 What's up everybody, we're talking about Attack on Titan Season 3 Episode 17 today, also known as Episode 54, titled Hero. Now this will be a full recap and review of the episode so if you haven't seen it yet, go watch it and then come back and watch this video. I should also point out I don't read the manga and I don't watch the next time on previews at the end of the episode so neither of those will be spoiled today. If you just want to hear my quick thoughts, I've been loving the season so far, this episode has been no exception, I only have a couple of minor quibbles, but otherwise it was a great episode, now go and watch it. Let's jump right into it, let's get into spoilers. The episode opens with Irwin, right where we last left him, which is him getting torn apart by rocks thrown by the beast titan, specifically we see him take a rock to his side and lose a chunk of his stomach, he puts on a determined look on his face just before him and his horse collapse to the ground. We see another scout right after that yell to the rest of the scouts with him not to look back, he yells charge and that's where we cut to the opening theme. Now one thing this show has always been really good at is making you really hate and despise the enemies that our heroes face off against and they do a really good job of that here with the beast titan. After he's taken out that first wave of soldiers including Irwin, we see him pick up another rock and think to himself how pitiful it is that they're sending these waves of people to essentially commit suicide and then he has an interesting thought where he says it's too bad they had all their memories wiped, now we knew about that, but he says it's too bad that because they don't have their memories they are doomed to repeat the same mistakes as previous generations. He thinks to himself they're going to send every last person from behind those walls out there to commit suicide from the elderly to children and he gets angry when he thinks that he gets so angry he crushes the rock into dust and when he notices that he says to himself I'm not going to be like my father I need to enjoy this and he's saying a lot of this out loud which will come into play later when he says he's going to enjoy it he adds he's going to turn them all into little chunks of meat so if you didn't hate him already now you definitely want to see him get taken down the beast titan picks up another rock and then we cut to the perspective of that soldier we saw earlier the one who told people to charge on after Irwin fell and we see him think to himself he wonders what Hitch is doing now Hitch is somebody we don't know but it's quickly communicated just based on the context that this is maybe his partner someone who is very important to him and in the span of 10 seconds the score quiets down and something is communicated about this character that makes us care about him just before he's taken out by that next rock thrown by the beast titan and that's another thing the show does really well it can make us care about someone in the span of just a few seconds so even though we're not losing a main character we still feel for them we cut back to the beast titan and he's celebrating as though he's already won he notices another group of soldiers charging at him but in his mind it's no big deal he can just scoop up another rock and take them out like that but that group of soldiers like the previous ones fire smoke signals and the beast titan this fool doesn't understand why they're doing that but once that smoke clears he sees that the titans around him have all been taken out and he learns that hey maybe this generation won't repeat the same mistakes as the previous ones because this generation has someone on their side named Levi in a great shot we see Levi come through that puff of smoke from the smoke signals and as the beast titan raises his arm to stop Levi it doesn't matter Levi slices his way through slices the beast titans eyes so he can't see then he swings down cuts both of his Achilles heels knocking him to the ground and through all this this is probably the most classical moment of triumph we get in the episode the music swells Levi having heard the beast titan talking to himself earlier Levi shouts what happened to all the fun you were having come on let's try to enjoy this he slices away at the beast titans nape and pulls out the human inside and as that guy flies through the air Levi sticks up his sword and catches it in the man's mouth throws him to the ground and pins him there and it is just a fantastic release as an audience having watched our heroes basically fail last episode even if this isn't a clean victory we'll find out in a moment it's not over yet but even just this moment of Levi taking the beast titan down was incredible and has huge rewatch value in that moment while Levi has the man pinned down he wonders to himself whether or not anyone is still alive even if they're just barely alive he can use the titan serum to turn that person into a titan essentially bring them back to full health and then that person can eat the beast titan stealing his powers now while he's thinking all this to himself we see an image of Irwin in Levi's mind raising the question could Irwin still be alive while Levi is lost in thought the titan that crawls on all fours he's sort of the assistant to the beast titan he shows up picks up the beast titan in human form and takes him away from Levi so it's not over yet the man is hurt but we know he'll heal and as the assistant titan that crawls around takes the man away that man shouts at the surrounding titan to attack Levi so four titans are charging towards Levi he's standing there thinking to himself remembering the promise he made Irwin that he will take down the beast titan no matter what it takes so we see him jump up use the ODM gear to start taking out the four titans we cut to another scout who wakes up maybe the only survivor of the bunch and he looks around wondering if any of the rest are still alive and that is the last we see of Levi Irwin or any of these scouts outside the wall this episode so a little bit of a cliffhanger there couple things to say about this scene I already said how awesome it was just to get that release so great scene and one that I'm going to go back to and rewatch multiple times but a couple of other thoughts number one is Irwin alive we saw him get hit pretty bad to me it looked like it would be a mortal injury that he's going to die but it didn't look like it would necessarily be an immediate death and in fact as he fell to me he looked pretty determined like he wasn't going to just let go so I think it's possible he's still just barely holding on to life I will say we've seen him have close calls before in fact we saw him lose his arm to a titan so to a certain extent it would feel a little cheap to me if they pulled their punch here and let Irwin live but on the other hand it would kind of be interesting to see him turn into a titan see him become something that he hates and has fought against his whole life so I wouldn't be totally opposed to that storyline the other thing I'll point out is it could seem cheap and like a trick to have that assistant titan show up at the last second and save the beast Titan but to be fair they had established that the assistant Titan was there we've seen him help out the beast Titan a couple of times and we had no reason to believe that he had been taken out so I think it's totally fair for him to have shown up at the last second there now there are other characters this episode who show up at the last second where I'm less forgiving but we'll get to that back inside the wall Armin finally has an epiphany he notices that the colossal Titan is thinner than he was last time and I'm really annoyed at myself I swear when we watch the last episode I noticed that I thought to myself how bizarre the colossal Titan looks I wish I said it in the last video but that's okay from that Armin surmises that the colossal Titan when he uses that steam effect where he blows people away with that hot steam it weakens him and that might be what finned him out so he turns to the others and tells them he has a plan to take out the colossal Titan him and Aaron will do it but he needs the rest of them to distract the armored Titan who showed up towards the end of last episode now from here the groups split into there's the Mikasa Jean group and there's the Aaron Armin group the episode cuts back and forth between them a couple of times but I'll go through everything that happens with the Mikasa group taking on the colossal Titan before we go back to Aaron and Armin so the group tries to distract Reiner but he's not having it he is singularly focused on Aaron he's charging ahead and the only way to stop him Mikasa realizes is they've got to take him down they only have a few thunder spears left and they come up with an awesome plan to shoot spears into either side of his mouth blow him up knock out his jaw so they can go through his mouth and blow up his nape the nape of his neck from the inside the problem is when they try to execute this plan one of the spears misses they only get one side of his jaw but Hange shows up at the last second she looks a little bit hurt but she's got another spear they take out his jaw Mikasa jumps in to the armored Titan's mouth shoots a spear down his throat and blows Reiner through the other side and it's another awesome triumphant scene so I have to say here the last episode when Hange was taken out you didn't see her body they kept mentioning Hange is gone Hange's group is gone where's Hange it felt sort of obvious to me that she was going to show up at the last second so that took me out of the episode a little bit and I kind of wish they found a better way to do that because I really wanted to enjoy that scene I really wanted to enjoy the moment of Mikasa finally taking down the armored Titan and I did I enjoyed it but I think it would have been a little bit better if either Hange wasn't there or they found a way to bring her back in a more surprising way or it maybe it didn't have to be a surprise it could have been that maybe her group was heavily damaged but she survived or Hange plus one or two others survived I don't think they handled that in the best way they could but it's a minor knock against an otherwise fantastic episode that's the last we see of Mikasa and her group this episode I should note that in the explosion of the spears it did look like Sasha got hurt we see Jean catch her how bad is that injury unclear so cutting back to Aaron and Armin if you recall from last episode Aaron had been blown against the wall and he's been laying there unconscious since Armin jumps over to him and wakes him up in the most badass way possible he stabs through the Titan and into Aaron's shoulder now through all this the colossal Titan is watching it all happen and he wonders what's going on as he stands there trying to figure things out this kind of quiet different sort of music starts playing to me it sounded sort of religious and kind of gave the episode a very important and apocalyptic feeling like we are really seeing humanities last stand here thought it worked really well and by the way they do a lot of interesting things with the soundtrack this episode this is one example but there are one or two other scenes where things get quiet things get silent when in other episodes you might expect them to sort of swell with music and get more triumphant and that really adds to the dramatic effect we'll talk about that when we get to the scene we start to get the hints of Armin's plan here we understand that Armin is going to somehow distract the colossal Titan and he makes a cryptic and foreboding remark to Aaron which is that a lot of this is going to count on how long Armin can hold out and we can see Aaron starts to wonder without saying it we can see Aaron starts to wonder if Armin is even planning to survive this attack but Armin reassures him that he still needs to see the sea one day he needs to get outside the wall with Aaron and he asks Aaron if he's ever lied to him so all the pieces are falling into place for a tragic sacrifice this episode as they're getting ready to execute the plan Aaron still in Titan form slips off the wall and falls to the ground and we wonder if this is part of the plan or if this is legitimately a mistake from the colossal Titan's perspective he thinks to himself this is it it's over and he wonders what will Armin show him in his final moments just like the beast Titan he's so arrogant he doesn't think we stand a chance but he'll soon find out he doesn't know who he's dealing with the colossal Titan swings at Armin he jumps out of the way and hooks on to the colossal Titan who then uses his steam power to try and throw Armin away but somehow Armin's able to hold on and that's because he's hooked on to the colossal Titan's teeth which means when he's being blown away his gear doesn't simply rip out of the colossal Titan's flesh but because it's lodged into bone he's able to hang on tight as Armin is holding on and the steam continues to blow the colossal Titan wonders what is going on he looks around he sees that Aaron is still incapacitated he figures that Aaron has given himself a concussion and probably can't even move so he says to himself he's gonna make it quick for Armin and he blasts him with enough steam to launch Armin against the wall and there's a pretty gruesome shot where we start to see the flesh and skin get burned off Armin and then there's an incredible shot an unforgettable shot where we see Armin fall off the wall and there's flames behind him creating a sort of silhouette effect and as he falls he thinks to himself he's giving Aaron the last thing he can give him he's giving humanity this one last shot and he thinks to himself that Aaron is going to have to look at the sea for both of them so it's an incredibly powerful shot and a great moment for this character once Armin is presumably dead the colossal Titan stops blowing steam looks down and notices that Aaron was not incapacitated Aaron created a hardened copy of himself a decoy and then the score goes quiet we see Aaron swing in from behind slash at the colossal Titan's nape and rip birth halt out of there in the whole scene like I said plays out with virtually no score and it felt very appropriate because it would have been it would have been off-putting I think to have a triumphant score here right after we lost or at least we're pretty sure we lost Armin a character we've been following for years it was such an effective and interesting choice for them to make with this episode because it is a triumphant moment this colossal Titan that's the one that started it all he's the one who kicked the hole into the wall in the first episode he was the first Titan we really saw and they've finally taken him down so we're feeling all that but at the same time we just saw Armin get taken down so the way they chose to play that scene juxtaposing this triumphant moment but taking the score down so our feelings are sort of conflicted it was an awesome choice and is one of the reasons that I'm going to remember this as one of the best episodes I've ever seen of attack on Titan Aaron drags birth halt over to where Armin is laying down and he looks bad he's not moving he's burned up there's pretty much no doubt he is dead the episode closes with Aaron it sang I knew you were more of a hero than anyone else earlier in the episode Armin had pondered whether or not he really was a hero and Aaron saw this so it's appropriate that the episode would close with Aaron reassuring Armin even if he can't hear it that he is a hero maybe he is the biggest hero of all of them like I said at the start of this video I've been loving this season I love this episode it's probably one of my favorite episodes it had extremely powerful moments great use of score and some incredible visuals there were really only two things I took issue with number one I already mentioned it behind showing up at the last second it was just way too telegraphed so I feel like a lot of us knew that was coming or had a strong feeling that was coming and second actually a sort of similar criticism Armin's death was also pretty heavily telegraphed throughout the episode there were multiple references to him saying he wants to see the sea one day he has to see the sea so they were sort of setting it up for this tragedy he talked about whether or not he's a hero so hearing all that your mind immediately goes to sacrifice now I won't say it was unintentional I think it was very clear that the show wanted us to wonder whether or not Armin was going to sacrifice himself this episode but I don't think they left enough doubt on the table I wish they dialed it back a little bit so we didn't feel so sure Armin is going to die this episode and then a couple of other random thoughts number one can we all take a moment just to appreciate how much of a badass Levi is he's got to be one of my favorite characters in anything I've ever watched when he took down that Beast Titan it was just so awesome and not only is he a badass character he also has a great and tragic backstory if you watch the OVA about him if you haven't seen it I highly recommend it and lastly we can't ignore that Levi thought about using that Titan serum on someone it's like Chekhov's Titan serum and the episode left us with a few potential candidates for that the most obvious one is Erwin we didn't see him die and it looks like he's near death he's the one Levi thought of is Erwin alive enough is he just barely hanging on and will Levi use the serum on him there's also Armin it would feel a little cheap to backtrack on that and say he's not dead but is it possible he's just barely alive maybe and lastly the one that kind of happened quickly easy to miss but we did see Sasha got pretty badly hurt and it would feel strange if they showed us that for no reason and I've got to think the only reasons you would show that are either a she's gonna die or B they're going to use a Titan serum on her my official prediction on that is that it's gonna be Sasha and that's because Erwin I think would be a little bit too obvious they pretty heavily telegraphed that this episode though based on what happened with Hanj and with Armin it may be the fact that they're foreshadowing it means it will happen but I'm gonna say it's not Erwin I don't think it's Armin either I think backtracking on his death here would feel a little cheap considering how powerful and tragic a death it was Sasha I think would be surprising and would be an it would be an interesting way of making her a more important character but we'll have to tune in next week to find out anyway thanks for watching and if you enjoyed this video make sure to subscribe to our channel and hit the little bell icon to make sure you get notifications whenever we come out with more videos like this one thanks for watching