Season Analysis

Attack on Titan

Season 3 Analysis

Season Woke Score

out of 10

Season Overview

Eren and his companions in the 104th are assigned to the newly-formed Levi Squad, whose assignment is to keep Eren and Historia safe given Eren's newly-discovered power and Historia's knowledge and pedigree. Levi and Erwin have good reason to be concerned, because the priest of the Church that Hange had hidden away was found tortured to death, making it clear that the Military Police are involved with the cover-up. Things get more harrowing when the MPs make a move on Erwin and the Levi Squad narrowly avoids capture. Eren is also having problems with his Titan transformation, and a deadly killer has been hired to secure Eren and Historia, one Levi knows all too well from his youth. Then, hoping to retake Wall Maria and find the answers humanity seeks in Grisha's basement, Eren, Mikasa, Armin and the rest of the Survey Corps return to the town where everything began: Shiganshina.

Season Review

Season 3 shifts focus from fighting Titans to a political thriller, exposing the profound corruption within the human government and the monarchy behind the walls. The Survey Corps executes a violent coup d'état to unseat the false King and the elite who actively suppress objective historical truth for their own gain. A massive revelation completely alters the narrative, establishing the existence of a world beyond the walls where the protagonists' people are an ethnically persecuted group. This introduces a heavy theme of systemic oppression and historical guilt based on immutable characteristics (bloodline). Institutions like the monarchy and the established Church are exposed as collaborators with the oppressive ruling class. Key female characters, such as the true heir to the throne, choose self-determination and moral integrity over a traditional, fated role of power and lineage, while other female soldiers remain forces of great competence and skill.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics7/10

The narrative's central conflict is revealed to be based on ethnic oppression. The protagonists’ race (Eldians) are persecuted globally because of their immutable bloodline trait, which is a powerful form of identity-based conflict. Characters are judged by their merit and actions within the heroic military branch, but the entire world structure is rooted in ethnic hierarchy and systemic subjugation. There is no forced insertion of diversity, as the cast is ethnically homogeneous within the walls.

Oikophobia8/10

The plot centers on the successful, violent overthrow of the home civilization's ruling political structure and government. The current society within the walls is explicitly framed as fundamentally corrupt, built on lies, and led by selfish elites who actively sacrifice their citizens. The ultimate historical revelation is that the civilization's ancestors were a genocidal empire, actively demonizing the foundational past.

Feminism6/10

Female characters hold key positions of high competence and merit, including a respected scientist who becomes a commander, and the military's most formidable fighter. A major female protagonist's arc involves rejecting her fated role as a queen and a traditional natalist duty for the sake of moral self-determination, which is a rejection of the anti-natalism definition's antithesis.

LGBTQ+2/10

The story features a deeply committed, non-traditional relationship between two female characters which is integral to the plot's emotional weight and one character's eventual sacrifice. This relationship is presented naturally within the dark, overarching war narrative, and there is no ideological lecturing or focus on deconstructing the nuclear family as a societal goal.

Anti-Theism8/10

The season immediately establishes the Church of the Walls as an institution complicit in the government's cover-up of objective historical truth. The religious institution is portrayed as a tool used by the corrupt ruling class to maintain control and hide reality from the populace, framing traditional religion as an impediment to transcendent truth. Heroes operate on a moral code of sacrifice and objective truth, separate from faith.