It’s the twist that broke the internet. For years, fans of Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin) fueled their hatred for the Titans based on one single, traumatic event: a Smiling Titan devouring Carla Yeager while a young, helpless Eren watched in horror. We all thought we knew the culprit. It was Dina Fritz in her mindless Titan form, right? Well, sort of. But when the final chapters and the anime finale dropped, the truth turned out to be way more twisted. Did Eren kill his mom? Technically, yes. He did. It’s a bitter pill to swallow for anyone who spent a decade rooting for him.
The reveal happens during a psychic, paths-transcending conversation between Eren and Armin. It’s messy. It’s emotional. Eren confesses that he used the power of the Founder to influence the past. He admits that on that day, the Smiling Titan was actually heading toward Bertholdt. But Bertholdt wasn't supposed to die yet. History needed him. So, Eren redirected the Titan. He sent it toward his own home.
The Path of the Founder and the Collapse of Time
To understand why this happened, you have to wrap your head around how the Founding Titan actually works. It’s not just a big monster with cool hardening powers. Once Eren gains full control of the Founder through his contact with Zeke and Ymir, his perception of time ceases to be linear. He isn't living in "the now" anymore. He’s living in the past, present, and future all at once.
It’s a headache. Imagine seeing every moment of your life and the history of your people as a single, overlapping image. Eren tells Armin that his mind has become "convoluted." He can’t distinguish between what happened yesterday and what will happen tomorrow. In this state of god-like confusion, he realized that the timeline was fixed. To ensure the future where his friends survived and the Power of the Titans was erased, certain "fixed points" had to occur.
One of those points was the death of Carla Yeager.
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If Carla hadn't died, Eren never would have joined the Survey Corps with that specific, burning intensity. He never would have "pushed the world forward" toward the Rumbling. He basically became the architect of his own trauma. It’s a bootstrap paradox. He caused the event that created the man who would eventually cause the event.
Why Dina Fritz Ignored Bertholdt
Let’s look at the specifics of that day. When the Colossal Titan kicked a hole in Wall Maria, the mindless Titans flooded Shiganshina. Bertholdt, having just transformed back into a human, was vulnerable. Dina Fritz’s Titan walked right past him. At the time, we thought it was just a creepy fluke. Maybe she was just focused on finding Grisha’s house because of her final promise to find him?
Nope.
Eren explicitly states that he was the one who "let him go" and "sent her that way." By "her," he means Dina. By "that way," he means toward his mother. He had to save Bertholdt because the Colossal Titan needed to be inherited by Armin later on. If Dina had eaten Bertholdt then and there, the entire sequence of events for the next five years would have collapsed.
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The Moral Weight of a God-Like Choice
Is Eren a monster for this? Honestly, maybe. But the story paints it more as a tragedy of predestination. Eren isn't necessarily a "villain" sitting in a chair twiddling his thumbs and plotting his mom's murder. He’s a slave to a vision of freedom that requires a horrific price. He’s trapped by the very power he sought.
He didn't want to kill her. He loved Carla. We see that in his breakdown. But in the twisted logic of the Attack on Titan universe, his mother was a sacrifice for the "greater good" of his friends' survival. It’s the ultimate irony of his character. He wanted to protect his family and his home, but to save the "concept" of Eldia and his friends, he had to destroy his actual family.
Some fans argue that it wasn't a choice at all, but a mathematical necessity of the universe. If Eren has the power to change the past, and he sees a future he wants to achieve, any action he takes to reach that future becomes "the way it happened."
Was there another way?
This is the question that keeps the fandom up at night. Could he have saved both? Could he have let Bertholdt die and still reached the same conclusion? According to the logic of the Paths, probably not. The moment Eren touched Ymir, he saw that this was the only path that led to the end of the Titan curse.
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It’s a dark reflection of the "trolley problem." Eren chose to pull the lever. He chose to kill one person—his mother—to potentially save his friends and end 2,000 years of Titan suffering. But unlike the standard trolley problem, he’s the one who put her on the tracks in the first place.
Impact on Carla’s Legacy
Knowing that Eren killed his mom changes how you rewatch the first episode. Every time Carla tells Eren to run, every time she screams as the Titan lifts her up, it hits differently. She was dying for a cause she didn't even know existed, killed by a son who wasn't even born yet to a version of him that had already lived through it.
It makes her final words even more poignant. She wanted him to live. And he ensured she died so that he could live and eventually fulfill his destiny. It’s a cycle of violence that starts and ends with the Yeager family.
Actionable Insights for Fans and Theorists
If you're still processing this or looking to dive deeper into the lore, here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Rewatch Episode 1 and the Season 3 Finale: Look at the "Dina walking past Bertholdt" scene again. Now that you know Eren was "steering" her, the framing of the shot feels completely different.
- Study the "Bootstrap Paradox": This is the trope Isayama used. It’s the same logic found in movies like Interstellar or 12 Monkeys. The effect causes the cause.
- Analyze Eren’s Mental State: Notice how Eren’s eyes look in the final chapters. He looks exhausted. He’s not a proud conqueror; he’s a man who has seen too much and had to do the unthinkable.
- Consider the "Attack Titan" Ability: Remember that the Attack Titan can see the memories of future inheritors. This is how Eren influenced Grisha in the Reiss chapel. The Founding Titan’s power just took that influence to a universal level.
The debate over whether this was a "good" writing choice will probably go on forever. Some feel it was a twist too far—that it cheapened Eren’s initial motivation. Others feel it perfectly encapsulates the "cruel but beautiful" world that Attack on Titan always promised. Regardless of how you feel, the fact remains: Eren Yeager is the beginning and the end of his own tragedy.
To truly understand the ending, you have to accept that Eren wasn't just fighting the Titans. He was fighting time itself, and in that battle, he had to become the very thing he hated most. He became the Titan that killed his mother, all to ensure that one day, there would be no more Titans left to kill.