Ironically, after writing a very long critique of the ending, I believe I have found a way to redeem it. Isayama’s comments on the manga ‘Himeanole’, as well as the analyses put forward by @twilight-paradise88 and @cosmicjoke, led me down a very interesting path of interpretation that makes the ending - thematically, at least - justified.
In the 2017 Bessatsu Shonen interview, Isayama says this about ‘Himeanole’:
Ultimately, I don’t think the series [SNK] passes judgment on what is “right” or “wrong.” For example, when I read Furuya Minoru’s “Himeanole,” I knew society would consider the serial killer in the story unforgivable under social norms. But when I took into account his life and background I still wondered, “If this was his nature, then who is to blame…?” I even thought, “Is it merely coincidence that I wasn’t born as a murderer?”
Does this sound familiar?
Eren, like the protagonist of that manga, is presented as being a certain way since birth. From the Attack Titan’s power to see the future, we know that Eren bringing about the Rumbling was an inevitability.
The kernel of this idea is preserved in the ending. Although Eren’s motivations become more complex, the core of his being still compels him towards that act of destruction. He cannot understand it, because it is not a logical demand. It is simply the nature of who he is.
The words Grisha tells him at his birth become the driving force of his nature. Eren is, and has always been, someone who fights for freedom at all costs.
That’s why he hurls himself at titans instead of running away from them. That’s why he’s willing to commit a genocide instead of accepting compromise. He was very vocal about this desire in the Final Arc, but his friends wouldn’t take him seriously. They couldn’t understand it.
It is when Mikasa makes the mistake of claiming that Eren saved her from the kidnappers because he is a ‘kind person’ that he becomes enraged.
Because Eren knows the real reason he killed those kidnappers. He tells Zeke as much when they survey the scene together: he did it because ‘If other people are going to steal my freedom, I’m going to steal theirs’. He was made to act by his all-consuming drive for freedom, and not from any kindness.
Being aware of that now, he is angered that she thinks of him as a kind person; because, knowing the future, he can no longer believe that about himself at all.
As Mikasa becomes aware of this side of Eren, she remembers her romanticised memory of him rescuing her differently. She sees much more of the animal in Eren, the primal instinct for freedom pushing him to tremendous violence, even as a child.
The drive for freedom possesses Eren like an outside force. For this reason, he tells us that he’d enact the Rumbling even if the circumstances were completely different. And for this reason, when he tries to abandon Ramzi, he is unable to do so. Logically, there’s no reason to save him, but he just can’t help himself. His instinct for freedom demands it.
It’s telling how we don’t actually see Eren in the act of saving him. It cuts to Eren bringing him back to the camp, and then we see him save Ramzi via flashback. But the point-of-view perspective makes it feel like the events are happening to Eren, rather than being committed by him. It gives the impression that Eren disassociates in these moments as his drive for freedom overrides his self-aware consciousness. In Freudian terms, his id overpowers his ego.
If this is the case, then the above lines from the ending are redeemed. Eren didn’t understand what he was doing at that moment just like he didn’t understand why he needed to flatten the world. It was his nature, his id, taking control.
The sheer power of this id caused Isayama to criticise his own portrayal of Eren in the 2014 interview with Brutus. Isayama’s motivation for turning Eren into a ‘Himeanole’-style character may have been an attempt to justify this ‘flaw’.
I mean, these Titans show up all of a sudden, and he’s not only unafraid, but decides to go kill them? That’s just not a realistic character.
It’s certainly nothing a normal human would do. But Eren, as Isayama goes on to write him, is not a normal human.
Eren completely embodies the ideal of freedom, and for that reason, he is often seen as inhuman: both as a god and as a monster.
Like the ‘Himeanole’ protagonist, Eren was born as something inhuman. This monstrous quality is reflected in his titan power: and, like Eren, the monster into which he transforms is defined by its search for freedom.
Since the Founding Titan’s power obscures past, present, and future, it may even be the case that Eren was influenced by that founding drive of the Attack Titan since he was a child.
But it is not just Eren or the shifters who possess these monstrous qualities. All Eldians can become titans, and so all of them have the capacity for inhumanity. Eren is different only for understanding and accepting this fact.
Unlike the Marleyan Eldians, who are desperate to atone, and unlike Zeke, who wants to wipe out his own people for being born as monsters that can turn into titans, Eren does not regret the fact of his birth. Staying true to his mother’s words, he believes he was born this way for a reason.
Instead of rejecting his nature, he attempted to use that inherent ‘evil’ to create a better world.
The id is a powerful tool, and without its powerful emotional energy it’s unlikely we would be able to accomplish anything. Eren’s id desire for freedom was the only way he could endure all the trials he had to go through to reach the final result.
However, it’s dangerous to allow the id to roam freely. According to Freud, civilisation can only function if the ego represses the id: and indeed, Eren’s id desire is the destruction of almost all human civilisation.
In the 2018 Oita 4PM Radio interview, Isayama seems to concur with Freud:
It’s good to doubt yourself. Sometime[s] it is good not to overly believe in oneself. Everyone has a side inside of them that is a cruel person.
The cruel person inside you is your id, and it is your ego which doubts its desires. Armin considered Eren to be a ‘slave to a piece of shit’ in 112 because he thought he was yielding to that cruel person inside him. Knowing that Eren’s ego would never want to hurt Mikasa, Armin believed it had surrendered to the id.
He thought the same thing while watching Eren crush the world. Armin, the series’ prime example of the rational and moral ego, looks down on Eren for allowing his id to run away with him like this.
But we learn in the final chapter that Eren’s ego - the Eren which is recognisable to Mikasa and Armin - was in control all along. He was simply making use of the energies of his id to achieve the goal of his ego, the disappearance of the titan power. Although he didn’t want to die, and he genuinely did want to flatten the world completely, he denied the longings of his id for the greater good.
Accordingly, he relied on his friends to kill him before his id escaped the control of his ego entirely. Just as there was a part of Eren that grieved at his destiny, there was also a part of him that looked upon the massacre with elation.
It is appropriate that Eren’s id is represented by his child self. Childhood is the less developed, more instinctual, and more emotional stage of existence before civilisation instils us with moral conscience and the ego.
For this reason, Ymir is also represented as a child, as her id of love for Karl Fritz overtook her ego completely. It is only after her ego triumphs over her id that we see her as an adult again.
In that sense, SNK is something of a coming-of-age story. The reining-in of our id is the basis of civilisation. So far as maturity means active contribution to civilisation, it also means the taming of our id.
Eren engineered a situation to stop his id before it was too late. Otherwise, Ymir would never be able to mature and move on from the past, and instead of freeing her from her torment, Eren would join her there as a fellow slave to the id.
In accordance with his vision, the person he entrusted with this task was Mikasa. Mikasa would always stop Eren in the past when his id got out of control, and just so it was her destiny to kill him now.
When Armin learns that Eren had always planned to suppress his id rather than give into it, he is finally able to reconcile with him. So long as Eren prioritised selfless principles over selfish ones, the series’ mouthpiece for the rational ego can forgive him.
The continued presence of the ego in Eren’s mind is hinted at when Zeke goes through his memories. Eren points out his killing of the slavers to demonstrate his id to Zeke, but he chooses not to comment on something else that he notices.
Just as Mikasa said, Eren wrapped that scarf around her because he is a kind person. Remembering her words, Eren looks at the moment with conflict. It is proof of his own decency that his self-hatred struggles to acknowledge. It is also the side of himself that his plan seeks to uphold and protect.
Because unlike the slaver killings, wrapping a scarf around a traumatised girl has nothing to do with Eren’s instinctive drive for freedom. It was an act entirely performed by his ego. The repetition of this act in the original final panels serves to reiterate that Eren’s ego, not his id, proved to be the fundamental essence of who he was.
Although the world remembers him in fear and hatred for the excesses of his monstrous id, his friends remember him fondly for the workings of his ego behind the scenes. By ending the series with words of gratitude for the actions of his ego, rather than words of hatred towards his id, Isayama tells us Eren is redeemed.
This serves as the conclusion to Mikasa’s dilemma in determining whether it is the savage Eren or the kind Eren which is real. The alternate images flash in her mind in 112.
While she is forced to acknowledge the reality of Eren’s id and the fact that it must be stopped by any means necessary, she does not renounce her love for his ego.
Peace of mind comes to her with the revelation that the destruction of his id was the wish of Eren’s ego itself.
But Eren did not come to this conclusion easily. He has been torn between the two sides of himself throughout the series, unsure of whether to listen to his rational ego and heed the advice of his comrades, or follow his id and his individual intuition.
He was punished for relying on his id at Trost, when his solo forwards charge led to his near-death. On the other hand, he was rewarded with the awakening of his titan power - the id incarnate. Against the Female Titan, he regrets trusting in his comrades and decides it would have been better to follow his instincts. Once he does so, he is soundly defeated.
Notably, when Eren indulges his id, his more ferocious and monstrous aspects come out.
Eren continues to vacillate between his two selves with differing results. Just as Levi warned him, the right choice is never made clear.
But in his plan as it worked out, he found a balance between the two. He acted on his own, but still relied on others to stop him. It is because of this balance that the optimal solution could be achieved (or so it is presented).
Put simply: follow your nature, but temper it by relying on people you can trust to do the right thing. In this regard, Eren shows himself to be a true member of the Survey Corps, who not only follow their own dreams, but also carry the dreams of others on their backs. This is best represented by Erwin.
Erwin was only able to bring humanity to this point by selfishly following his id. However, in his last moments, he chose to follow his ego and place others’ wishes above his own. Erwin died a hero precisely because he followed his nature up to the crucial point, and no further. He knew when one must be impetuous and when one must be rational, when one must be selfish and when one must be selfless.
This is the meaning behind the motto ‘Dedicate your hearts’. By all means follow your heart, but dedicate it to the service of the Survey Corps. When the time comes, you must overcome your heart, your id, for the sake of the common good. That, for Isayama, is heroism.
In this regard Eren and Erwin parallel each other, as do Mikasa and Levi. Both placed their ego over their id desire to live, and the Ackermans, though desperate to keep them alive, ultimately respected their wishes and pushed them towards death themselves. Like Mikasa with Eren, it was Erwin’s ego that Levi admired, and so he could not do anything to undermine its wishes. Isayama said in the 2017 Character Directory interview:
The reason Levi always operates alongside Erwin is because he interpreted Erwin’s “For Humanity’s Future” as an altruistic intention that Levi never considered himself [...] When he discovers that Erwin actually has a selfish goal like his “dream,” it can be said that he felt betrayed. However, he also recognizes that this person whom he cannot hope to surpass actually has “an innocent, childlike side that chases dreams.”
Notice the word ‘childlike’, and compare it to the image of the child Eren enjoying the massacre. Eren and Erwin both held onto their dream since they were children, and indulged that id desire well into adulthood.
For both of them, this id desire is represented as a foreign force. The way Erwin describes his dream flashing through his head when he wants to quit is eerily similar to Eren’s explanation of the Ackerman brainwashing.
We now know that there was no truth to these claims about the Ackermans. Instead, it is likely that Eren based them off his own experience of his ego trying to resist his id. Erwin experienced it too; and though it had nothing to do with her Ackerman bloodline, so did Mikasa. Selfishly following her id to protect Eren had been extremely beneficial to the Survey Corps, who needed him alive; but when the time came to kill him, she was able to overcome that desire for the sake of the greater good.
Likewise the solution to the problem of the series, the titans, comes about only when Ymir puts aside the id that manifested as chains, agony, and loyalty to an external oppressor.
Her ego had to triumph over the force of her desire in order to be free. Mikasa describes her love as a ‘long nightmare’ because, like a nightmare, it was torment she was powerless to stop. Her conscious self, her ego, was subordinated entirely to her id.
This description is reminiscent of the ‘long dream’ Eren wakes up from the start. He, like Erwin, like Ymir, has spent the course of the series stuck in a dream, his body being moved by a force outside his control. This gels well with Isayama’s comments in the 2019 Guidebook interview.
Up until he saw the ocean, he was the “slave of the story”. After seeing the ocean, he became a character that pulls the story along, and his inner psychology hasn’t been revealed yet.
It was only in the Final Arc when Eren’s ego began forming a plan independent of his id, thus achieving freedom from the external force controlling him (which had also pushed the story forward). His definitive shaking-off of the chains of the id, however, comes only at the end of the story, when he closes his eyes again and wakes from the ‘long dream’ that makes up the series.
Ironically, it was Eren’s very drive for freedom which had enslaved him. This is in keeping with Zeke’s reflections on freedom in 137.
Indeed, Levi perceived freeing Erwin of the control of his id as a mercy.
Ymir smiles as she gains the strength to leave her love behind, and Mikasa, though in grief, bears a very peaceful expression after she overcomes her id desire to protect Eren.
And as Mikasa comes to free Eren of his id desires, his eyes seem to be smiling.
So Eren does accomplish freedom at the end, for himself and the rest of the world alike.
The rest of the world is free because, despite still being riled up in political turmoil, it has been liberated from the titans. The pure titans are driven solely by id, as they possess nothing but selfish desire at the expense of others. It is the progenitor of this unrestrained id which is the story’s true antagonist.
By Zeke’s description, the titan worm is practically the incarnation of the id drive itself. It evolved solely to fulfil the instinctual objectives of ‘life and multiplication at all costs’ that Zeke decries.
Therefore, a series about the importance of restraining one’s id with one’s ego could only end with the defeat and disappearance of this incarnation. The rational and moral voices of the Alliance, and of Eren’s better self, conquer the destructive self-satisfaction of the worm.
This is the central question of both Eren’s character and the series as a whole. Will the ego that makes up your humanity triumph, or will it be the monstrous id represented by the titans? It’s an idea inherent in the very premise of the manga: can humanity defeat the titans? The ending tells us that it can indeed.
Yet without the titan worm, Eren’s plan and the subsequent victory of humanity would never have been possible. In the manner of Eren planning out his own demise, the id must be directed towards its own destruction. This is how Isayama recommends we use our violent and obsessive urges.
Using the id for other purposes is what created the central conflict of the series in the first place, i.e., the titans. Both Eldia and Marley became too invested in the power their id gave them, and Eren had to step in to remove it before the two nations ground the whole world to dust.
The central theme of the ending is reflected in the change of Isayama’s attitude to the story. Like Eren, there was a part of him that genuinely wanted to destroy the world, that wanted to hurt people. He mentions this in the 2014 Brutus interview:
Would you say part of you wished the world would be destroyed?
What, like, “Screw the world, let it all go to hell”? Yeah, I used to really think that quite a bit — like, I’d wonder what it would be like to live in a world without people, like in I Am Legend.
And in the Final Exhibition interview:
I think I wanted to attack something. Like betraying people or hurting people. And, well, it's not exactly nice, but hurting the readers too... In all honestly, I feel that's what I really wanted to do.
However, he ultimately renounced that desire in the name of responsibility towards others. He left his fictional world partly intact, and tried to give the readers a happier conclusion. The moral conscience of the ego conquered the selfish and violent urges of the id. As he says in the 2017 Bessatsu Shonen interview:
Although I’m progressing towards the ending that had been set before, my approach towards the ending itself has changed from the original plans. Because now I feel responsible towards the reader.
Whether he made the right choice is very much up for debate. But in my opinion, if these themes of id and ego were what Isayama was angling for, then the ending is justified. There are still narrative problems and loose ends (Historia’s arc, for instance), not to mention issues of tone and execution. But thematically, I am satisfied. I only wish the ending had made these themes clearer: subtlety’s all well and good, but you shouldn’t need this heavy of an analysis to make sense of a story’s conclusion.
If you enjoyed reading this, you might be interested in these metas too: ‘Life without the Will to Life’ and ‘Levi, Erwin and the Decision to Die’. The former analyses the series’ presentation of the id through the lens of Schopenhauen philosophy; the latter delves more into how the id acts as a foreign, controlling force, particularly with regard to Erwin.
This needs to be said: transform Azula into a Himeanole-like character doesn't fit ATLA narrative at all.
ATLA narrative:
Toph: It's like these people are born bad.
Aang: No, that's wrong. I don't think that was the point of what Roku showed me at all.
Sokka: Then what was the point?
Aang: Roku was just as much Fire Nation as Sozin was, right? If anything, their story proves anyone's capable of great good and great evil. Everyone, even the Fire Lord and the Fire Nation have to be treated like they're worth giving a chance. And I also think it was about friendships.
For the record, this is what a Himeanole take looks like (based on a very psychological story but an empathetic one):
I feel like this is the take most people want to see, only in the sense they want to relish in considering Azula an "outsider" whom they can wash their hands off and punish simply for being born, a portrayal stem from bias or hatred I'd say, and maybe ignorance.
But honesty that would shift the focus on why she is an antagonist of the series in the first place. Azula wasn't an antagonist because she suffers from a personality disorder, she was an antagonist because she was part of an imperialist regime and serves the Fire Lord without a question. Make the Fire Nation wins the war and Ozai becomes the ruler of the world were her goals.
Besides, a Himeanole take is simply too edgy for ATLA and its writers. ATLA take on psychology is so light, and they wouldn't treat it with the nuance necessary which only would contribute into flattening Azula's character.
A Himeanole!Azula might be interesting but it's simply jarring in the story. Her supposed "violent psychology" (which is not worse than the others but whatever) should not be the focus; her values and trauma should be.
