"You really think merely mentioning Annie's name is enough to shake me? You think deceiving the honest, cowardly Bertholdt will give you a chance?"
The Bertholdt standing before them now was completely different from the insecure, hesitant man they had seen in the second season.
Even surrounded by former comrades-in-arms, there was no fear in his eyes.
Sometimes, all it took was a single moment for a character to grow.
And suddenly, Eren found himself feeling sorry for him.
Was Bertholdt a bad person?
Without question.
His hands were stained with the blood of countless people. He and Reiner had caused a tragedy that claimed thousands of lives within the Walls, and no excuse could ever erase that.
But they suffered too.
They carried guilt too.
In the end, they were soldiers.
Soldiers bound by orders issued by people who remained safely behind the front lines.
And to be brutally honest, how much was an individual soldier's conscience worth on a battlefield?
To an army, following orders almost always came before anything else.
That sense of helplessness was precisely what Attack on Titan conveyed through the growth of Reiner and Bertholdt.
Eren still wanted Bertholdt to pay for everything he had done. A man responsible for so many deaths could not simply escape the consequences.
Even so, he could not bring himself to hate him.
"I know you're only stalling until the other soldiers can surround me!"
Bertholdt stared at Armin with absolute resolve.
"The only reason I haven't done anything yet is because I needed to confirm something. I wanted to know whether, after seeing all of you again, I would still cry... whether I would still beg you to forgive me."
There was not the slightest trace of hesitation in his eyes.
"But that won't happen anymore."
The soundtrack began to change.
Its rhythm softened, becoming almost serene, yet beneath that calmness lay something much greater.
Then, quietly, the music that fans of Attack on Titan in another life had elevated to near-divine status began to play.
The melody stirred something inside Eren.
And he was not alone.
At that exact moment, countless fans watching the episode from their television screens felt the same emotion seize their hearts.
For Sora, if he had to divide ten points among the elements that made Attack on Titan an extraordinary work, four would go to the story, three to the animation, and three to the music.
In this Japan, however, Hiroyuki Sawano did not exist.
As far as the public knew, those compositions had been created by Sora.
And before that scene, countless anime fans across the country once again found themselves silently admiring the young creator's musical talent.
"Yes. You were the most important comrades I ever had."
Bertholdt's voice remained calm.
"And I'm going to kill every one of you without hesitation."
The cruelest words possible were spoken in the calmest tone imaginable.
Yet his expression did not change.
The spiritual and psychological transformation of the character stunned Eren.
"Is it because we're descendants of devils?" Armin asked.
Bertholdt answered:
"No. You haven't done anything wrong. You're not devils."
A brief pause followed.
"But all of you still have to die."
At that exact moment, Mikasa attacked.
It was a sudden and vicious ambush.
The old Bertholdt would probably have lost his head before he even understood what was happening. He would not have had the slightest chance to transform.
This time, however, everything was different.
He twisted his body in midair, reacted in a single motion, and unleashed a fierce counterattack.
Mikasa was kicked away.
Eren's eyes widened.
Was that really Bertholdt?
The person he had just driven back was Mikasa!
A low murmur accompanied the sharp sound of the ODM gear hooks firing.
The cables buried themselves in the walls.
And in that moment, it no longer seemed as though they were supporting only Bertholdt's body.
They carried his resolve.
His choices.
Everything that still remained within him.
One after another, members of the Scout Regiment appeared to stop him.
Bertholdt did not slow down.
He dodged.
Counterattacked.
Brought down everyone who stood in his path.
The story and music of Attack on Titan fused together perfectly.
For a few moments, it almost felt as though Eren was no longer the protagonist of the series.
Or perhaps the truth was something else entirely.
Every character in Attack on Titan was a living, complete human being, made of flesh, blood, dreams, and contradictions.
Eren was the protagonist of his own world.
Bertholdt was the protagonist of his as well.
In that moment, he was charging toward his objective, prepared to give everything he had.
He had to reach them.
He had to take Eren away.
He had to destroy the Scout Regiment.
There was no longer any time for hesitation.
The strength of the character, combined with the power of the soundtrack, elevated the entire sequence to another level.
"It's strange..."
Bertholdt's eyes remained calm.
There was no fear in them.
"I'm not afraid."
His voice carried an almost impossible serenity.
"I think I can accept any outcome... no matter how all of this ends."
And then came the most memorable line of Bertholdt's entire character arc.
"That's right. No one is in the wrong."
The world seemed to fall silent around him.
"There was simply nothing any of us could do."
A brief pause.
"Because this world... is far too cruel."
Eren was deeply shaken.
When did someone truly become an adult?
Perhaps it was the moment they learned to accept at least one part of the world.
To reject reality completely was merely another form of escape.
Reiner, for example, had never been able to endure the pain caused by the massacres he helped commit. His mind had fractured beneath the weight of his guilt, creating another identity as a desperate way to flee from what he had done.
But accepting everything without hesitation was cowardice too.
Annie was the clearest example.
She had carried out her orders without showing any genuine inner conflict, and that was why Eren could not bring himself to pity her, regardless of what fate awaited her.
Bertholdt, however, was different.
He did not consider himself a good person.
Nor did he believe that following orders freed him from responsibility for the massacres he had committed.
He knew exactly what he had done.
Both sides fought for their own interests.
They were enemies.
Nothing more simple.
Nothing more cruel.
Bertholdt understood his situation.
And he accepted it.
He believed that he owed an apology to every person he had killed.
But he would no longer allow that guilt to consume him.
He would not let remorse paralyze him when the moment came to kill again.
Bertholdt fired his cables and climbed higher and higher.
The entire city spread out beneath his eyes.
It was a magnificent sight.
The world was beautiful.
The cities were beautiful.
And in that moment, his heart seemed as clean and clear as the blue sky above him.
He knew what he had to do.
No hesitation remained.
Then came the flash.
A gigantic cloud of smoke rose above the city.
Within the explosion, a colossal figure appeared.
Dozens of meters tall.
Muscle exposed across its entire body.
The Colossal Titan.
Eren nearly forgot to breathe.
It was not the first time that creature had appeared.
But never before had its transformation carried such overwhelming emotional weight.
Outside the Walls, the Beast Titan commanded a horde of mindless Titans as it closed in on the forces led by Commander Erwin.
Inside the city, the Colossal Titan that Bertholdt had become began unleashing indiscriminate destruction upon the members of the Scout Regiment.
Inside and outside the Walls, there was no escape.
Despair once again wrapped itself around the hearts of the audience.
Eren only emerged from his daze when the ending theme slowly began to play.
No.
It could not end there.
Not now...
The abrupt cut left him deeply frustrated.
Yet at that moment, something weighed even more heavily on his mind than curiosity about the next episode.
It was the feeling everything he had just witnessed had left behind.
Eren realized that he could no longer hate Bertholdt.
Not even a little.
Yes.
Perhaps this truly was a situation in which nothing could have been done.
An invisible force pushed every character in Attack on Titan forward.
And faced with that...
What could any of them possibly do?
...
When the ending theme finally came to an end, a large portion of Attack on Titan's audience remained motionless in front of their televisions.
For nearly half a minute, no one seemed to know how to react.
Then, after replaying everything that had happened in the episode inside their minds, the crowd rushed online.
"This episode was incredible!"
"Yes! This is what Attack on Titan needs! What even was that first half of season three? I'm not saying all that complicated, heavy political material was bad, but scenes filled with action and character development like this are obviously much more exciting!"
"But the first half of the third season revealed crucial information about the entire world of the story! There was no way they could simply ignore all of that!"
"I almost cried watching Bertholdt. I still want him to die, but I realized I can't hate him the way I used to."
"Seriously, what is a soldier supposed to do if a superior orders him to fire on civilians in the middle of a battlefield? Do you really think someone can simply ignore the entire authority behind the military, not to mention their own family, just to follow their conscience?"
"Watching all of this was suffocating! If I were in Bertholdt's position, I wouldn't know what to do either!"
"Among the three infiltrators, Annie is the only one I don't feel sorry for. It doesn't seem like she ever truly regretted anything she did! And she killed Petra like that!"
"And that damned giant monkey? Now that's the real villain! The Beast Titan needs to die!"
"Bertholdt and Reiner are just too tragic. Five years ago, they were still children when their superiors sent them out to carry out a massacre!"
"Tragic? What exactly is tragic about them? Even if they were following orders, killing is still killing! They have no conscience at all! Hah..."
"Should a soldier follow his conscience or his orders? If everyone in an army starts acting however they please because they think killing is wrong, they might as well surrender immediately. At least then no one has to kill anyone, and everyone gets to preserve their conscience."
"Enough. Stop arguing. What do you expect to solve by debating something humanity has been arguing about for thousands of years? What matters is something else entirely: the fact that Attack on Titan can provoke arguments like this already proves how extraordinary the anime is."
And the discussion continued.
Without a definitive answer.
Just like the world of Attack on Titan itself.