The discussion from Episode Three had not finished by the time Episode Four aired.
Reiner's backstory had unsettled the forums in a specific way, the kind of unsettlement that does not resolve cleanly but continues generating new threads days later. People kept returning to Marcel's face. To the father running down the street. To Reiner telling a teenage Eren to keep moving forward while the mission he had built his life around was already collapsing underneath him.
Natsume had thought about it on the train to work three mornings in a row without meaning to.
Episode Four aired on a Wednesday again. She came home, made tea, sat on her floor.
The episode was titled From One Hand to Another.
It opened where Episode Three had left its loose thread.
Falco, leaving the internment zone late at night. A friendly goodbye to a guard at the gate. He had told his family he forgot something at headquarters and was going back to get it.
He was going to mail a letter.
Mr. Kruger, the soldier in the hospital who claimed memory loss, had asked him for this favour. The letter needed to be sent from outside the zone to avoid the censors reading it. He just wanted to tell his family he was here and doing fine.
Falco agreed without hesitation. He was that kind of person.
Natsume watched him walk out through the gate with the letter in his hand and felt something she could not name yet. The episode had not told her anything she did not already know. Mr. Kruger's face had not been shown clearly in Episode Three. His name meant nothing to her. But there was something in the careful way the show was handling him, the specific attention it kept paying to this person whose identity it was declining to confirm, that made her watch the scene with more attention than she would have otherwise.
Falco mailed the letter and went back through the gate.
The episode moved on.
The Tybur family had arrived in Liberio.
Willy Tybur, head of the family, met Commander Magath at the statue of Helos, the legendary Marleyan hero who had supposedly defeated King Fritz a century ago and saved the world. The statue was beautiful. Spotless. Brave and gleaming with the specific perfection of something that had been built to communicate an idea rather than to represent a fact.
Magath looked at it without particular warmth.
"For within, it's empty inside."
Willy found this amusing. He was that kind of man, the kind who appreciated a precise observation even when it was directed at something he was supposed to venerate.
Their conversation was the most honest exchange Natsume had heard from a Marleyan character since the series arrived in Liberio. Willy acknowledged that the Tyburs controlled Marley from the shadows. He acknowledged that the path of warmongering had been Marley's own choice and the Tybur family bore responsibility for the darkness that followed. He said he intended to reveal the truth at the festival. He asked Magath to join hands with him.
"Marley is in need of a hero once more."
Magath looked at him for a long moment.
The episode cut away before his answer.
Pieck and Galliard, meanwhile, were discussing the Paradis Island operation in a corridor.
Pieck was still moving on all fours. Two months in Cart Titan form had reasserted itself as her natural state and her body was still working out the geometry of upright walking. Galliard told her to walk upright. She said this was more natural. He told her again.
She laid out the strategic problem clearly. Attacking from the north meant less coastal defence but no large dock for ships. Attacking from the south meant using the wharf but that was where thirty-two Marleyan scout ships had already been lost. Both options had problems.
A senior Marleyan officer, listening, cut her off.
"It was dumb to let an Eldian talk."
Pieck's expression did not change. She had heard this her entire life. Galliard's did not either, for the same reason.
Natsume set her mug down.
The Eldian warriors had just finished winning Marley's four-year war for them. One of them had laid out a clear analysis of the strategic problem in the next operation. And the response, from the people whose war they had just won, was that it had been a mistake to let an Eldian speak.
The warrior cadets were running drills.
Falco crossed the finish line ahead of Gabi. Not by much. Enough.
His friends erupted. A historic feat. Falco had beaten Gabi in a race. The celebration was immediate and completely disproportionate to the achievement, which was the point, because watching children be children in the middle of everything else the series had established was its own kind of precise discomfort.
Gabi hit Falco on the head. He looked at her.
"It's way too late to compete against me."
"But they still haven't announced a successor yet. Until then, I'll do everything I can."
Later, after Gabi had walked away, someone in the group pushed Falco. Why was he working so hard? His brother was already inheriting the Beast Titan. The family was set. What was the point?
Falco answered without looking away from the direction Gabi had gone.
"I'm doing it for you."
The group went quiet for exactly one beat before erupting again. He had said it out loud. Completely out loud.
Gabi, from a distance, heard the commotion, turned back, demanded to know what was happening.
"Huh?! You're getting in my way but you're doing it for me? That doesn't make any damn sense!"
Falco's expression: "Guess it didn't get through."
Natsume put her hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing. The show had been doing this since the beginning of the season, these precise cuts from geopolitical weight to children being completely, recognisably children, and she still was not immune to it.
The pre-festival dinner. The cadets had been trained as waiters.
Willy Tybur addressed the assembled foreign dignitaries with the specific charisma of someone who understood that what he was doing was theater and had made his peace with it.
"Until recently, we were squabbling over resources in an unsightly war. However, yesterday's enemy is today's enemy!"
A pause. He looked at his notes.
"Pardon me. Yesterday's enemy is today's friend."
The room laughed. He had them.
He invited everyone to the Liberio Internment Zone the next day for his theater production. He said he had arrived at a single solution to the endless problem of what to do about the Eldians. He would reveal it tomorrow.
"To the great playwrights and witnesses of history."
The room toasted with him. Everyone smiling. Everyone charmed.
Natsume watched his face while the room toasted and could not decide what she was seeing there. Something that was not quite a performance and not quite a confession. Something between the two.
The festival itself was colour and noise and food stalls and the specific joy of children given a single uncomplicated day.
Gabi overate. She sat holding her stomach with an expression of complete misery.
"I wish we had festivals every day. Blech."
Udo: "Yeah."
Zofia: "Lately, it seems like lots of new things have been happening."
"It does."
"It kinda feels like something is about to change."
"Yeah."
"It does."
Four children sitting together in the sun after a festival, stomachs full, none of them knowing what the next episode was going to do to their lives. The episode let the moment be exactly what it was. Quiet. Warm. Ordinary.
Natsume felt the specific dread of knowing, on some level, that the show was giving her this moment because it was about to take something away.
Falco found Reiner in the crowd and pulled him away from the group.
"What's this about?"
"You'll see soon enough."
He took him through the festival crowd, down a side street, through a door, into a cellar beneath the city.
Inside the cellar, in the dark, someone was waiting.
He turned.
"Hey. It's been four years, Reiner."
The voice.
Natsume froze.
She knew that voice. She had known it for three seasons. She had heard it screaming and crying and declaring and breaking and rebuilding itself across sixty episodes of television. She knew it the way you know a voice you have been listening to since you were a different person than you are now.
Reiner's face in the dark.
"Eren!"
The episode ended.
Zjgoku: "After Eren making his own grandfather mentally break down, he meets Reiner. More trauma incoming."
TSmasher1000: "Hey Reiner, I know you just underwent a major trauma episode, find yourself isolated and outcast, everyone who used to look at you as family now wants you dead, and your wallet just got destroyed. But let me hit you with more trauma and pain with a blast from the past. You still need more suffer."
JackTheRipper1001: "I am conflicted right now. On one end there is Eren, who lost everything dear to him, was betrayed by people he trusted, had to eat his own father. And on the other hand there is this broken man Reiner, who also lost everything.
The line from the preview, 'we are quite the same', hits different now. This is not a fight Reiner wants but a fight he has to see through because he pushed himself into it. A hell beyond hell, exactly like the soldier said in episode three. This show is insane."
Raknel: "Eren: 'Reiner, I'm the Attack Titan and also the Founding Titan.' Reiner: '...I know.' Eren: '...sorry, it was cooler when you did it.'"
Lemon1412: "'It's been four years, Reiner.' This line gave me chills."
Damarugaki: "The way he said it so casually too, considering the last time they met was under very different circumstances."
SyleosFan: "Another basement!"
Thoughtlow: "More walls, more basements. I just can't take it anymore."
LunarGhost00: "Setting up surprises in a basement is a Yeager family tradition. Reiner's lucky he didn't have to wait three seasons for this one."
Tiour: "This episode was one of the darkest we've had so far. Reiner's characterization is nothing short of amazing. One of the best depictions of guilt I have ever seen. The structure, the piano, the pacing. A great episode despite the cuts."
Yaserafriend: "Reiner's split personality makes so much more sense now. He took over Marcel's role as leader without ever being trained for it and became the de facto big brother of the entire cadet corps."
Lewis_Parker: "His split persona has healed since then though. His warrior side and soldier side merged into the ultimate embodiment of depression."
Aileos: "Good timing Falco. Your buddy Reiner was enjoying that rifle a little too much."