals, the tide turns back in his favor. The episode ends with Eren and Zeke butting heads.

The preview shows that the two of them will be seeing each other's memories, and also seems to insinuate that the two will learn things. With the next episode title being, "Memories of the Future," I suspect it's going to focus entirely on this plot point.

But, wow! As I said at the beginning, this episode was intense. There were times that it seemed like the story would be close to ending, but I knew that the story can't end here since we're only three episodes into this season. I'm curious to see how the story is going to be able to progress past this point and how the story will ultimately come to its end.

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