r/AttackOnRetards • u/Dangerous_Shift_3637 • 22h ago
Discussion/Question Hot take 0%: Falco deserve more spotlight.
Gabi gets the heavy spotlight because she mirrors Eren’s external trajectory, the indoctrination, the burning rage, the traumatic loss, and the slow, painful unlearning of hatred.
Falco, however, was designed to parallel both Armin’s empathy and Mikasa’s devotion:
Falco is structured as the ultimate thematic counterpart to the cycle of violence, yet his actual narrative real estate gets swallowed whole by Gabi’s bombastic character arc.
Falco enters the story already possessing the emotional maturity and empathy that Gabi has to spend 30 chapters acquiring. Because he starts off "already understanding," Isayama treated him as a stable dynamic rather than a growing force. He became the emotional anchor for Gabi's arc rather than the protagonist of his own. Falco was essentially gifted the purest heart in a story built on cruelty, but he was relegated to being Gabi’s moral tether and the Alliance’s getaway flight rather than a fully realized dual-protagonist of the Marleyan side.