Paradis Island might have been devils to the rest of the world, but they had their own devils to fight. Pure titans roamed the area outside the walls, effectively stopping them from ever realizing that a huge world existed outside their little bubble. In fact, Marley would take its prisoners to Paradis and drop them after injecting them with titan fluid to keep increasing the number of titans posing a threat to Paradis.

This would work against them, though. Marley sent the Warriors to Paradis and ended up losing three out of the four warriors to Paradis’ forces. Due to the war Marley was waging against other countries, they couldn’t focus on Paradis or even try to attack it.

Every other country focused on anti-titan technology that would render Marley’s Warriors redundant. The Founding Titan could change all that. Marley ended up having to secure the Founding Titan to strengthen their power level in the world.

So, Marley went ahead and sent scout ships to Paradis to gather what information they could and none came back. Honestly, that shouldn’t have been a surprise, seeing how there were titans mindlessly attacking and eating every human they saw.

So, what exactly happened to Marley’s scout ships?

Marley underestimated Paradis’ forces

Marley’s knowledge of Paradis was outdated, to say the least. The maximum new knowledge they had was from Reiner’s accounts on what happened. Zeke never saw the inner workings of Paradis, Annie never made it out till the end, and Bertolt was eaten before he could escape.

They assumed that the pure titans were too much of a threat to allow Paradis forces to explore the area beyond the walls. Mistake number one.

Aside from this, they also thought that the survey ships would be able to gather information about Paradis island and what was going on.

Now, assuming the pure titans weren’t an issue, they knew that a Paradis soldier ate the Colossal Titan. They also knew that the Attack Titan was dangerous and was capable of beating the Armour Titan. This is a very weird decision from Marley, knowing exactly what dangers awaited them.

Marley underestimating Paradis’ forces was a big mistake as they never expected them to clear the titans beyond the wall. This “miscalculation” spelled their doom.

What exactly happened to the Marley scout ships?

Eren, Hange, and Levi ambush and take over a ship with the Anti-Marleyan Forces on it with the help of the Attack and Colossal Titans. It is possible that this was the fate of every scout ship.

It seems to make sense. Eren waits in the shadows, and as the ship gets close, he transforms and either destroys them or captures them. Also, let us not forget about our favorite Colossal Titan, Armin. The poor scout ships had no chance, really.

Of course, Hange gets little hearts in her eyes when she sees people to extract information from. This also happens when she sees new and powerful technology. Both of these conditions were met with each ship that came by from Marley. In fact, Hange seems to have a lot of fun, putting on a show with an unwilling Nicolo, as they hold a ship hostage.

This tells us that Hange might have asked Eren to not destroy the ships and to use them to gain valuable information instead.

We can’t be sure what exactly happened to the scout ships, but looking at what the manga tells us, it can be safely assumed that they were captured and harvested for whatever resources, technology and information they could get.

TL;DR

In the end, the scout ships never achieved a single goal. They were all sent to their doom. Additionally, they ended up giving more information to Paradis instead of getting back information from Paradis. These scout ships were a blessing from Marley. They also helped greatly in attacking and destroying Marley’s forces in the raid on Liberio, during Willy Tybur’s speech

The only question is why did Marley send a grand total of 32 ships before they realized something was wrong? Was Zeke behind the plan to get his followers to Paradis? Hmm…

What do you think? Why did Marley keep sending ships and what did Paradis do with 32 whole ships sent to them? Let us know in the comments below!