While lying awake in bed, Jean envisions a comfortable future in “that prime spot in the interior.” He has a wife, a kid, and all the fancy liquor he can sip. He can have it all if he simply “stays put”, does what Floch says, and allows Eren to commit global genocide unchallenged. In other words, he has to give up on being a Scout.
Jean meets secretly with Hange and Mikasa prior to the botched execution of Yelena and Onyankopon that results in the three being eaten by the Cart, so we already know he’ll choose to stop Eren. This week we learn why he made that decision. First, Hange’s three simple but powerful words—genocide is wrong. Second, Hange makes him feel the eyes of all his fellow scouts who have fallen. He won’t forsake them. He tells Hange, simply, I’m forever a scout.
Fast-forward to the big meet-up of the Paradis and Marleyan Eldians (and Magath), and while last week there was a distinct super-heroic feeling to this eclectic band being brought together, it looks decidedly shakier this week, once they all, ya know, have to sit around a fire together.
The sparks start flying when Magath and Jean argue over who started this fight, at which point Hange, stirring the stew, says none of them should be talking about a past they weren’t present for.
Then Annie asks Mikasa if, when trying to convince Eren fails, would she really be able to hurt or kill him in order to stop him. When Mikasa bears arms, Annie responds with her needle ring, ready to transform. They end up cooling down then partaking in the hot stew.
Meanwhile, the reason Yelena is alive is so she can tell Magath and the others where Eren is. She won’t tell them, but she’s happy to stir the shit by going over how many people everyone assembled there has killed, and more importantly, what they did to each other.l
Honestly, why Hange didn’t insist on Yelena being gagged in such a volatile situation is beyond me. Yelena doesn’t spare anyone, getting it “all out in the open”. What sets Jean off is when she mentions Marco, and how Reiner and Annie took away his ODM gear so he’d get eaten by a titan.
It’s not that fact, but when Reiner adds that he killed the titan that ate Marco, and begs Jean not to forgive him, than Jean basically beats him to a pulp. When Gabi gets between them, she gets kicked, but she and Falco still beg Jean to help them save their families.
At dawn, after he’s calmed down, Jean wakes Gabi and Falco up, saying that he’ll help them. There’s a crispness and clarity to the look of the morning that suggests a great many things were burned away in that campfire, or at least set aside to the point where they can all work together towards a shared goal: stopping Eren’s genocide.
Unfortunately, before they reach the port where Azumabito Kiyomi says there’s an airship for them to board, Pieck reports that the port is already under Jaegerist occupation, and Lady Azumabito is among Floch’s hostages. The Stop Eren faction is off to a rocky start.
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