Thoughts on SnK ch84, part 3
I should have known better than to fall in love with a mentor. Mentors die, that’s the way of them. They don’t always die, sometimes they go away for a while, or they go away and come back changed. I thought this is what would happen to Erwin. But mostly they die, so the protagonist can take up the mantle of hero and move out of the mentor’s shadow. Mentors die before they’ve seen their dreams fulfilled. They die before they’ve been able to fully pass on their knowledge and wisdom to their protégé / student / subordinate. They die before their successor is ready, before that person has acquired the needed maturity to carry out the dream, sometimes while they are still refusing the call. The mentor’s dream will not be carried out as planned. It will become something else, for better or worse.
Isayama knows how stories are told. This has no doubt been planned from the beginning. I never expected Erwin to make it to the end of the story. I just hoped we’d have him for a little longer. I don’t see Levi having much of a role from now on, after he carries out his last promise to his husband. He was fueled by anger, but his anger is spent.
I’m seeing a lot of people who say they are not angry with what happened but how it happened. Honestly, I don’t see how a death on the battlefield would have been preferable to his gentle passing with the benediction of his husband.
I think that the protagonist role will shift now. Eren has been the viewpoint character, but we’ve known from the beginning that Armin is telling the story. The three of them have been a single protagonist. Eren is a tool, Mikasa is a weapon, and Armin is a vision. Heart, muscle, mind. Isayama had said that Eren and Armin will not always have the same relationship. Maybe this is where it breaks.