8 Questions We Need Answered in 'Attack on Titan' Season 3
Everything from the nature of the Coordinate to the identity of the Beast Titan.
While being less than half as long as the first season, Season 2 of everyone’s favorite brutal, goretastic anime Attack on Titan somehow presented more questions than it actually answered. After a violent and thrilling Season 1 that involved the ongoing conflict with the Female Titan, Season 2 changed directions to address a Titan threat within the Walls while revealing a few more Titan Shifters within the human ranks.
Spoilers for Attack on Titan’s ultra-violent Season 2 follow.
Ymir outed herself as a brand-new Titan Shifter, comparatively much smaller than many Titan yet incredibly agile. Reiner and Bertholdt also announced that they were the Armored and Colossal Titans, leading to a series of explosive confrontations in the back-half of the season with their goal being to kidnap Eren, Ymir, and Historia. Despite reaffirming her devotion to Historia in the finale, Ymir opted to stay with Reiner and Bertholdt in the finale while Eren and Historia retreated with the rest of the Scouts.
As the show continues into a Season 3 sometime in 2018, here are 8 questions we want Attack on Titan to answer:
Who is this bespectacled man and how does he keep so swole?
Who is the Beast Titan?
The teaser at the very end of Season 2 showed a bespectacled man standing on the shoulder of the immobile Beast Titan perched atop one of the outer Walls. This more or less confirms that he’s a Titan Shifter piloting the body of the massive, orangutan-looking Titan.
Aside from being able to talk coherently — something no other Titan can come close to — the Beast Titan can seemingly control other Titans with verbal commands, which at least seems slightly different than what the Coordinate does. It’s also implied that he’s somehow vaguely responsible for the humans — like Conny’s mom — that became Titans from within the Walls.
If anything was made abundantly clear about the nature of Titans by the end of Season 2, it’s that all Titans are or once were human, so it isn’t really a surprise that someone was inside that giant monkey suit. What is surprising is that the Beast Titan is apparently a more traditional Titan Shifter comparable to Eren and Reiner than someone stuck as a mindless Titan like Ymir was for all those years.
When the Beast Titan did talk to Mike Zacharias in the Season 2 premiere, he seemed puzzled by vertical maneuvering equipment and also weirdly pointed out that he assumed that he and Mike “spoke the same language.” These details imply that the human inside the Beast Titan might be a relic from a previous era, perhaps even earlier than Ymir.
But we know next to nothing about who the Beast Titan is or what his motive is. How does he relate to Reiner and Bertholdt’s mission, if at all? You can bet that he’ll do more than fling horses and rocks at people from afar in Season 3.
Eren successfully activates the power of the Coordinate.
What exactly is the “Coordinate”?
The Coordinate was, for a time, just a vague “thing” that was mentioned by Reiner as the focus of he and Bertholdt’s mission, and he offered very little context as to whatever that might be.
In the Season 2 finale, Eren’s use of the power clarified everything: The Coordinate is a Titan Power allowing a person to command regular Titans. Eren first discovers it when he accidentally made nearby Titans devour the Smiling Titan that killed his mother, and he uses it again when he sends all of those Titans to attack Reiner’s Armored Titan. Much like his other Titan powers, Eren has virtually no idea how it works.
It’s clear why the Coordinate is so important for both the Titan Shifters and the humans living behind the Walls, but what remains unclear is the true nature of this power. How did Eren come to possess the Coordinate? What is it truly capable of doing?
Ymir has Marcel as a snack, much to Reiner and Bertholdt's horror.
What happens when a Titan eats a Titan Shifter?
In one of Season 2’s final moments, Ymir mentions that she “stole” her humanity back from Marcel when she ate him, and that she feels like she owes Reiner and Bertholdt a debt. This clearly implies that there’s some sort of power transference that happens when regular Titans eat Titan Shifters, though the show hasn’t explicitly drawn these connections just yet. It also leads viewers to wonder: If eating Marcel is what allowed her to turn back into a human, then was Marcel also a Shifter? What might his Titan form have looked like?
This is a mysterious mechanic considering the fact that Eren’s been eaten previously by a Santa-looking Titan and by Annie’s Female Titan much later, though she didn’t swallow his body, for whatever that’s worth. Titans don’t actually have a digestive tract anyway, so logic can only take us so far.
Might this mechanic someday explain how and why Eren himself got his powers?
Everybody's obsessed with Historia.
Why is Historia (formerly Christa) so important?
In Season 2’s fifth episode, Christa outed herself as a person named “Historia” with Christa being a false identity she used for years. Through Ymir eavesdropping on some noblemen, we come to realize that Historia was the illegitimate child of a nobleman that was given a false name to spare her life. That ultimately lead to her having no choice but to enlist in the military — not unlike how Jon Snow’s only real option as a bastard son was to join the Night’s Watch in Game of Thrones.
Thus far, all we really know is that she’s of noble birth, but for some reason she is very important to Reiner and Bertholdt. The show hasn’t sufficiently explained why just yet, but good money’s on Historia gaining a more prominent role as the story unfolds.
Captain Levi is the GOAT in 'Attack on Titan.'
When will Levi be back in action?
With Commander Erwin seriously injured (he lost an arm in the Season 2 finale) and even Mikasa a little shaken up following the final confrontation with the Armored and Smiling Titans, Attack on Titan is in desperate need of a heavy-hitter — especially with Mike Zacharias having died very early on in Season 2. There’s no better time to bring Captain Levi back to active duty after he sprained his ankle fighting the Female Titan partway through Season 1. They’re going to need him if they’re to have any hope of reaching Eren’s former basement.
"Peek-a-boo..."
How were the Walls made and how do they work?
After Annie’s Female Titan damaged the Wall trying to escape at the end of the first season, it was reasoned in Season 2, mainly by Hange Zoë, that the Walls themselves were constructed with material similar to the Female Titan’s hardened skin. Especially when the face of a Titan was revealed from within a hole in the Wall, it looks like all of the massive, impenetrable Walls are actually constructed from the bodies of Titans.
But why and how would Titans themselves build the Walls to keep out Titans? Logic would assume that Titan Shifters in control of their own powers would be the only ones capable; that, or someone possessing the Coordinate with incredible control over the power. But either way, both possibilities are firmly in the camp of rogue Titan Shifters like Reiner and Bertholdt that are undermining humanity at every turn.
Who created the Walls? But more importantly, how?
Annie is still encased in diamond, trapped underground somewhere.
What will happen to Annie moving forward?
Armin uncharacteristically tried to provoke Bertholdt in the penultimate episode by describing all the ways that Annie has been tortured since her capture at the end of the first season. Aside from Hange using samples of her crystal casing to compare to the material within the Walls, we’ve heard very little about Annie. Will she ever wake up out of her diamond stasis? Will she stay aligned with Reiner and Bertholdt, or will things change?
The key to the basement should be important moving forward.
What the heck is in Eren’s basement?
It’s all but certain now that Eren’s father injected him with the same Titan serum that triggered Ymir’s transformative punishment all those years ago, but he’s been absent throughout the entire series.
The very end of Season 1 made it seem like retrieving whatever secrets might be in that basement was a priority, as if that would be Season 2’s focus — especially when Eren’s recovery featured the basement key so prominently. Instead, Season 2 felt like a long distraction from the main narrative aim of the show: to discover the true nature of the world and the Titans inhabiting it.
Attack on Titan Season 3 will debut sometime in 2018.
