With the female titan right on their tails, Eren and the others frantically wonder what the next play is. For all of the buildup, and the fact that we see the noise flare get fired three times, it doesn't really seem to do much. I suppose that it summoned the other scouts who leap into the fray and attempt to bring down the monster to no avail, but that much is never made clear.
After seeing so many fellow scouts perish, Eren decides to transform and attempt to combat the female titan in a more evenly matched showdown. Oddly enough, the others tell him to just hold on and trust Levi.
It makes for an interesting dilemma as Eren has to weigh the short term gains with the long term plan. I kind of feel like Eren is right to transform. It isn't like the rear scouts are actually slowing the titan down in any real capacity. It just seems like needless casualties.
The scenario prompts a flashback to a time shortly after Eren had joined team Levi. They had attempted to trigger a transformation for the purpose of study, only to have it fail, or so they thought. A short time later, as Eren is trying to pick up a spoon, he partially transforms.
Suffice it to say, the other team members don't take this well and start to freak out. The way the scene is executed, it's tense enough. There's plenty of panic and it all feels realistic. However, because this is a flashback, the wind is cut from the sails a bit as we know how it is going to turn out.
True, the flashback ends up being relevant to this episode's circumstance, but it's another instance where the show would have been better off keeping it chronological as opposed to leaping ahead and than backtracking later on down the line.
Ultimately, it's to show that the team trusts each other, and more importantly, Levi. Where the others were keen on taking Eren down, Levi kept a cool head and kept them at bay long enough for the situation to resolve itself. This allowed Eren to survive and gave them more insight on how Eren's transformation works.
It turns out that he can't just hulk out by getting mad or hurting himself. There has to be a reason for it. The other times he transformed, the reasons were legit, but picking up a spoon seems like a stretch. I suppose that also further shows how little control Eren really has over this condition.
The whole ordeal also gives us one of the show's more heartwarming moments, as all of the other scouts bite their own thumbs as a show of apology for their earlier fear.
As to the present development, it is revealed that the scouts had set a trap for the female titan. Furthermore, they're able to take it in alive, allowing them to further study it. After seeing the humans get owned for 2 episodes, it was nice to see them score this win. Judging by the look on the titan's face, even it wasn't expecting them to get the drop on it to such a degree.
However, the development has some flaws. For one thing, the titan was gaining on them with no real impediments. The fact that they made it that far when it was repeatedly emphasized that they had no hope of outrunning it might raise some eyebrows. This also goes for Levi's assertion that the fallen scouts slowed it down. As noted before, that wasn't the case at all. On top of that, why not let the others know the plan? If the objective was to lure the titan into a trap, they could have saved themselves a lot of grief if everyone knew what was up ahead. It's not like they needed plausible deniability. The female titan is smart, but it isn't Light Yagami. I don't think it would have suspected anything as long as everybody rode as fast as they could.
Overall, this episode was pretty solid. There are flaws in both plot lines, but this approach allowed us to keep the fast pace of the pursuit, and still give us some character development.
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