Attack On Titan Episode 80: Historia’s Cameo Makes Her Ending Even Worse

Warning: Contains spoilers for Attack on Titan episode 80 and the Attack on Titan manga.

The ending of Attack on Titan episode 80 has a cameo from Historia that wasn’t in the manga, and it makes her ultimate fate even worse. Historia’s part in the story has been a point of contention among fans for how much she seems to fluctuate between being important and being irrelevant, especially when compared to Mikasa, who’s invited similar debates over the years. The ending ultimately leans towards the latter for her, and the anime isn’t doing much to help with that.

From season 2 onwards, Historia developed into a core character, like Eren, in Attack on Titan, with her being at the center of a lot of the story’s lore and plot threads and receiving a lot of character development. Come season 4, however, Historia was sidelined with the reveal that she was on the verge of giving birth, with most of her actions and development in the time skip being shown through flashbacks. The story made it appear as if Historia was still an active player in the story by further developing her relationship with Eren and creating parallels between her and the Founder Ymir, but by the end of the manga, it’s clear that nothing Historia did actually factored into the endgame in a significant way.

Attack on Titan episode 80, “From You, 2,000 Years Ago”, makes that even worse with Historia’s cameo in the Paths dimension. When Eren made his declaration to destroy the world in the manga, Historia wasn’t shown listening to that or at least wasn’t explicitly shown. The anime going out of their way to show Historia reminds the audience that she’s supposed to have a role to play, and that makes her lack of relevancy at the end of the story even worse.

The rest of the episode doesn’t help much in that regard, either, thanks to the Founder Ymir. “From You, 2,000 Years Ago” sets up a lot of clear parallels between Historia and Ymir with their appearances, the two of them being people who were trapped by the royal family, and even having shots of the Founder Ymir that directly mirror shots of Historia, like shots of their respective pregnancies. Having Historia reappear in an episode such as this one reinforces that idea, but in the end, it amounted to nothing.

Historia’s lack of relevancy is made even weirder by the subplot surrounding her pregnancy. When it was first revealed that Historia was impregnated by a farmer who used to bully her as a child, it was acknowledged as ridiculous both in-universe and out, and most fans agreed that it was a red herring to cover up the identity of the real father, and the most likely candidate for that was Eren. Whether or not the two shared romantic feelings for each other, the story seemed to be building up to the idea that Eren was the father, with one panel from chapter 130 of the Attack on Titan manga making it especially plausible, but the final chapter reveals that a double red herring was in place; the farmer, dubbed “Farmer-kun” by the fanbase, really was the father, and there was no special meaning to Historia’s pregnancy beyond her wanting a child and the story needing a reason to keep her out of the plot.

Fans of Historia probably won’t like how the rest of her story plays out in Attack on Titan. Historia was built up from a minor character in season 1 to a vital part of the plot in seasons 2 and 3, but season 4 has mostly sidelined her, and going by the manga, she’s set to be completely irrelevant to the story by the end of it all. It’s a definite disappointment, and Attack on Titan season 4 giving her cameos to hide away from that doesn’t help, in the slightest.

Attack on Titan releases new episodes Sundays on Hulu.