Summary

• Eren's dramatic change in character came about after he kissed Historia's hand and saw the future, including a version of himself committing mass murder.
• All Titan Shifters in Attack on Titan have the ability to see the memories of those who held their Titan before them.
• Eren's future was filled with bloodshed and suffering, and he believed that the only way to achieve peace and independence for Eldia was through mass death and destruction.

Eren Yaeger was a much different person than he used to be when Attack on Titan started back in 2013. By the anime's fourth and final season, he changed dramatically. This radical, almost villainous change in Eren came about after he was assailed by his father's memories when he kissed Historia's hand during the royal awarding ceremony near the end of Season 3. During Season 4, Episode 20, "Memories of the Future," as Grisha Yaeger struggled with his task to slaughter the Reiss family, there was a brief flash to Eren kissing Historia's hand. This confirmed exactly what Eren saw that caused him to do everything he's done since: he saw the future. Specifically, he saw this moment with Grisha and the Reiss family, including the presence of a future version of himself who pushed Grisha into committing mass murder.

All Titan Shifters in Attack on Titan were capable of seeing the memories of those who previously held their Titan. Attack on Titan had already established that when Historia, a member of Eldia's royal bloodline, made physical contact with Eren, it sparked a memory from the previous holder of the Attack Titan, Grisha. After the Survey Corps defeated Zeke Yeager, Reiner Braun, and Bertholdt Hoover in Shiganshina, Historia gave the survivors medals of honor in a ceremony, and each soldier placed a kiss on Historia's hand. When it was Eren's turn, the contact with Historia set off a deluge of memories from Grisha that left Eren visibly shaken.

Updated on January 10, 2023 by Angelo Delos Trinos: Now that Attack on Titan ended, there's no better time than now to put all the lingering questions and dangling threads to rest. The long-standing question of "What did Eren see when he touched Historia?" has finally been solved, thanks to details that were only revealed in Attack on Titan's grand finale. This article was updated to bring new information to light, and to reflect on what just happened.

What Did Eren See When He Touched Historia?

It was also revealed that the Attack Titan had a special ability that allowed its wielders to see the memories of future inheritors. "Memories of the Future" confirmed that while the current Attack Titan user cannot willfully see the entire future, they could still see what future inheritors witnessed for themselves, or what memories they were willing to show them. These let Eren see the future when he kissed Historia's hand, but in an extremely roundabout way. Though he initially claimed that he only saw memories of Grisha's childhood and his later slaughter of the Reiss family, it was only later in Season 4 when it was revealed that Eren saw and actually did much more than just watch his father.

To avoid confusion, the following references to Eren will be organized as such: Season-3-Eren, Season-4-Eren, and Future Eren. Season-3-Eren was the kid who viewers followed ever since Attack on Titan's very first episode. This Eren was last seen on the beach right before Attack on Titan's time skip, pointing towards the world beyond Eldia's borders. Since they both starred in Attack on Titan: The Final Season, the easiest way to differentiate Season-4-Eren and Future Eren is that Season-4-Eren was the Eren seen in flashbacks. At the time, he was still with the Survey Corps and seemed like a slightly more reserved version of himself. Finally, Future Eren led the Yeagerists and activated The Rumbling in the present. By this time, Future Eren noticeably had a darker worldview, and isolated himself from everyone else.

Judging by Grisha's words, Future Eren had been pulling the strings of the entire series for quite some time. In fact, Eren could've been masterminding everything before Attack on Titan even began. Everything Season-4-Eren was planning and keeping to himself was horrifying. Worse, it was going to succeed. It's unclear if Grisha only caught a small glimpse of Future Eren's successful activation of The Rumbling, or if Eren deliberately showed everything to him. Whatever it was, it was more than enough to strike palpable fear in the heart of Grisha because he saw what kinds of atrocities and nightmares his son was more than capable of committing.

When Season-3-Eren touched Historia, he saw Grisha's memory of his slaughter of the Reiss family. However, there was more to this crime. Grisha committed this mass murder on Future Eren's orders and influence. Watching all this was Season-4-Eren, who was present via Zeke's Founding Titan powers. Although Season-4-Eren goaded Grisha into killing the Reiss family when Grisha almost backed out, Grisha later confessed that he saw the end result of what Future Eren had already accomplished in his timeline. Put simply, Season-3-Eren saw Season-4-Eren in Grisha's memories. Season-4-Eren then acted upon his desires and those of Future Eren's. Through Grisha's memory that he inherited through the Titans' powers, Eren saw Future Eren's plan. Effectively, when Season-3-Eren kissed Historia's hand, he saw his entire future, which included the declaration of war in Marley, The Rumbling, and his death at Mikasa Ackerman's hands.

Eren's future was so bloody and grim that his own father begged Zeke to stop him, even though he had been cooperating with Future Eren's instructions up to that point. Up until the moment he momentarily broke through the limits of the Titans' time-traveling abilities and talked directly to Zeke, Grisha had been justifying his atrocities as being necessary evils for the Eldians' sake. Eren's use of The Rumbling was so horrifying that it snapped Grisha out of his self-assuring delusions, if even for a brief moment. Season-4-Eren's and Future Eren's dour demeanors took on a whole new light, as it became clear that they have been living their lives already knowing the outcome of their actions. Worse, Attack on Titan's finale outright stated that Eren relived these events countless times in a futile effort to achieve a "good ending" that didn't involve mass death and suffering. After an unspecified number of loops and replays, Eren gave up and concluded that the only way Eldia could attain peace and independence was by killing all life beyond the walls. While Season-3-Eren was horrified by what he saw when Eren touched Historia and if Season-4-Eren gave the world a chance, Future Eren was much less conflicted about it. By then, he was resigned to becoming a monster.

Eren Trapped Himself in a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy After He Kissed Historia’s Hand

Despite the Attack and Founding Titans' combined powers to transcend time and allow their holders to basically reshape reality, Eren still felt like he was trapped by fate and destiny. He felt this way the moment he kissed Historia's hand, and the Titan holders' memories came flooding in. As Eren told Armin during their final conversation in The Paths, he was a slave to freedom. No matter how many times he replayed the same events and tragedies through the Titans' powers, Eren always wound up with the same conclusion: either everything beyond Eldia's walls had to perish, or Eldia would be destroyed in a war. If not in the near future, then generations later. As far as Eren was concerned, he, his loved ones, everyone on Paradis Island, every single Eldian in the world, and their descendants were cursed to be trapped in an endless cycle of death that would only end with their complete annihilation. It was because of these fears that Eren swore to activate The Rumbling in Eldia's name and as a preemptive strike against their enemies. This was decided the moment Eren touched Historia during the ceremony. Eren was, by all accounts, incredibly childish and stupid.

Attack on Titan's ultimate tragedy wasn't that Eren saw how hopeless and pointless the Eldians' struggle was, or that he had to carry the burden of a global genocide for their sake after he touched Historia. What was tragic was that he believed these fallacies. As an enraged Armin put it, Eren didn't try enough and just gave up before he could find a truly humane solution to what he felt were the world's problems. It also didn't help that Eren spent his whole life fighting and barely surviving. A world without war was simply something Eren never hoped for, let alone thought about. Eren's dark past influenced his cynicism and lack of an imagination, which then culminated in him using awesome godlike powers for what amounted to a temper tantrum on a global scale. What Eren saw when he kissed Historia's hand wasn't his and the Eldians' dark fate, but a self-fulfilling prophecy that validated his fatalism and pre-conceived notions of the world beyond the walls.

These solidified Eren's legacy as one of modern anime's and fiction's most tragic heroes. Eren had the blood of billions on his hands, but it wasn't difficult to see why he rewrote the past in such a way that everyone's suffering (especially his own) would lead to The Rumbling and the deaths of 80% of all life on the planet. Eren becoming the literal manifestation of an uncaring world's reckoning and the Eldians' vengeance felt simultaneously inevitable, yet wholly avoidable. If only Eren confided with his closest friends about what he saw after kissing Historia's hand or if only the world wasn't so needlessly cruel, then The Rumbling and all the horrors that came before could've been avoided. Alas, this wasn't the world that Eren was born into, and he changed it in the only way he knew.