Quote Originally Posted by Kraco
What formation, huh? There's no formation exactly because they keep getting themselves killed! The whole idea of the visible plan was to use the scouts to inform the whole formation of the locations of the titans and adjust the movements accordingly. But now they ended up losing all the scouts of one sector and turned blind. Their objective wasn't to kill titans but to reach the target location. That's why the priority should have been to preserve strength to maintain the formation, not thrown everything they had at the abnormal one.
The whole scouting thing was done so that the original plan looked like it was real. The entire thing was bait, and it doesn't work if you make it smell like a trap. The whole idea about the formation "changing direction based on flare input" means that the group running randomly into the forest seemed plausible, instead of making seem like it was a trap and an objective all along.

The weaker people were supposed to stay outside the forest and keep all the normal titans at bay while the central, titan-capable team were focused on luring out the traitors while using Eren as bait.

I'm not sure what trump cards the humans have though, since they'd need one to deal with the overpowering titan. Perhaps Erwin placed a giant pit-fall spike-trap earlier?

I seriously considered Krista a candidate for Blonde-Titan when she showed up. It was just... so convenient. But by the end of the episode, those mad CQC skills could belong to none other than Annie. I hope she doesn't die. I've grown to like her now (more so because of her titan form. I sure hope this doesn't develop into a de-gloving fetish for me.)

Regarding Eren, I think he's been beaten into submission and discipline after joining the Rangers. Don't forget that he was under trail and was supposed to be killed if he rebelled. He's had to dampen his desires and emotions since then so that he's always in control. It might even make his titan form more controllable. Annie's pretty cold/composed, and she rocks that titan like a boss.