Hello, this post is a bit of me attempting to explain the progression of Ed’s character in 03 and how it shifts slowly over time.
Early on we see Ed (and Al) having adventures, getting into trouble and then solving problems. The Ed we meet here is really confident and happy with lots of big arrogant smiles. He takes great joy in outsmarting people or defeating people with his awesome alchemy skills. He gets moody at times – he doesn’t like being part of the military – but he is proud to be the alchemist for the people.
The first glance at him after the timeskip when he’s 15 has him talking to a taxi-driver about his lovely reputation and he’s visibly happy and gloating. (The wind gets taken out of him with a remark about his height though.) Now, he is sensitive to people’s suffering and wants to help others when he can – stuff like Nina still weighs on him and his past is extremely tragic but he prefers to blame the world and get angry and frustrated at the unfairness of it all. But mostly, he’s doing his own thing and thinks he’s awesome. (See Liore, Yousewell and the fullmetal versus flame episode.)
Al’s a little more humble and caring about others while Ed is less interested in other people’s problems, he’s not exactly cruel but he’s very-much self-interested – he generally wants to help only when he begins to care about them or if it’s really about proving himself. (In episode 10, the Phantom Thief, his problem with Clara wasn’t that she was a thief, it was because she was a thief using alchemy. He’s particularly opposed to the misuse of alchemy and actually helps her when he thinks she’s trying to help the town. Then when she’s tricked him, Ed wants to defeat her because she got the better of him and he hates that.)
Over the series, this arrogant attitude gets deconstructed. It starts with Marcoh, when Ed tracks him down and doesn’t care too much about his story about his Ishval and how the Stones he made were misused. He just wants the stone for his own goals – restoring him and Al – and doesn’t really care too much about the wider world. Then Marcoh gets taken by the military and Ed suddenly feels bad because he realises his actions caused this and he steps in to defend Marcoh from Scar. Complete with a flashback to Nina. (Separate post on this here)
So next, Ed finds out that the Philosopher’s stone is made from human lives and he starts to give up because pursuing their own goals would mean hurting others. It’s another huge challenge to his worldview. (Here’s a separate post I made on it.)
Then he enters Lab 5 and he finds out the homunculi have been behind things and that they’ve been secretly manipulating him and his brother all this time, leaving a trail to the stone to lure them in. Now Ed can no longer pretend that it’s their own quest independent of anything else. They’ve been controlled all this time and didn’t know it. Tucker is still alive. Barry the chopper is still alive. Ed hates being tricked and outsmarted and he’s really shaken by it all. All his achievements suddenly seem like nothing. (More of my thoughts on Lab 5)
Meanwhile, you’ve got Al interacting with Scar. Originally Scar is just a bad guy to Ed and now they’re learning more about Scar and his sympathetic motivations and it’s not so black and white. In contrast, many of the early villains tended to be framed as generically evil.
So Ed finds he’s more connected to the world than he’d like to be. He can’t just be selfishly pursuing his own goals with no care for his effect on the world. He learns about how the homunculi were created with Izumi and then he meets Greed. Greed’s just a bad guy to Ed. Then Ed kills him and Greed reveals he let Al go, that he’s been manipulated all his life and that he’s not such a bad guy. It’s not so simple as Greed or Wrath being evil just because they’re homunculi, like the ones they met in Lab 5. And now Ed has to deal with the fact that he’s taken a life, previously a line he swore not to cross, and he has to try and move on.
Early episodes had Ed really happy and proud with him being the hero defeating the bad guy and saving the day. (Nina, his great failure, and Barry the chopper are sort of exceptions but even then the bad guys were so clearly evil and he could at least take some sort of satisfaction from defeating them. Until lab 5…) These episodes show the opposite, Ed feels terrible for what he’s accomplished. There is no satisfaction here.
So the next couple episodes have some more of his assumptions challenged. His interactions with Ishvalans in episode 36 reveal that he’s been affected by propaganda more than he’d like and he confronts a bit of his own internalised racism (even if the show doesn’t really delve into the subject.) Ed is starting to rethink his assumptions and his worldview. He makes this nice statement about how you can’t always trust what you’ve been told and you have to come to your own truths about the world. It’s a lesson Ed’s beginning to take to heart. Soon after this, Martel informs him how the Ishval war wasn’t a single inciting incident based on different worldviews but an active insidious campaign by the military from the beginning purely to start a war. What he’s been told before has been more lies and military propaganda which he’d never questioned.
Then the truth about Liore is revealed and Ed is now confronted with the fact that his actions didn’t help like he thought. He couldn’t solve their problems. All he did was cause worse problems even though it wasn’t his intention. All he can do is collapse in horror at the graves, realising that he was never the clever hero defeating the bad guy. His actions really had huge devastating consequences outside himself.
And while in Liore, he confronts another mistake he’s made. He faces Sloth, who he’d been in denial about for ages, even when he should’ve known. Now he accepts that she’s his creation and his responsibility and he can no longer run from her. So after this, he prepares, going to Risembool to get her weakness.
Lust has been his enemy for a long time and she’s done some terrible things. Yet she offers to work with him against his enemies. She wants his help and I like her line about how if he gives her what she wants and makes her human then they wouldn’t be enemies anymore. It’s like, these characters are more complex than mere bad guys and helping her would be the best move even though she’s never shown any remorse for the things she’s done. There’s no point to antagonising her now. (I’m probably not explaining it that well but I find this scene really powerful.) Meanwhile, Sloth is intent on being their enemy to the end and it’s necessary to go as far as killing her.
Ed’s fight to defeat her is every bit as clever and awesome as any of his earlier schemes and he’s aiming for the ending he got. (Whereas he was shocked by his own actions against Greed.) But there’s no happiness in victory here. Only bitter sadness. He’s beginning to understand the homunculi and that they’re not monsters – they’re tragedies.
At this point they have the Philosopher’s stone and Ed could be trying to get his and his brother’s body back. I think it might well have been possible. Early Ed probably would have tried to do just that. But now Ed’s not thinking of his own goals, he’s thinking of the greater world outside of his own dreams. His conversation with Mustang in Episode 48, Goodbye, discusses this. Mustang’s throwing away his dream of becoming Fuhrer to defeat the corrupt Military while Ed goes after the Homunculi’s master who’s been pulling all the strings and starting wars. War is not a far-off thing that doesn’t concern him as he believed in early episodes.
So we don’t see much of his cocky smile anymore. Ed learns he’s not as clever as he thinks he is and that his enemies aren’t as simple as he once thought and that the world affects him and he affects the world, whether he likes it or not. That’s some of his character development throughout the series.
We may not get so many big grins but we do still get some nice smiles from him at times. He’s grows more thoughtful about the world and more caring about others. He’s calmer and less arrogant and better at forgiving others for their mistakes, (like he’s able to forgive his father for all the terrible stuff he’s done upon seeing how he’s trying to be better). He’s still restless, and very attached to Al and can’t let go of his principle of equivalency entirely and this leads to his final sacrifice and then continuing researching relentlessly in the new world – he doesn’t become a perfect person or anything but he does grow immensely becoming kinder and more selfless. I absolutely adore his character growth.
Ed’s my favourite character in FMA and I absolutely love his character journey in 03. I hope this helps to explain why.
Zetalial 