Zeke’s Loyalties (As Of 102)

[hushpiper]

So. In chapter 99, this happened:

The Lanky Soldier who went on to drop Pieck and Porco into a trap told Zeke to go on ahead. After chapter 102′s ending, I have been trying to think of an explanation for this that doesn’t require Zeke working with Paradis, and nothing I come up with is convincing. But I think the possibility that Zeke has turned traitor is not so unlikely as it seems now.

It is clear that the scene above is meant to make us suspicious of Zeke’s loyalties, in the same way that Pieck hugging her panzer squad was meant to make us wonder about her plans. Pieck herself is almost certainly suspicious of Zeke right now: someone wants to entrap her and Porco, but not Zeke. Someone wants them out of the way–and Zeke free to roam. She’s smart and observant, and not so sentimental that she would discount the possibility that he’s turned traitor. (It will be interesting to see whether she acts on her suspicions.)

To argue that these things don’t add up to Zeke working with Paradis requires contortions that I’m frankly not comfortable with. We would have to assume that The Lanky Soldier either is not with Paradis, or that Paradis is okay with letting Zeke roam free despite his loyalty to Marley. Both ideas are… problematic.

We know that The Lanky Soldier is not with Magath, so if he’s not working with Paradis, then he must be part of some third party we haven’t met or seen any sign of yet–which is a strike against any theory all on its own: we have to make a new assumption that’s not in evidence. But it’s worse than that: in 102 Jean says the plan is going well so far. But if The Lanky Soldier is not a part of this plan, then the Survey Corps has no idea where Pieck, Porco or Zeke went. A plan where three enemy shifters are unaccounted for is not going “well”. They should be concerned, alarmed–but they aren’t.

The Lanky Soldier is with Paradis, because the alternative doesn’t make sense. So why let Zeke go free when they had the easy opportunity to get him out of the way? Maybe the Survey Corps had something else set up to take care of Zeke beyond the gate–something we’ve seen no sign of despite all the other hints being dropped, and have heard no reference to despite Jean and Connie playing exposition about the plan in 102. Something which, clearly, has failed at this point.

You can see, I think, why I don’t find that convincing. I have to come to the conclusion that at the very least, Paradis believes that Zeke will not interfere with their plans despite being free to move and clearly within earshot of the action.

So here we are: Zeke must be working with Paradis because every other possibility is unconvincing or simply doesn’t make sense.

Of course, possibly the biggest complaint against this theory is the one that points out how heavily stratified the sides are here. Zeke has calmly killed so many Paradisians and caused so much wanton damage at Shiganshina alone that it’s hard to think he could ever be on their side. Both Connie and Levi have so much cause to want Zeke dead that it’s hard to imagine them accepting him as an ally, to say nothing of the others. But I want to present some counter-arguments to that.

Accepting that Zeke may be working with Paradis doesn’t require that we also assume they’ve all been having bi-weekly meetings at the clubhouse, where they eat Zeke’s homemade cookies and plot Marley’s downfall. There’s a lot of gray area here. Zeke may not have had much (or any) direct contact with Connie or Levi; he may not even know anything about Paradis’s plan beyond his own part in it. The only assumption we have to make is that he made contact with someone at some point, and that they are confident enough in his cooperation to work it into their plans.

And so we come, finally, to the question of Zeke’s loyalties.

Much of the discussion about Zeke has revolved around the question: who is he loyal to? Marley, or his parents’ revolution? Marley, or Eldia? And when it’s posed that way, it seems obvious that he must be loyal to Marley–how could a person loyal to Eldia do the things he’s done in Paradis?

But this precludes a third possibility: that Zeke is loyal to neither.

I want to make a proposal: despite his immediate plans being hidden from us, Zeke is actually one of the most straightforward characters in the series, because all his drives and motivations are precisely as they’ve been presented to us. He values knowledge and hates war; he wants to help Eren; and he wants the cycle of violence to stop. Working with Marley as he’s done for so long has given him power and freedom to work toward his goals–whatever those specific goals are. Perhaps working with Paradis serves them better now.