WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Season 4, Episode 4 of Attack on Titan, "From One Hand to Another," now streaming on Crunchyroll, Funimation, Hulu and Amazon Prime.
After almost four episodes of patient waiting, fans of the Attack on Titan anime have just been rewarded with another huge basement reveal. Following the end credits of "From One Hand to Another," the post-credit scene lifts the lid on something that sharp-eyed viewers may have already pieced together: the wounded veteran whom Falco has been visiting is, in fact, Eren Jaeger.
Considering how much the final season has already been mirroring what came before it, the location of this significant twist can't go unnoticed. From Seasons 1 to 3, the contents of Grisha Jaeger's basement in Eren's ransacked former home pushed him and his allies to do anything they could to find out what his father was hiding in it. Their long and arduous fight to do so finally paid off at the end of the third season's second part. Inside a secret compartment in Grisha's desk, the Scouts were shocked to discover that the mysterious intellectual actually came from a place beyond the island -- Marley. From there, they realized the Titans weren't the root cause of their subjugation; they were merely the tools of calculated, human evil.
The source of that evil is what Season 4 of Attack on Titan has been entirely focussed on so far -- to the confusion and frustration of some anime-only fans. Four years after his failed efforts to find the Founding Titan on Paradis Island came to an end, Reiner Braun, the Armored Titan, is now back in Marley's internment zone for Eldians, Liberio. What he doesn't realize is that Eren, with whom he trained and fought alongside on the Island for years, has been under his nose this whole time. With long hair, a bandaged eye and half of one of his legs missing, Eren smuggled himself into a hospital and struck up a friendship with Falco Grice, the Warrior candidate hoping to save Reiner's cousin, Gabi, from inheriting the Armored Titan.
Even if you didn't recognize his voice or distinctive eye, Eren's false name, "Mr. Kruger," may have been the most obvious clue as to the man's true identity. Eren Kruger was the name of The Owl, a covert operative for the Eldian Restorationists who worked within the Marleyan military police. He passed the Attack Titan power onto Grisha before he could be turned into a Pure Titan as punishment for his leadership of the Restorationists. Grisha quite clearly named his second son after the man as a debt of gratitude, so Eren Jaeger's choice to use it in Season 4 brings this acknowledgment full circle.
In Episode 4 of the current season, we also find out that Eren has been using Falco to send letters "home," allegedly to let his family know that he's okay. How much truth there is in this we don't know yet, as the status of the rest of the Survey Corps is still unknown. But whether Eren is alone or not in Marley, he's clearly about to put something big into motion as the episode ends with him instructing Falco to bring Reiner down into an aforementioned basement to meet him. This time, Eren himself is the surprise lurking underground, with two unsuspecting Marleyans on the receiving end.
Meanwhile, Willy Tybur -- whose family, the holders of the War Hammer Titan, are given center stage at a festival in Liberio -- is planning a big shake-up himself, promising to "address the endless problem" that is what to do about the "devilish" Eldian race in front of some movers and shakers from around the world.
The short preview for Episode 5 is especially telling: just as Willy Tybur addresses the festival's crowd, Eren is shown telling Reiner, "I'm the same as you," with a familiar glow in his eye that can only mean one thing -- a Titan transformation. Previous episodes have told us that the Tyburs are incredibly secretive, and so Eren choosing to reveal himself at the very moment the family's leader is making a rare public appearance cannot be coincidental. With both Paradis and Marley neck-and-neck when it comes to possession of the Nine Shifter Titans at the moment, Attack on Titan's final season is going to be a race to see which side can gain the upper hand first. Eren himself already holds two of them -- will the anime's next episode allow him to claim a third?
