The Attack on Titan fandom has an awful relationship with belittling important characters, and I’ve seen a lot of it in Zoe Hange. Even in the reblogs I’ve read, people have a tendency to say things like ‘but she’s really only a scientist, isn’t she?’ and claiming she’s not as high up in the military as she clearly is. They also belittle her intelligence and tactics skills, in favor of characters like Armin or Erwin.
However, if you look at her when in battle, you realize how much responsibility she has, and that she isn’t a simple Squad Leader like Mike is. In her first appearance when she speaks about Sawney and Bean, there are far more than just a Squad’s worth of soldiers helping her. There’s also a strange amount of unexplained soldiers sitting around that are not in Levi’s squad, before Eren accidentally grabs the spoon with a titan hand. When she helps take down Annie, the massive amount of soldiers are shown again. When she lectures Pastor Nick about what the Scouting Legion fights for, there’s a few of them watching her, listening to her orders to stay back and clearly under her command, as well.
And most importantly, when fighting the Armored and Colossal titans, she specifically called on them as different squads, as her own squads with different numbers that are under her control, and commanding them like Mike did his own squad, where he put one person in charge and went off on his own.
By the implications given, we can be sure Hange has more than one squad to control, which is already more than Mike or Levi have. This isn’t something given to just any soldier, and, along with the fact that Erwin trusts her to ride alongside him in expeditions, proves something vital— she has a far higher rank in the Scouting Legion than people assume.
While at least some of the faces of Squad One are most noticeable, if you’re paying attention—Moblit, Keiji, a fandom-dubbed ‘Goggles-kun,’ as well as a young woman who didn’t seem to be a part of said squad until recently, it’s possible that we’ll notice faces of her other squads popping up more as we learn more about her and her squads. After all, we know a surprisingly small amount about them; we didn’t even know the name of Moblit, the man always by her side and screaming 'Squad Leader!' until chapter 37.
We can only hope that they’ll be delved into to the same amount that other squads were, but for now, we should at least agree on one thing— Hange is a far more important soldier than people seem to realize.
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