From the start, Eren Jaeger was not innately evil in Attack on Titan. His descent into darkness was fueled by the tragedies and injustices he experienced throughout his life. Introduced as the protagonist, Eren sought to join the Survey Corps after the Titans took his mother, driven by a desire to eradicate the monsters.
However, as time went on, trauma and circumstance pushed Eren down an increasingly sinister path. The once-righteous hero progressed into Attack on Titan’s final villain, which made fans wonder – How Eren Turned Into A Villain In Attack on Titan?
Eren’s descent into villainy crept up on us, subtle and insidious. Early signs whispered of darkness yet to come, too faint to raise alarm. But as each new tragedy carved away Eren’s hope, the looming shadow within him swelled until we could no longer avert our eyes.
The savage death of his mother unlocked something broken in Eren. Her blood nourished the seeds of a festering hatred in the boy, a hatred that grew tangled and wild over the years.
Revelation after violent revelation stripped away Eren’s purpose, leaving behind a raging, empty void. The world had betrayed him so that he would remake it through fire and blood.
In the end, Eren did not choose the path of the villain willingly. He was led there one faltering step at a time by forces beyond his control. Fate selected Eren as its instrument of annihilation. Each tragedy and betrayal strengthened his resolve until unleashing the Rumbling felt like surrendering to destiny.
He did not want to become the villain, but the role chose him. Faced with a future written in stone, Eren accepted damnation and sought to drag humanity down with him into the abyss.
How Eren Turned Into A Villain In Attack on Titan?
Here are some of the most important events that turned Eren Yeager towards a dark side in Attack on Titan.
5. Eren started losing hope
Eren didn’t want to believe he had to become the big bad guy in Attack on Titan. He wanted his friends to help him find another way, one where everyone could live in peace. Eren kept searching for a path that didn’t mean killing millions of people.
But his friends didn’t give him any good ideas. Eren watched helplessly as they grew further apart. His personality turned cold and mean, like the scary killer Kenny. In just a few seasons, Eren went from a trusted friend to someone his comrades barely recognized.
With time running out, Eren slowly accepted he had to be a monster for the greater good. He cut ties with everyone and became a loner, losing the hopeful kid he used to be. Eren thought causing pain now would somehow save Eldia later. Even if it made him a villain, he believed it was the only choice left.
Despite fighting against it, Eren couldn’t escape his fate. His desperate hope to find another path slowly died as harsh realities set in. And his old friends could only look on sadly as Eren slipped into darkness, morphing into the very evil he once swore to defeat.
4. He recognized that he couldn’t resist the course of fate
A pivotal point in Eren’s dark turn in Attack on Titan came when he realized he could not prevent his own spiral into madness. After kissing Historia’s royal hand and unlocking the Founding Titan’s power, Eren was bombarded with horrific visions of the inevitable future.
What he saw appalled him to the core. Eren desperately sought an alternate path, some way to avoid the atrocities in the visions. But time and again, it was proven that no matter his struggles, the only possible outcome was for Eren to become Attack on Titan’s most fearsome villain.
Against his conscience and morals, Eren was fated to commit unthinkable carnage. The more he resisted this destiny, the clearer it became that he lacked any choice in the matter. Eren was shackled by circumstance to become a monster and antagonist.
This knowledge tormented Eren as he helplessly watched his sanity unravel. His desperate attempts to divert his course all met dead ends, grim reminders that the future was fixed.
Witnessing his inevitable downfall broke Eren’s spirit in a fundamental way. In the end, he begrudgingly accepts that he must stain his hands with blood, becoming the story’s final enemy for the sake of a higher purpose. Eren descended into darkness not by choice but because fate left no other road open to him.
3. The reality of the basement of Eren’s house
One of Eren’s driving motivations in Attack on Titan was uncovering the secret hidden in his family’s basement. For years, it remained an enduring mystery, one he believed held the key to understanding the Titans and saving humanity.
But when Eren finally gained access, the truth shattered his worldview far more than he could have imagined. He discovered there was not just life beyond the walls but entire civilizations that hated Eldians and sought to turn them into Titans.
This revelation upended Eren’s convictions. No longer were the mindless Titans the greatest threat to his people. Now, the target of Eren’s retribution expanded to the hatred-filled humans beyond Paradis. At first, he resolved to massacre the outside world for Eldia’s sake.
However, when Eren infiltrated Marley himself, any nuance remaining in his views evaporated. Mingling among everyday citizens, Eren recognized a painful kinship with these supposed enemies. They were not monsters but complex beings with their own hopes and struggles.
In the end, the basement held no tidy solutions, only shattering Eren’s naive binary of good versus evil. The truth forced him to confront the messy realities of a world locked in an endless cycle of violence. And it set the stage for Eren’s conviction that apocalyptic measures were needed to break free.
2. Eren’s collaboration with Zeke Yeager
Eren joining forces with Zeke was simultaneously the best and worst event for Attack on Titan. Fans were thrilled at the culmination of Eren’s incredible character arc into one of anime’s greatest villains. Yet for the comrades Eren left behind, his descent into darkness brought only devastation.
When Eren reached out to Zeke in Marley, he played the role of caring brother flawlessly. Eren pretended to agree to Zeke’s plan to sterilize Eldians, lulling him into complacency. This ruse allowed Eren to betray Zeke at a critical moment and unleash the Rumbling.
If Zeke had been warier, he could have prevented catastrophe. But blinded by hope of family bonds, Zeke failed to see Eren’s true motivations. In the end, Eren ruthlessly sacrificed both his brother and friends to bring about his vision of freedom.
For viewers, Eren’s cunning manipulation delivered an incredible emotional payoff. But for the betrayed characters left in his wake, his cold duplicity signaled the loss of their closest ally to darkness. Eren embracing Zeke’s power set the stage for unimaginable destruction, all while hiding his true intentions behind a mask of brotherly love.
1. The invasion of Anti-Marleyan Volunteers’ in Paradis
When the Anti-Marleyan Volunteers first arrived on Paradis Island, seeking an alliance with the Eldians, they were met with outright hostility and skepticism. The Eldians refused to let the mysterious outsiders anywhere near Eren out of fear they might be Marleyan spies or manipulators.
However, despite this initial resistance, the cunning and determined Yelena was able to arrange a meeting with Eren. She leveraged her knowledge and status as an outsider to gradually gain Eren’s trust, eventually even managing to introduce Eren to his half-brother Zeke.
On the surface, Eren appeared to go along with Yelena and Zeke’s plan to sterilize the Eldian people. But unbeknownst to them, Eren was simply pretending to cooperate while hiding his true intentions. In secret, he worked with the fiery Floch to rile up the restless Eldian youth into forming the Yeagerist faction, a militant group fanatically loyal to Eren alone.
By providing Eren access to Zeke and catalyzing the formation of the Yeagerists, the Anti-Marleyan Volunteers unwittingly gave Eren the perfect ingredients to incite an uprising on Paradis.
Though they had come with their own agenda, in the end, the Volunteers enabled Eren to overthrow Paradis’s government and gain full control of the Founding Titan’s power, setting the stage for him to initiate the apocalyptic Rumbling as the series’ final antagonist. Their arrival set in motion a chain of events they could not foresee.
