Seriously, watching this episode again made me sank into a bottom low. It felt bad watching it the first time around, and this time it became a worse second adding that each of the recent episodes give away the review for what happened previously.
Watching over and over the Female Titan crushing each soldier to get to Eren made me rage, and watching it slaughter Oluo, Eldo, and Petra I felt sobbing for them.
Erwin nailed something important about what teaches this arc: Nothing goes according to plan or one's own expectations. There's too much arbitrary variances working on in the universe, that no guarantee can be assured except for only one: Death. Death is the only ensured destination that all living things headed, are heading, and will be heading forward to.
If I may add, the Female Titan was just leagues away in terms of intelligence for Levi Squad attempting seriously to kill it. Yes, they had the skills to stand their ground in terms of fighting to incapacitate it, and they should had left it at that in order to buy more time and ground. Instead, they went fight to kill, hence, I speculate the Female Titan prioritized healing quickly one eye over the other, as well preparing it's hardening ability to take the rest of the squad off guard. The result was that all were massacred right on the spot.
Keeping on with the subject, Eren downplayed what he learned from Levi's squad members: there's no such thing as good or right decisions, because all decisions convey risks and are weighed by consequences. What I think is that in order to achieve something, then one must be prepared for all possible scenarios: good and worst cases. However, it's more logical and making sense to act upon forseeable worst case scenarios, so as to regret things the least possible.
To be honest, what Eren said about tearing apart the Female Titan in the previous episode if back at the time when the squad was persecuted he had made his choice, then it wouldn't had made much of a difference; the result would had been the same. Simply, the controller of the Female Titan has had much experience fighting inside that body, as well as building experience with that body along with skills and reflexes. On the other hand, Eren for the time being has no experience and limited knowledge on how to tap his Titans' skills and powers. He was done by the Female Titan, because he lost control of his emotions over his comrades' deaths, and that physically manifested on losing control over his own Titan body. Pretty much, that was what the Female Titan was waiting for in order to pawn Eren's Titan. But, likely, the coup de grace for Eren's crushing defeat was his shocked reaction after watching what the Female Titan did seconds before literally kicking out half of Titan Eren's face, and the rest became history with Eren turning literally into (not) food for the Female Titan.
Now, just to conclude this post, I agree that Mikasa and Eren are so alike, behave the same, and think the same way when turning into beasts dominated by wrath. The only difference, IMO, lies that Mikasas' killer instincts are far sharper than those of Eren's.
