Season 2 of Shingeki no kyojin, better known Stateside as Attack on Titan, came to a conclusion this weekend, leaving fans with plenty of answers to questions they'd been asking for four years. But in addition to resolving of some of the show's major mysteries--What exactly are the Titans? Where do they come from? What's up with their weird faces?--Attack on Titan's second season also conjured up a whole crop of new questions that won't be answered until Season 3, at the earliest. (Now's a good time to mention that, yeah, if you're reading the manga, all of this has been addressed already.)

There's plenty of good news, however. Despite having half the episodes of the first season, Season 2 had a stronger focus in those episodes, allowing it to deliver satisfying answers alongside mind-blowing revelations in each and every outing. The continued good news is that fans won't have to wait another four years to see Season 3. Wit Studio, the animation house behind the kinetic, visceral, and at times downright strange design of Attack on Titan, confirmed that the show would be back some time in 2018. That's way better than waiting for the 2020s for some more AoT action.

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Image via Wit Studio, Funimation

But as for what happened in Season 2 and its finale, that takes a little bit of explanation. This is your final spoiler warning to stop reading if you haven't watched the finale or don't want a little extra insider info on the story of Attack on Titan. I won't go too deep into the manga's lore here and will keep story spoilers hidden or in links only. So with that being said, let's get into it!

From the outset of Season 2, Attack on Titan reveals something in the anime that had been known for a while in the manga: The revelation that Titans themselves were in the very walls that protected human civilization. Without going too far into the history of the walls themselves, which go back a long, long way before Eren's story, we know a few things from this season of the anime: Certain Titans (the "Shifters" like the Female Titan, Colossus Titan, Armored Titan and Beast Titan) can damaged the walls which are otherwise impervious, and that the Church of the Walls, a sect of radicals who see the walls as religious objects, will go to any lengths to preserve the secrets behind their creation. Even under torture, those secrets were not divulged this season; maybe next year. But perhaps Hange Zoë's theory about a piece of the Female Titan's skin being similar to the Walls' material is already most of the way there ...

While the existence of Titans within the walls was certainly a big WTF moment early on which allowed the story to swing briefly into an investigation of the strange phenomenon, more importantly, it gave the Scouts a reason to ride the length of the wall looking for any holes where a Titan invasion might be coming from. This, of course, led to devastation of the troops out in the wild, especially during the battle of Utgard Castle. During this mini arc, we get the reveal that Krista Lenz is actually Historia Reiss, the last surviving member of the royal family. Coupled with this reveal was the surprise that Krista/Historia's bodyguard Ymir was actually a Titan Shifter in disguise! "Being a goddess isn't all that bad." (She also happened to be the one who surfaced and killed Marcel in Season 1...) While that was bad news for Annie Leonhart, a.k.a. the Female Titan, Ymir's own transformation comes in quite handy for the Scouts throughout the rest of the season, though it does complicate things once the other named Titans reveal themselves.

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Image via Wit Studio, Funimation

Perhaps the biggest shock of the season came when Reiner Braun and Bertolt Hoover, long-time allies of Eren and the other Scouts, revealed themselves to be the Armored Titan and Colossus Titan, respectively. That's huge, no pun intended. And the way in which it was revealed was so casual, so matter-of-fact, that it took a while to sink in for yours truly.

Yes, the incredibly durable and massive Titans were fighting alongside Eren and his friends all along. The specific details for this treachery have yet to be laid out in the anime, but we learn that they're both operating on orders from someone in their homeland, orders that have them attempting to steal away Eren and bring him back with them. Ymir both assists with and complicates their plans, but it's Eren himself who really throws a wrench into the works. And it's not just that he hulks out into his Titan form to fight the Armored Titan ... Eran also has a brand new power under his control.

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Image via Wit Studio, Funimation

When it looks like all is lost in the Season 2 finale, "Scream", and after Mikasa has confessed her thanks and affection for Eren, he attempts to summon his Titan form once more, but is unsuccessful. What he is able to do, however, is connect to the minds of the other general Titans in the area and order them to attack both the Titan who devoured his mother and the Armored Titan himself. (It's no wonder Reiner and Bertolt were under orders to bring him in.) Eren does this without ever transforming, though the lines that appear on his face are similar to those seen on Shifters when inside their Titan form.

It turns out that Eren is known as the "Coordinate", a type of Titan that acts as a point of convergence for all other Titans. This will likely be explored further in Season 3 and beyond, so I won't get into it too much here except to say that Eren's fellow Scouts are on the right path in thinking that he now has some control to exert over the mindless monsters that have plagued humanity for so long. Using his power, he might be able to fix the damaged wall, to keep humans safe, and in doing so, prevent more Titans from being formed.

Yes, it turns out that, like you probably figured all along, Titans are former human beings who have been transformed into the cannibalistic monstrosities. There's more going on here than anime fans have been shown, but Season 2 did at least confirm that Titans were once humans, making the slaughter of both species all the more heart-breaking. Season 3 likely holds more answers, as does another curious newcomer: The Beast Titan.

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Image via Wit Studio, Funimation

The ape-like monstrosity known as the Beast Titan has been a very curious entity throughout Season 2. He's appeared at random moments to either exert control over other Titans, hurl horses/boulders/etc. at the Scouts, or to ask a Scout about his vertical maneuvering gear before leaving him to be devoured. He's a strange one, for sure, but perhaps the strangest sighting of the Beast Titan came in the finale's final moments.

As Eren is just beginning to understand his newfound power and its implications, we get a long-distance zoom to find Beast Titan still perched upon a wall, watching to see how things turn out. However, he's not alone; a blonde man also watches from upon the Titan's shoulder. Is this an ally of the Beast or simply his human form who's managed to step outside of his Titan shell? There's a lot more to discover within the world of Attack on Titan and I, for one, am thrilled that Season 3 will be coming within the next year or so.

Did you catch up with Attack on Titan this year? Please share your thoughts in the comments below! Just keep things spoiler-free as far as the manga vs anime plot points go, please!

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Image via Funimation