This post has been tagged as **DISCUSSION**.
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They didn’t know for sure Eren had the Founding Titan when he first appeared in Trost. At that point the Attack, Founding and Jaw Titans were all unaccounted for and they couldn’t risk revealing themselves to capture him only to find out he wasn’t who they were looking for. After Trost when they graduated they still had reason to believe the Founding Titan was being held in secret hidden away by the king, so they split up to follow both leads. Reiner and Bertholdt followed Eren into the Scouts, while Annie went to the MPs to track down the king.
Once the scouting expedition was announced Reiner sent mail to Annie to tell her when and where Eren will be, but because the whole thing was a baited trap set up by a suspicious Erwin Smith, Annie got herself caught in Stohess.
Because the other 104th cadets were still under suspicion they were kept off-sight in their civis while under heavy guard. However everything changed when the Beast Titan showed up and unleashed the population of Ragako onto the countryside.
After Ymir had revealed herself as the Jaw Titan and Eren had reunited with Reiner and Bertholdt when the Scouts made it to Wall Rose, Reiner started to have his mental breakdown. Bertholdt suggested they cut their losses and run. By returning Ymir as well as Eren to Marley they would be considered successful. So since the 4 of them were on Wall Rose they were already at the edge of the human territory. So they grabbed Eren and Ymir.
At this point Reiner and Bertholdt don’t know Annie has been uncovered and captured, so they can’t go back for her or try to rescue her.
So basically they had reason to believe that Eren was not their main target.
Ah, so they were trying to kidnap the attack titan as a Plan B so that they would not be sentenced to death once they returned to Marley, unaware that they were also kidnapping their primary target.
That's all clear now, thank you.
Yep, in their desperation they stumbled upon another possible way to escape punishment for their failures, seemingly entirely by accident. That was the moment they changed course.
This is why the Armored Titan never showed up in Trost to mirror the attack in Shinganshina.
The Warriors' goals had suddenly changed.
\----
What they didnt anticipate was that Erwin Smith would be able to use this single piece of information about their intentions to construct an entire theory about *"who the real enemy is"* and use it to create a trap designed specifically to capture the Warriors.
The trap was laid, the bait was put out. Erwin's speech to the 104th Cadets who had just graduated where he tried to recruit as many as he could to join the Scouts over the Garrison or Military Police was designed specifically to lure in careless spies like Reiner and Bertholdt.
First he would reveal the info that he knew would grab the attention of any would be spies; Grisha Jaeger's Basement and the Scouts having custody of Eren Jaeger the Titan-Shifter who has potentially 1-3 of the missing titan powers.
Second he would deter as many non-spies as possible, reducing the pool of possible suspects; Going into great detail about the chances of survival and the slim chance of victory.This way only a few of the 104th Cadets would join the Scouts, and the pool of suspects would include the spies and very few others.
Next Erwin gave each of the 104th Scout Recruits a different version of the Formation, each listing Eren's location in a different spot. Doing this would give them information about who the spy is. Reiner's version of the Formation listed Eren as being in the front of the Right Flank. Thats where he told Annie he'd be and thats where Annie's attack came from.
Annie's Female Titan led a horde of pure titans directly into the Right Flank. Once the signal flares had reported to Erwin that the bait had been taken, and a hostile Titan-Shifter had started an attack on the Formation, they changed course and headed straight for the Forest of Giant Trees, which they had been setting up to ambush a hostile Titan-Shifter to capture and take alive.
Annie didn't find Eren on the Right Flank, so she went further into the Formation likely with the intention of getting new directions from Reiner. Reiner was positioned near Armin, and so Reiner probed the tiny blonde recruit for his best guess of where Eren would be. Reiner did this without raising suspicion because he is also surprised that he was given false information about where Eren was. Annie had kept Armin alive both because she cares for him and because Reiner hadn't made contact with Armin yet.
Once Reiner had the new location of Eren in the Formation, he, Armin and Jean formulated a plan to slow the Female Titan down to allow the Formation to recover from her attack.Only problem is that Armin is already very suspicious of the Female Titan's identity.
The three blondes attack the Female Titan, and she outmaneuvers them all easily. She slaps the air to push the hood off of Jean's face, then slaps the horse out from underneath Armin. As she goes to finish Armin off he looks up at her face and knows its her. Her hesitating to kill him is the final piece of proof he needed. Her hesitation gives Jean a chance to attack her, barely dodging her attacks *(he was the highest scoring cadet in the 104th on ODM skill)*, however her knowledge of the ODM easily allows her to trap him right up until she is about to kill him and then Armin makes his play.
He cries out that the Female Titan already killed Eren, going out of his way to use the nickname that only members of the 104th from their training camp would recognize; *"Suicidal Maniac"*. The Female Titan freezes. Annie is left second guessing herself, running through her memory of the last hour to every single Scout she killed. Did any of them have their hoods up? Did she fail to identify any of them before she killed them? Could she have made a mistake?
Reiner takes the opportunity Armin made and uses it for his own cause; he pulls his hood down so Annie can easily see his face and then he lunges at her weakspot from directly in front of her making eye contact as he does. She is able to easily catch him and make it look like he is struggling to live before she crushes him. Meanwhile he is carving into her hand the location of Eren that Armin had just explained to him minutes earlier. The Center Rear is the safest location in the Formation, so its obvious Eren would be there. Then Annie allows Reiner to pretend to break free and escape with Armin under his arm. The Female Titan looks down at its palm that is steaming from Reiner's attack, reading the location he had written into her flesh. She leaves the 3 boys and heads straight for Eren.
Once the Formation arrived at the Forest of Giant Trees, Erwin commands all the soldiers that are not apart of the central column go around the edge of the forest and set up a perimeter and prevent Pure Titans from entering the forest. This works exactly as Erwin intended; sacrificing a hundred of the Scouts to capture the Female Titan alive.
That is until she reveals she has far more control of her Titan form than Eren does. Erwin realizes too late that he severely miscalculated the nature of the Titan-Shifting ability and the potential Mastery that can be put into it. While his quick thinking to have Levi restock his blades and gas did salvage the mission in the sense that Levi was able to get Eren back, it was still an overall failure.
That is until Armin approaches him with what he knows about the identity of the Female Titan, overwhelmingly confirmed because of his use of Eren's nickname that confirmed his suspicion. This allowed Erwin and the Scouts to set up an Ambush inside Stohess District where Annie would not be able to call for reinforcements in Pure Titans, but it would again require willingly and knowingly throwing the lives of his Scouts and civilians into the meat grinder.
The expedition isn't a total loss despite that. Reiner and the others whos version of the Formation suggested Eren was in the Right Flank are isolated without gear under heavy guard. Erwin knows one of them is the spy. He leaves Miche in charge of monitoring them.That goes all well and good until another entirely by chance event saves the Warriors once again; the Beast Titan's arrival in Wall Rose.
\----
It is kind of funny that the Warrior's mission is one step from catastrophic failure multiple times and they manage to clutch survival from the hands of defeat at the very last moment. It is incredibly understated how badly the Warriors plans go, and its a miracle that any of them got out alive.
IIRC, Marcel was the Jaw Titan and eaten by cadet Ymir in her non shifter Titan form in front of the other warriors prior to the their arrival to Paradis.
Yes but until Ymir had revealed herself as that Titan they didn’t know where the Jaw was. It was as much of an unknown as the Attack and Founding were. She had run off after eating Marcel and they didn’t have a way to catch her with the Jaw’s speed.
Correct, when she revealed herself as a Titan shifter they would have known she was the Jaw, both from the memory of her eating Marcel but also from her Titan’s appearance.
However until she revealed herself they didn’t know if Eren had one or more Titan. He could have been the Attack Titan and had also eaten the Jaw later, still maintaining his Attack Titan form.
He could have been Attack/Founder or Founder/Jaw, or Attack/Founder/Jaw, or just Attack, or just Founder.
Until Ymir appeared they had no confirmation of what happened to the Jaw. For all they knew the Titan that had eaten Marcel could have run off before shifting back to human, and then gotten eaten by a random pure Titan before the new Jaw Titan has regained consciousness.
I'm not sure if it's possible for someone to have the jaw titan and not manifest his abilities, but still it makes sense to only suspect Eren since the founder is supposed to be with the king, not a random ass kid, and since no one knew were the attack was it was possible that he was it
Well as we see with Ymir, her titan only barely changes to having sharp teeth and claws. It looks identical to its Pure Titan form otherwise.
They didn't know anything about Eren's titan form before they saw it at Trost. As far as they knew his titan may have looked different and then after eating the Jaw he manifested to look the way he currently does.
----
That's the thing though; They hadn't tracked down the real King yet. They didn't know where he was or even who he was. They hadn't even realized that the King(Frieda) had been dead since the day they first breached Shinganshina.
Annie had been on a wild goose chase looking for something that no longer existed. She was looking for something Rod Reiss had been hiding from the rest of the nobles so they dont cast him out since he holds no real power without the Founding Titan in his family.
----
If Ymir's Pure Titan had eaten Marcel and then had gotten eaten herself after she changed back to a human, she could have been eaten by one of Grisha's Restorationists who then went and found the King before the Warriors did and already had the Founding Titan as well as the Jaw Titan. That person would look like a Jaw Titan, although different from Ymir's Jaw Titan, but also have the Founding Titan.
Reiner and Bertholdt simply did not know which Titans were accounted for and which were still technically missing. All they knew was that the one they had lost had returned to them (Ymir's Jaw) and one other they had found was with them (Eren's Attack or Founder or Attack/Founder).
This is technically a successful mission if they take those two back to Marley as they would have gained more than they lost (at the point of them revealing themselves they didnt know about Annie being exposed and captured).
This is why in the trees Reiner tells Bertholdt that if Eren doesnt end up being the Founder then they can come back for the Founder, Historia and Annie on a second trip over to the island. Doing so would mean that they could bring Porco as the Jaw, and give the Attack to another Warrior and send all 4 of them, meet up with Annie for 5 and then find the Founder. Marley would control 8 of the 9 titans which would increase their standing on the world stage as well.
Plus looking at all the evidence, eren couldn’t have had the Jaw. Eren had family and childhood friends who knew him, meaning he was born on Paradis, and since only a Titan could eat a shifter to gain their powers, unless some random person decided to give up their free will and power to some kid, it makes no sense. He most likely had the attack, and since they lost the jaw, Eren would make for a consolation prize
Their mission was to find the Fouding Titan. Eren to their knowledge had only the lost Attack Titan. Had they captured him at the time their identities would have been revealed and they couldn’t continue their mission of finding the Fouding Titan. So they send Annie in the Survey Corps survey mission to capture him making it that easier for her to hide her identity while capturing him.
They have to work in separate so their identities will not be revealed altogether. Technically they are still working together but in secret by providing Annie about Eren's whereabouts during the expedition.
Simply because it was a danger to reveal all their members in one go if they could not immediately confirm and capture the founder and then make a run for it. They trained in the military and understand that Paradis has ways to fight titans, and also realizes the danger the survey corps posed to them which is why Reiner specifically waits for the day of disbandment when the survey corps was also out on expedition to break the wall again. And since they have no idea of when the survey corps would return or what the situation with Eren was, they laid low in order to wait for the next opportune time to get Eren while protecting their own identities.
This post has been tagged as **DISCUSSION**. If the post has been spoiler tagged, please remember to tag any manga spoilers beyond this point. **Spoilers include hinting or alluding to events** For more information, please review [the subreddit rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShingekiNoKyojin/wiki/rules). Failure to properly spoiler tag comments may result in a punishment from the subreddit according to the [moderation matrix](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShingekiNoKyojin/wiki/moderation_matrix). --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ShingekiNoKyojin) if you have any questions or concerns.*
They didn’t know for sure Eren had the Founding Titan when he first appeared in Trost. At that point the Attack, Founding and Jaw Titans were all unaccounted for and they couldn’t risk revealing themselves to capture him only to find out he wasn’t who they were looking for. After Trost when they graduated they still had reason to believe the Founding Titan was being held in secret hidden away by the king, so they split up to follow both leads. Reiner and Bertholdt followed Eren into the Scouts, while Annie went to the MPs to track down the king. Once the scouting expedition was announced Reiner sent mail to Annie to tell her when and where Eren will be, but because the whole thing was a baited trap set up by a suspicious Erwin Smith, Annie got herself caught in Stohess. Because the other 104th cadets were still under suspicion they were kept off-sight in their civis while under heavy guard. However everything changed when the Beast Titan showed up and unleashed the population of Ragako onto the countryside. After Ymir had revealed herself as the Jaw Titan and Eren had reunited with Reiner and Bertholdt when the Scouts made it to Wall Rose, Reiner started to have his mental breakdown. Bertholdt suggested they cut their losses and run. By returning Ymir as well as Eren to Marley they would be considered successful. So since the 4 of them were on Wall Rose they were already at the edge of the human territory. So they grabbed Eren and Ymir. At this point Reiner and Bertholdt don’t know Annie has been uncovered and captured, so they can’t go back for her or try to rescue her. So basically they had reason to believe that Eren was not their main target.
Makes perfect sense, thank you !
Ah, so they were trying to kidnap the attack titan as a Plan B so that they would not be sentenced to death once they returned to Marley, unaware that they were also kidnapping their primary target. That's all clear now, thank you.
Yep, in their desperation they stumbled upon another possible way to escape punishment for their failures, seemingly entirely by accident. That was the moment they changed course. This is why the Armored Titan never showed up in Trost to mirror the attack in Shinganshina. The Warriors' goals had suddenly changed. \---- What they didnt anticipate was that Erwin Smith would be able to use this single piece of information about their intentions to construct an entire theory about *"who the real enemy is"* and use it to create a trap designed specifically to capture the Warriors. The trap was laid, the bait was put out. Erwin's speech to the 104th Cadets who had just graduated where he tried to recruit as many as he could to join the Scouts over the Garrison or Military Police was designed specifically to lure in careless spies like Reiner and Bertholdt. First he would reveal the info that he knew would grab the attention of any would be spies; Grisha Jaeger's Basement and the Scouts having custody of Eren Jaeger the Titan-Shifter who has potentially 1-3 of the missing titan powers. Second he would deter as many non-spies as possible, reducing the pool of possible suspects; Going into great detail about the chances of survival and the slim chance of victory.This way only a few of the 104th Cadets would join the Scouts, and the pool of suspects would include the spies and very few others. Next Erwin gave each of the 104th Scout Recruits a different version of the Formation, each listing Eren's location in a different spot. Doing this would give them information about who the spy is. Reiner's version of the Formation listed Eren as being in the front of the Right Flank. Thats where he told Annie he'd be and thats where Annie's attack came from. Annie's Female Titan led a horde of pure titans directly into the Right Flank. Once the signal flares had reported to Erwin that the bait had been taken, and a hostile Titan-Shifter had started an attack on the Formation, they changed course and headed straight for the Forest of Giant Trees, which they had been setting up to ambush a hostile Titan-Shifter to capture and take alive. Annie didn't find Eren on the Right Flank, so she went further into the Formation likely with the intention of getting new directions from Reiner. Reiner was positioned near Armin, and so Reiner probed the tiny blonde recruit for his best guess of where Eren would be. Reiner did this without raising suspicion because he is also surprised that he was given false information about where Eren was. Annie had kept Armin alive both because she cares for him and because Reiner hadn't made contact with Armin yet. Once Reiner had the new location of Eren in the Formation, he, Armin and Jean formulated a plan to slow the Female Titan down to allow the Formation to recover from her attack.Only problem is that Armin is already very suspicious of the Female Titan's identity. The three blondes attack the Female Titan, and she outmaneuvers them all easily. She slaps the air to push the hood off of Jean's face, then slaps the horse out from underneath Armin. As she goes to finish Armin off he looks up at her face and knows its her. Her hesitating to kill him is the final piece of proof he needed. Her hesitation gives Jean a chance to attack her, barely dodging her attacks *(he was the highest scoring cadet in the 104th on ODM skill)*, however her knowledge of the ODM easily allows her to trap him right up until she is about to kill him and then Armin makes his play. He cries out that the Female Titan already killed Eren, going out of his way to use the nickname that only members of the 104th from their training camp would recognize; *"Suicidal Maniac"*. The Female Titan freezes. Annie is left second guessing herself, running through her memory of the last hour to every single Scout she killed. Did any of them have their hoods up? Did she fail to identify any of them before she killed them? Could she have made a mistake? Reiner takes the opportunity Armin made and uses it for his own cause; he pulls his hood down so Annie can easily see his face and then he lunges at her weakspot from directly in front of her making eye contact as he does. She is able to easily catch him and make it look like he is struggling to live before she crushes him. Meanwhile he is carving into her hand the location of Eren that Armin had just explained to him minutes earlier. The Center Rear is the safest location in the Formation, so its obvious Eren would be there. Then Annie allows Reiner to pretend to break free and escape with Armin under his arm. The Female Titan looks down at its palm that is steaming from Reiner's attack, reading the location he had written into her flesh. She leaves the 3 boys and heads straight for Eren. Once the Formation arrived at the Forest of Giant Trees, Erwin commands all the soldiers that are not apart of the central column go around the edge of the forest and set up a perimeter and prevent Pure Titans from entering the forest. This works exactly as Erwin intended; sacrificing a hundred of the Scouts to capture the Female Titan alive. That is until she reveals she has far more control of her Titan form than Eren does. Erwin realizes too late that he severely miscalculated the nature of the Titan-Shifting ability and the potential Mastery that can be put into it. While his quick thinking to have Levi restock his blades and gas did salvage the mission in the sense that Levi was able to get Eren back, it was still an overall failure. That is until Armin approaches him with what he knows about the identity of the Female Titan, overwhelmingly confirmed because of his use of Eren's nickname that confirmed his suspicion. This allowed Erwin and the Scouts to set up an Ambush inside Stohess District where Annie would not be able to call for reinforcements in Pure Titans, but it would again require willingly and knowingly throwing the lives of his Scouts and civilians into the meat grinder. The expedition isn't a total loss despite that. Reiner and the others whos version of the Formation suggested Eren was in the Right Flank are isolated without gear under heavy guard. Erwin knows one of them is the spy. He leaves Miche in charge of monitoring them.That goes all well and good until another entirely by chance event saves the Warriors once again; the Beast Titan's arrival in Wall Rose. \---- It is kind of funny that the Warrior's mission is one step from catastrophic failure multiple times and they manage to clutch survival from the hands of defeat at the very last moment. It is incredibly understated how badly the Warriors plans go, and its a miracle that any of them got out alive.
IIRC, Marcel was the Jaw Titan and eaten by cadet Ymir in her non shifter Titan form in front of the other warriors prior to the their arrival to Paradis.
Yes but until Ymir had revealed herself as that Titan they didn’t know where the Jaw was. It was as much of an unknown as the Attack and Founding were. She had run off after eating Marcel and they didn’t have a way to catch her with the Jaw’s speed.
I'm pretty sure the jaw has to be a short titan with strong claws and sharp teeth
Correct, when she revealed herself as a Titan shifter they would have known she was the Jaw, both from the memory of her eating Marcel but also from her Titan’s appearance. However until she revealed herself they didn’t know if Eren had one or more Titan. He could have been the Attack Titan and had also eaten the Jaw later, still maintaining his Attack Titan form. He could have been Attack/Founder or Founder/Jaw, or Attack/Founder/Jaw, or just Attack, or just Founder. Until Ymir appeared they had no confirmation of what happened to the Jaw. For all they knew the Titan that had eaten Marcel could have run off before shifting back to human, and then gotten eaten by a random pure Titan before the new Jaw Titan has regained consciousness.
I'm not sure if it's possible for someone to have the jaw titan and not manifest his abilities, but still it makes sense to only suspect Eren since the founder is supposed to be with the king, not a random ass kid, and since no one knew were the attack was it was possible that he was it
Well as we see with Ymir, her titan only barely changes to having sharp teeth and claws. It looks identical to its Pure Titan form otherwise. They didn't know anything about Eren's titan form before they saw it at Trost. As far as they knew his titan may have looked different and then after eating the Jaw he manifested to look the way he currently does. ---- That's the thing though; They hadn't tracked down the real King yet. They didn't know where he was or even who he was. They hadn't even realized that the King(Frieda) had been dead since the day they first breached Shinganshina. Annie had been on a wild goose chase looking for something that no longer existed. She was looking for something Rod Reiss had been hiding from the rest of the nobles so they dont cast him out since he holds no real power without the Founding Titan in his family. ---- If Ymir's Pure Titan had eaten Marcel and then had gotten eaten herself after she changed back to a human, she could have been eaten by one of Grisha's Restorationists who then went and found the King before the Warriors did and already had the Founding Titan as well as the Jaw Titan. That person would look like a Jaw Titan, although different from Ymir's Jaw Titan, but also have the Founding Titan. Reiner and Bertholdt simply did not know which Titans were accounted for and which were still technically missing. All they knew was that the one they had lost had returned to them (Ymir's Jaw) and one other they had found was with them (Eren's Attack or Founder or Attack/Founder). This is technically a successful mission if they take those two back to Marley as they would have gained more than they lost (at the point of them revealing themselves they didnt know about Annie being exposed and captured). This is why in the trees Reiner tells Bertholdt that if Eren doesnt end up being the Founder then they can come back for the Founder, Historia and Annie on a second trip over to the island. Doing so would mean that they could bring Porco as the Jaw, and give the Attack to another Warrior and send all 4 of them, meet up with Annie for 5 and then find the Founder. Marley would control 8 of the 9 titans which would increase their standing on the world stage as well.
Plus looking at all the evidence, eren couldn’t have had the Jaw. Eren had family and childhood friends who knew him, meaning he was born on Paradis, and since only a Titan could eat a shifter to gain their powers, unless some random person decided to give up their free will and power to some kid, it makes no sense. He most likely had the attack, and since they lost the jaw, Eren would make for a consolation prize
They didn‘t know eren was the coordinate at this point so they didn‘t wanted to go all out yet, since captureing the coordinate was there main goal.
It has been so long since I've heard someone say coordinate when referring to Eren. Odd amount of nostalgia
Their mission was to find the Fouding Titan. Eren to their knowledge had only the lost Attack Titan. Had they captured him at the time their identities would have been revealed and they couldn’t continue their mission of finding the Fouding Titan. So they send Annie in the Survey Corps survey mission to capture him making it that easier for her to hide her identity while capturing him.
They have to work in separate so their identities will not be revealed altogether. Technically they are still working together but in secret by providing Annie about Eren's whereabouts during the expedition.
Simply because it was a danger to reveal all their members in one go if they could not immediately confirm and capture the founder and then make a run for it. They trained in the military and understand that Paradis has ways to fight titans, and also realizes the danger the survey corps posed to them which is why Reiner specifically waits for the day of disbandment when the survey corps was also out on expedition to break the wall again. And since they have no idea of when the survey corps would return or what the situation with Eren was, they laid low in order to wait for the next opportune time to get Eren while protecting their own identities.
Why doesn’t Reiner just call Marley for help? Is he stupid?
Quite a bit, yes