Summary
- Isayama’s original Attack on Titan ending was inspired by “The Mist” movie.
- The Mist ending involved Eren possibly allowing the Rumbling to continue.
- The Mist ending could have resulted in a dark and regretful outcome for the characters.
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What if Attack on Titan ended differently? It’s not only a question fans regularly ask; it’s something that had a deep impact on Isayama. It’s been widely reported that Isayama struggled with Attack on Titan’s ending, and many fans were left unimpressed with what he came up with. However, there was a point where Isayama intended to do something different: the so-called Mist ending.
Mist is perhaps the closest we’ve got to an official alternate ending to Shingeki no Kyojin beyond the fan fiction created since the series finished in 2021. Given what we know so far, there are a few possible ways it could have played out.
Related
Attack on Titan: Differences Between Anime and Manga Endings
Attack on Titan’s anime came to its conclusion after a ten-year run, and some changes were made to the last episode that helps absolve some criticism.
Isayama Reveals Original Ending Plans
In a 2013 interview (reported on by Comic Natalie), Isayama revealed that his plans for the ending of Attack on Titan had changed. His comments are translated in multiple places as follows:
“Although I’m progressing towards the ending that had been set before, my approach towards the ending itself has changed from the original plans. Because now I feel responsible towards the reader. I originally wanted to illustrate something similar to the film The Mist.”
This is not the only time Isayama has talked about Attack on Titan’s ending. He has said in multiple interviews that he was unsatisfied with how he ended the series and apologized to fans for the ending at an Anime NYC event in 2022.
The changed ending is also not the only example of the story being altered due to outside pressures. It’s been widely reported that Isayama intended to kill Levi, one of Attack on Titan’s most popular characters, but was persuaded against doing so by his editor, Shintaro Kawakubo.
What is The Mist?
The Mist was a horror-mystery movie based on the novella written by Stephen King. It was released in 2007, one year after Attack on Titan’s original one-shot was created, but two years before the series started serialization. Interestingly, the film is most notable for how it changed the ending to something much darker and more brutal than in the original story.
In The Mist, people from a small town in Maine find themselves trapped in a supermarket after a mist containing weird, dangerous creatures envelops them. Constrained and fearful of the monsters outside, the film primarily deals with the volatile dynamics of those trapped inside the supermarket as people start to turn on each other.
In The Mist movie’s ending, having driven away from the supermarket but fearing no escape from the mist’s horrors, the main character, David, kills everyone with him as an act of mercy before entering the mist himself, expecting to be killed by the monsters. However, moments later, the mist clears, and he is saved by the US Army. David, realizing he killed everyone for no reason just moments before they were going to be saved, cries out in horror.
Destruction, Shock and Regret: What an Attack on Titan Mist Ending Might Have Looked Like
Isayama gave some more clarity to his Mist ending idea in the original interview mentioned above. That interview is no longer officially available online, but translations can still be found across the community. Here’s one example from Reddit:
“By the middle of the film, the story of The Mist is at the typical level of a B-list movie. But at its conclusion, it used the main character’s deep, intrinsic beliefs of what’s right to corrupt the main character himself, leading him to act in contrary ways. What the audience believed to be correct is also flipped upside-down. In the beginning, I spent a while analyzing how to imitate this style for Shingeki no Kyojin.”
The Rumbling is Likely Key to Attack on Titan’s Mist Ending
Much of Attack on Titan’s success comes from how meticulously planned the series was from the very beginning, which allowed Isayama to produce the plot twists and foreshadowing for which it’s renowned. This is perhaps best illustrated by the ‘2,000 Years’ reference in the opening chapter and the episode and chapter just before the Rumbling, the beginning of the end of the series.
A key tenet of Attack on Titan from the very beginning is Eren’s untamable desire to kill all the Titans. His destructive tendencies often got him into fights as a kid, and that passion for fighting causes Mikasa untold problems trying to keep him safe early in the story.
If Isayama wanted his original ending to follow The Mist – tapping into the main character’s intrinsic beliefs, then corrupting them until he ended up doing the opposite – the obvious solution would be that Eren decides he needs the Titans alive to get what he wants. This is largely what happens in the Rumbling. Therefore, it’s very likely that the Rumbling played a key part in the original Mist ending.
The next part of Isayama’s supposed plan was flipping what the audience believes to be correct. The Mist does this by revealing that the mist wasn’t going to kill the main characters at the end like they had thought throughout. If the Rumbling is Attack on Titan’s mist, there are a few ways it could have gone.
Possible Mist Ending 1: The World Ends
One version of the Mist ending in Attack on Titan could be that the Rumbling couldn’t be stopped and, ultimately, killed everyone.
If Mikasa killed Eren’s Founding Titan, but the Wall Titans continued their unstoppable march across the world and ended up killing everyone, including those on Paradis, then you would see an ending where Mikasa has to accept death while knowing her act of killing Eren was meaningless.
That could be the kind of gut-punching conclusion Isayama initially envisaged but is slightly more detached from The Mist than the second possible ending.
Possible Mist Ending 2: Eren’s Hollow Victory
Another, perhaps more likely version of the Mist ending could be that the Rumbling happens but doesn’t achieve what Eren wants.
If Eren’s Founding Titan had defeated the Survey Corps during the Battle of Heaven and Earth and his Rumbling was allowed to run its course, Attack on Titan could have ended with Eren being the last main character alive. He would be a hero of the people of Paradis Island, but he would also know that his actions killed everyone he cared about.
It could then emerge years later that small resistance forces somehow survived the Rumbling and rebuilt themselves on the mainland and were planning to invade Paradis once more, not dissimilar to the post-credits scene after Attack on Titan’s anime. With no sign of lasting peace, Mikasa, Armin, and the others’ deaths would have been in vain in a similar way to that seen in The Mist.
Right now, there’s no information from Isayama regarding which details of the Attack on Titan ending were different from what he had originally envisaged. Maybe in a few years, we’ll be fortunate enough to get more information from the creator. Regardless, discussions on how the ending should have gone will likely continue long into the future.