Warning: Contains spoilers for Attack on Titan season 4, episode 19.
Attack on Titan season 4, episode 19 has Porco Galliard dying in the battle between Eldia and Marley, and his death mirrors Ymir’s in a lot of ways. Every new season of Attack on Titan is filled to the brim with callbacks and parallels to previous ones in the service of enhancing the new material. Season 4 has been no different in that regard, and the latest episode brings material from all the way back in season 2 full circle.
In order to distract Marley long enough to enact the Eldian euthanasia plan, Zeke uses his ability to transform anyone who’s ingested his spinal fluid into a Titan. Falco was among the affected parties, and when Reiner is led to believe that Zeke is killed and Eren’s threat is neutralized, he decides to let Falco eat him so he can become the Armored Titan and give himself an excuse to stop fighting. Before Reiner can be eaten, however, Porco appears in his human form, which is enough to divert Falco’s attention away from Reiner and make Falco eat him, instead.
Porco’s death ends up having a lot of similarities to Ymir’s death, though it also contrasts with it in a few ways. Both Porco and Ymir possessed the power of the Jaw Titan - Porco having obtained it by eating Ymir - and both lost their lives in order to help Reiner in some way. Not only that, but while their sacrifices did help Reiner, neither one of them particularly liked him, and each of them was motivated by more personal reasons that Reiner only happened to be associated with.
Those motivations are where Ymir and Porco’s deaths begin to contrast with each other. Ymir sacrificed herself because she was convinced that Reiner could help her protect Historia if she gave herself up to Marle, and also felt indebted to Reiner and Bertolt for giving her a chance to be human again, if only by accident, so she wanted to do something to repay them. Porco, meanwhile, made his sacrifice because he was able to gain full access to Marcel’s memories and learn that Marcel worked to keep Porco from becoming a Titan Shifter as a child to try and protect him. Knowing that made his disdain for Reiner go away, so Porco - understanding the meaning behind his brother’s actions - honored him by sacrificing himself to protect Reiner.
Porco and Ymir’s deaths are similar in that they’re both Jaw Titans who sacrificed themselves to protect Reiner, but the decision to do so was based around the relationship they each had with someone else, with Ymir trying to protect someone and Porco trying to honor someone. With both of them, though, their sacrifices also help to bring their respective character arcs to an end; Ymir getting to show how far she’d go for love, and Porco getting to put his antagonism with Reiner to bed. Parallels such as these are what help make Attack on Titan work as well as it does, because they show just how connected all of the various plot threads can be, and the story is all the better for them.
Attack on Titan releases new episodes Sundays on Hulu.
