Now, you are all free to correct me if I am wrong for the points I am about to make in this post.

As seen the ending of the manga wasn't received well by for what looks to be a majority, but there are a few things that make me believe we are being trolled here by Isayama or rather, taught a lesson.

Isayama said that originally he wanted the ending to be much darker than what we got, we were given what felt like a forced happy ending and the alliance won thanks to the power of friendship, Falco being able to master his titan on the second transformation, Mikasa just knowing where Eren's head was in the colossal are a few of the many examples of bs in the last 8 chapters.

After 131, the famous 'Freedom' shot of younger Eren, there was a difference in writing , as if one reloaded to get the better route of a videogame, we already knew Eren was willing to do anything to achieve freedom and save his people, He WANTED to do everything he had done and could not gamble his people's future as seen here:

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Fridom

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https://preview.redd.it/es46lamu4ds61.jpg?width=602&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=efd324888360250e833b503f62db4907d6103b74

We knew Eren's words were definite, when he said he would do something, he ended up doing so, so when I see this next panel, I don't believe he was lying or was planning to let the alliance kill him

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https://preview.redd.it/uhcgbi445ds61.jpg?width=602&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4adcd5a21d03c4f8d88bcd82f78767b557e06869

Now remember how the ending of the third season's second part teased the upcoming arcs? If my thought process is indeed right, the images displayed were teasers for two endings, the manga one and anime one, as only two of the images seen appear in the manga

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old image hence the question marks

And then we see how when the final season was announced, only 16 episodes were going to air and no word at the time was said about a second part despite it being assured seeing what was shown in its trailer, either way the anime ending lined up close to the ending of the manga and this of course was done on purpose, Isayama also added unique dialogue to Falco at the beginning, a point divergence. I think Yams here is playing the double game, making us suffer with the cliche power of friendship ending and showing us how it would not work and mess so many things up in the series to then hit us with an anime original ending, or perhaps his original vision for the anime, leaving us to wonder for the time it'd take for the second part to air. We are talking of Isayama here and I trust in him, the writing we saw after 131 was just very out of character.

The teaser for s4 feels like how a VN teases you with scenes you've yet to unlock and would achieve by making different decisions at key points in the story.

So yes, I don't know if this makes much sense to those that'll read the post but it's something me and a friend of mine have been thinking about and my ideas are probably a mess, but I wanted to get it off my chest whilst it was fresh.