Postby Gendo'sPapa » Mon Mar 05, 2018 12:24 pm
No Rei or Asuka. It will be Shinji himself.
2.0 intentionally played into, among other things, fan interests in shipping - will it be Rei or Asuka who wins Shinji's heart? OMG it's Rei! Shinji is being all cool & heroic to save her! - as a form of misdirection for the switch in 3.0 & most likely Final.
While each of the four films have to work on their own - I feel they all do succeed on that front telling micro narratives in Shinji's overall macro journey - they are still four chapters in a single story. 2.0 explicitly sold (the majority of) viewers the version of Evangelion they're in love with in their heads. A technically polished, action packed story where cool characters do cool things, where those lady Eva pilots are just so damn cute, where Kaji is absolutely charming & where Shinji can get his shit together to be with the girl. It's intentionally the smiling pilots on posters, calendars & toys that has on the surface become the face of Evangelion.
3.0 in response is directly what Evangelion has always been that rarely gets played up in the mountains of fan-fiction, merchandise and spin-offs that the series has created - it's an austere & emotionally naked story about the crushing importance of feeling needed in the world you live in. Shinji's connection with Kaworu is immediate & necessary for him but that's not enough for him so the driving force in the narrative still ends up being Shinji's overwhelming neccesity to be needed (the whole setpiece with the Wunder taking out the Angel Drones while effective as spectacle is there to really drive home that Shinji is no longer NEEDED to pilot an Eva - at least at the moment - and that they've moved past him) and it's so debilitating he's willing to buy into such faulty logic as "Grab those spears and it will all be fixed."
Final, like EOE, is probably going to lean heavily on Shinji attaining self-acceptance. Oh sure, fans will read shipping into the story, fans always do. But, I doubt Final is going to preoccupy itself with any sort of shipping. Shinji will undoubtably have intimate scenes with Rei & Asuka, undoubtably he'll have a big cathartic scene with Misato that 3.0 has set up & he may even have a picturesque other-worldly moment with Kaworu's spirit or something & fans will ship all those based on their preferences, but the story is most likely going to end with Shinji accepting Shinji.