AoT: Who Is Santa Titan & What Happened When He Ate Eren?
The world of Attack on Titan can be just as crazy as its fandom, and many fans have been giving different names to different titans that they’ve seen throughout the series. Of course, the biggest “what if” story in Attack on Titan involves the titan that the internet has affectionately called Santa Titan due to his bald and bearded appearance. But who exactly is Santa Titan?
Santa Titan was the pure titan that ate Eren when the Colossal Titan and the Armored Titan breached Trost District and allowed pure titans to enter the walls. However, he was an Eldian restorationist captured by Marley and sent to Paradis Island, where he was turned into a pure titan.
The fact that Santa Titan ate Eren without chewing him made fans speculate about what would have happened if he had chewed Eren up and ingested his spinal fluid. After all, a titan shifter’s powers would get passed on to the pure titan that ate them. This is why Santa Titan is such a popular “what if” story online. Now, let’s look at what we know about Santa Titan in Attack on Titan.
Who Is Santa Titan?
In Attack on Titan, the different titan shifters we’ve seen all have names corresponding to their powers and appearance. Of course, that didn’t stop fans from naming the different pure titans the characters encountered throughout the entire storyline. While the Smiling Titan, who happened to be Dina Fritz, is still one of the most popular pure titans, Santa Titan is another of the pure titans fans are talking about. So, who exactly is Santa Titan in Attack on Titan?
Back in the early part of Attack on Titan and when Eren and the rest of the cadets that joined the military had just graduated and were on their way to choosing which military branch they would go to, both Reiner and Bertholdt decided to use the powers of their titans to launch a titan assault on Trost District so that they could flush the Founding Titan out and force it out of hiding. That was when Eren and the other cadets were forced into action against actual titans for the very first time.
It just happened that fighting titans was not as easy as it seemed because Eren and some cadets were quickly beaten by the pure titans when they set out to attack them using their ODM gear. Eren lost many of his friends and comrades because the titans ate them back then. Eren, meanwhile, lost his leg when an abnormal titan appeared out of nowhere to catch him by surprise while he was flying around on his ODM gear.
Afterward, a bearded titan appeared before Armin and prepared to eat the helpless young man. This titan is affectionately called by the internet Santa Titan because of his bald and bearded appearance.
Santa Titan prepared to eat Armin, who never resisted after seeing how some of his friends were mercilessly eaten. But Eren, who only had one good leg, was quick to save Armin by pulling him out of the mouth of Santa Titan. Instead, Eren was the one that got swallowed whole by Santa Titan, who never even chewed him up.
But we learn more about Santa Titan in the flashback scenes of Grisha Yeager’s life when he was still in Marley. That’s because it was made clear that the pure titans rampaging beyond Paradis Island walls were Eldians that the Marleyans punished for misbehaving. They were shipped to the island and turned into the pure titans responsible for striking fear into the people’s hearts behind the walls.
Grisha was a member of an Eldian restorationist group that sought to find a way to restore Eldia by infiltrating the Marleyan military through the use of Eldian warrior candidates. Grisha forced Zeke into becoming a warrior to infiltrate Marley and become a titan shifter with the power of one of the Nine Titans. However, Zeke betrayed Grisha and the rest of the restorationists when he met Tom Ksaver, the former inheritor of the Beast Titan.
When Grisha and Dina were sent to Paradis to be turned into pure titans, one of the Eldian restorationists sent to the island along with them was a bearded old man resembling Santa Titan.
That means the same Santa Titan responsible for eating Eren was one of his father’s friends in Marley. He was an Eldian restorationist caught and turned into a pure titan around the same time Grisha and Dina were also sent to Paradis.
What Happened When Santa Titan Ate Eren?
As mentioned, Santa Titan ate Eren by swallowing him whole. That was why there was a scene wherein Eren was slowly being dissolved inside the stomach of Santa Titan. But Eren’s will to live allowed him to subconsciously use the power of the Attack Titan to transform into his titan shifter form for the first time. In that regard, Eren’s transformation destroyed Santa Titan from the inside.
But the fact that Santa Titan swallowed Eren instead of chewing him got fans thinking about what could have been possible if he had chewed him before swallowing him. That’s because we know that pure titans can inherit the power of titan shifters by ingesting their spinal fluid. But because Eren was swallowed whole, Santa Titan couldn’t ingest his spinal fluid right away, and before Eren transformed into the Attack Titan.
We know that Eren possessed the power of the Attack Titan and the Founding Titan back then because he inherited those powers after eating his father, who acquired the Founding Titan when he ate Freida Reiss.
As such, if Santa Titan had eaten Eren the proper way, he could have been the one who inherited the powers of both the Attack Titan and the Founding Titan. And because of his nature as an Eldian restorationist that lived on Marley, things would have changed drastically for the people of Paradis, as fans of Attack on Titan were quick to photoshop his face on Eren’s season 4 body.
In that regard, Santa Titan would have sped things up for the people of Paradis because he already knew about the truth outside the walls. He was knowledgeable about the things happening beyond the ocean and what Eldia’s history was all about. As such, the people of Paradis Island could have prepared better in their war against Marley because they already knew what the titans were and what the Marleyans were doing to the Eldians on the mainland.
Nevertheless, we wouldn’t know what Santa Titan would have done with the power of the Founding Titan as he didn’t have a way to access its power. As such, the power of the Founding Titan would have been wasted on him. And he would have only become a target not only for the Marleyan warriors but for Rod Reiss’s Eldian royal family that was still hiding in Paradis Island then.
