WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Attack on Titan Season 4, Episode 17, "Judgment," now streaming on Funimation, Hulu and Crunchyroll.
Attack on Titan wasted no time addressing one of its biggest lingering questions in the premiere episode of the Final Season: Part Two. The last time audiences saw Zeke Jaeger and Levi Ackermann, Zeke detonated a Thunder Spear and blew himself to bits, simultaneously feeding Levi a face-full of shrapnel. Season 4, Episode 17, "Judgment," opened on the aftermath of this bloody disaster as Hange, currently Floch's prisoner, happened upon Levi's body and declared him dead. Zeke, on the other hand, appeared good as new as he emerged from the belly of a dead Titan.
Eldia's greatest soldier is at best permanently disfigured and at worst, dead. Meanwhile, the greatest threat to the Eldian people has come out of the confrontation completely uninjured. Things are not looking good for those who would stop Zeke's and Eren's plan to unleash the power of the Founding Titan. Yet this mystery is far from solved, as it's still not perfectly clear how Zeke survived, or whether Levi actually did.
Levi May Have Survived… But Does It Even Matter?
Hange's official diagnosis is that Levi's insides were completely pulverized by the blast, killing him instantly. However dead Levi looks, a soldier still suggested that he put a bullet in Levi's head just to be safe while Floch demanded to check for a pulse himself. Hange didn't seem inclined to allow either of them close to Levi, so Hange may have just been trying to protect the remains of a friend, or Levi might still be alive. The implication appeared to be that Levi is alive, considering that Hange dove into the water with his body, but the Survey Corps Commander may have just seized an opportunity to escape with a fallen comrade's corpse.
Assuming the most likely scenario is that Levi is not dead, he's so heavily wounded that it might be a moot point. There's certainly no way Levi could recover in time to be of any use to the battle currently taking place in Shiganshina, so humanity's greatest soldier is certainly out of the fight, alive or not. Levi has lost an eye and at least a few fingers, meaning that a full recovery is off the table permanently, so it remains to be seen what use he could be to any future conflicts once the war between Paradis and Marley has ended -- if it ever does.
What the Heck Happened to Zeke?
Zeke is lucky that he is a Titan shifter, as the injuries he sustained from the Thunder Spear's blast would have instantly killed an ordinary human. Little more than a bleeding torso, things got weird when a random, mindless Titan appeared and stuffed Zeke into its belly. It's unclear what physically happened inside the Titan, but Zeke's spirit(?) was transported to a place he suspected must be "the paths." Here, his body was reshaped out of clay by a mysterious girl, and Zeke felt as though years had passed in a single moment before he emerged from the Titan in perfect health.
Once he got his wits about him, Zeke was all business once more as he informed Floch that it's time to get back to the plan. Perhaps Zeke's royal blood had something to do with the seemingly divine intervention to save his life, but even he did not seem too curious about the "how" and "why" of his life being saved. Meanwhile, in Shiganshina, things have gone catastrophically wrong with Marley's invasion, and Zeke is probably the only person who can help Eren turn the tide back in his favor. Whoever that girl was, it's clear she favors Zeke, which means the already formidable Beast Titan might now be officially unkillable.
