Warriors
“Complete the mission”
The Warriors are the soldiers of Attack on Titan who lived inside the walls for years as ordinary recruits, carrying a mission nobody around them suspected.
Years of that cover did what nobody planned for: they made friends, took oaths and earned ranks they meant. When the mission finally resumes, it resumes in front of the people they trained beside.
Also known as Warrior Unit · Warrior candidates · the Warriors
- Base
- Deployed inside the walls
- Role
- Infiltration & recovery
- Type
- Infiltration unit
The record
Role in the story
Who the Warriors are
The Warriors are soldiers who came over the walls with an objective and set about carrying it out from the inside. They arrived young enough to pass as survivors of the breach and stayed long enough to stop being taken for anything else.
They are not an army and they were never meant to fight one. They are a small team with an assignment, a home they talk about only among themselves, and orders that assume they will still be recognisable people when the assignment ends.
The cost of the cover
A deep cover that lasts years is not a disguise; it is a life. They trained beside the people they were sent to work against, earned their ranks honestly, made friends who would die for them and returned the feeling.
The operation never accounted for that, because no operation can. The result is soldiers who are completely competent at the mission and completely unable to want it — and who have to keep performing the version of themselves that everyone around them believes in.
Why it matters in the story
The Warriors are the point where the series stops having an enemy in the ordinary sense. Everything the story has been treating as a natural disaster turns out to have had people behind it, and those people turn out to be the ones the reader has spent thirty episodes liking.
It is also the first hard evidence that the walls are not the whole world. Somebody sent these soldiers. Somebody decided this mission was worth whatever it cost. The story does not answer who for a long time, but from here the question exists.
The regiment
Hierarchy and members
0 revealed · 13 sealed
Turning points
Key events
1 revealed · 8 sealed
On the map
Key places
2 revealed · 1 sealed
Shiganshina DistrictA town that juts out from the southern foot of Wall Maria, the southernmost settlement of them all. Home to the Yeager family, it is the…
Wall MariaOutermost of the three rings of stone, Wall Maria marks the edge of the known world. Its frontier districts press closest to the wild lands…
Standing
Relations with other factions
0 revealed · 3 sealed
Across the story
How the faction changes
0 revealed · 4 sealed
Common questions
Frequently asked
Who are the Warriors in Attack on Titan?
A small team of soldiers trained for a single objective and sent inside the walls to carry it out under cover. They spent years living among the people they had been sent to work against, as recruits nobody had any reason to look at twice.
Is the Warrior Unit the same as the Warriors?
Yes — "Warrior Unit", "Warrior candidates" and "the Warriors" all describe the same programme and the operatives it produces, in English and Spanish alike.
Why did the Warriors infiltrate the walls?
They were sent to recover something, and the only way in was to arrive as survivors of the breach and be taken in. The infiltration was never meant to last years; it did because the operation went wrong almost immediately and had to be rebuilt from the inside.
Why did the Warriors take so long to complete their mission?
Partly because the plan came apart early and had to be rebuilt from inside. Mostly because a cover that lasts years stops being a cover: they made friends, earned ranks and built lives, and none of that is something a person can put down on schedule.
Other factions
All 13 members of Warriors — spoilers
Complete spoiler archive
Complete roster: Warriors
This index lists every member of Warriors, including those who haven't appeared at your episode yet. Open a dossier only when you're ready to cross that spoiler boundary.
The complete record
The Warriors are the operatives of Attack on Titan who were selected as children by the nation across the sea, trained for years against a single objective, and sent over the walls to blend in until it was done.
They are not a conspiracy and never were a rogue cell: they are an instrument of a state, produced deliberately, from a policy much older than any of them. What nobody accounted for is that the people they came to destroy are people they know.
What the Warrior Unit actually is
The Warrior Unit is a state programme, and the part of it that matters is the intake. Marley selects its candidates as children from the population it confines, puts far more of them through the training than it has posts for, and lets them compete for the handful of powers on offer. The ones who fail have spent their childhood on it anyway. That design is deliberate. A child who has been taught that the honour is the only way to lift their family will volunteer for a war of someone else's making, and a state that recruits that way never has to justify the war. The Warriors are not soldiers who were unlucky; they are the intended output of a policy much older than any of them.
Complete arc
Four went out
The first night of the operation is where the team stops being four and starts being three, and where the plan they were sent with acquires the improvisation it never recovers from.
The cover comes off
After years of it, two of them simply stop. What follows is not a confrontation between armies but a conversation between comrades, conducted with the appalling calm of people who have rehearsed it privately for a very long time.
The assignment, resumed
The team returns to where it began, to close the operation properly. They arrive with a plan, with reinforcements and with the advantage — and with the one part of the assignment none of them ever rehearsed: doing it in front of the people who know them.
Who sent them
The question the reader has carried since the reveal finally has an address. The Warriors were never a rogue cell or a private grudge: they are an instrument of a state, produced deliberately, and the story that produced them is much older than they are.
Relations with other factions
- Cadet Corps — Their cover was a place in the training class, which they took seriously enough to earn real ranks in it — the friendships made there are the operation's largest unplanned cost.
- Survey Corps — The regiment is the obstacle the mission has to get past, and the one the Warriors know best — several of them served in it, and meant it while they did.
- Marley — They are a state programme, not a conspiracy: selected as children by the nation across the sea, trained by it, and sent out carrying its policy.
