The following contains spoilers for the Solo Leveling Manhwa.
Solo Leveling is now one of the biggest anime series on the planet, and it’s not going anywhere. With the newfound success the series’ anime adaptation has brought to the Solo Leveling IP, there’s never been a better time for the series to branch out and expand the franchise’s surprisingly interesting world-building and lore. The Solo Leveling anime has taken some minor liberties to the story told in the manhwa and light novel source material, but it has still remained extremely faithful to Sung Jinwoo’s original story as written by Chugong overall.
Many of the biggest divergences Solo Leveling’s anime has made from the source material come by way of added scenes for the side characters, and minor omissions from the manhwa. In the spirit of expanding the franchise, Solo Leveling’s anime is in a unique position to hone in on one of the original series’ weaknesses, its relatively shallow side characters, in order to craft some genuinely interesting anime-only content. Considering Solo Leveling Season 3 is still apparently a long way from even being announced, let alone released, the next few years present a unique opportunity to build on the Solo Leveling Universe with new anime-only material.
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10 Things Solo Leveling Season 3 Needs to Change From the Manhwa
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Solo Leveling Season 3 will adapt some of the manhwa’s best arcs, but there are some specific details from the source material the anime should revise
It’ll Be a While Until Solo Leveling Season 3 Actually Comes Out
Solo Leveling Season 3 May Be Looking At a 2028 Release
Unlike Solo Leveling’s second season, which was announced immediately after the end of Season 1, Solo Leveling Season 3 has gotten no such announcement even 3 months out from the season’s finale. This all-but-rules out the possibility of Season 3 happening in 2026, making 2027 the absolute soonest the series could return. And that’s being generous. Aniplex Producer Sota Furuhashi even claimed he wouldn’t mind if it waited until as late as 2028, further confirming the fact Solo Leveling Season 3 isn’t even in production yet, let alone see a release date anytime soon. Solo Leveling anime fans may have quite a long time to wait for the anime’s official continuation.
Fans have theorized quite a bit about what the hold-up could be, citing the possibility of other anime contracts tying up A-1 Pictures, the studio behind Solo Leveling’s anime adaptation. No matter how popular an anime is, it doesn’t nullify contractual obligations, and that’s as true for Solo Leveling as it is for any series. On the positive side, multiple sources – including Crunchyroll’s president – have stated that Solo Leveling Season 3 will almost certainly be coming at some point. It’s just a matter of when.
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Though A-1 Pictures is apparently tied up for the foreseeable future, that doesn’t necessarily mean Solo Leveling content needs to cease entirely. There’s no reason that another studio couldn’t pick up the anime for some additional filler content to keep fans occupied until the next season. After how incredibly A-1 Pictures has produced Solo Leveling’s anime, no fan would want another studio to take over for them at this point, but perhaps anime-only filler to smooth over the 3-year wait until 2028 might not be so bad. This would actually give A-1 Pictures even more time to really polish the next season and make it what they envision it to be, without the added pressure of the Solo Leveling fandom having nothing new from the series to enjoy for years to come.
Alternatively, A-1 could potential assign a smaller team to handle a smaller, shorter anime filled project to capitalize on the IP’s massive success while still freeing them up to take on whatever other projects they’ve currently got in the works. Recently, reports came in that A-1 Pictures had come under financial trouble, having netted their greatest fiscal loss in the past decade in June 2025. Granted, A-1 does not usually directly gain from an anime’s success, because they don’t own the rights to the IP, and are only contracted to create the series. Still, what better way to turn that situation around than to tap into the IP that lies at the center of their most successful work yet?
Solo Leveling Should Develop Characters Other Than Jinwoo Before Season 3
A Short OVA or Film Could Flesh Out the Cast & Buy Time Before Solo Leveling Season 3
It’ll be awhile until fans get to finally see the next chapter of Sung Jinwoo’s story unfold in Solo Leveling Season 3but that doesn’t mean Solo Leveling anime content needs to cease altogether until then. There are plenty of underlying plot threads the series can explore that only minimally concern Jinwoo, or have nothing to do with the Shadow Monarch at all. It would be preferable that anime-only content explores characters other than Jinwoo anyway, both in the interest of preserving his part of the story as faithful to the original, and also to help flesh out the shallower characters who are nonetheless important to the series.
Cha Haein is an obvious low-hanging fruit for the series to focus on in Jinwoo’s absence, expanding on a fan-favorite character and helping her stand on her own as a popular hero. There’s also Jinwoo’s father, Sung Ilhwan, whose story encompasses one of the more enigmatic but nonetheless intriguing aspects of the Solo Leveling mythos. If the anime wanted to take a more lighthearted, slice-of-life approach, following Sung Jinah and her bestie, Han Songyi, on their highschool adventures might be a solid way to prepare for the utter mayhem they and their classmates are about to inevitably face when Groctar comes around in Solo Leveling Season 3.
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Another notably underutilized group of characters is the National Level Hunters, whose Kamish Raid is a commonly cited aspect of Solo Leveling lore that fans have agreed they’d love to learn more about. A brief film focusing on the moment the Gates first opened, leading up to the Kamish Raid, could provide a great way to expand the franchise while also buying time in the next 3 to 4 years as Solo Leveling fans wait for a proper Season 3. This could also give more insight into Jinwoo’s own home life, as Sung Ilhwan was awakened as a high-ranking Hunter before he was lost inside one of the gates. It would also give more backstory to Gunhee Go, whose younger days as an S Rank Hunter before becoming head of the Hunter’s Association have never been shown before.
Kamish Raid aside, one final character who doesn’t get a lot of focus in the manhwa, but who absolutely should, is Yoo Jinho. As a character who is essentially the secondary protagonist of the series and Jinwoo’s closest ally, Yoo Jinho has always been criminally underappreciated in the grand scheme of the story. His recent resurgence in the Solo Leveling: Ragnarok Manhwa just makes Jinho an even more sensible pick for some anime-only filler pre-Season 3. Solo Leveling Season 3 will cover an arc that relies on the audience to care about Jinho more than ever. Expanding on his story in small ways could help that arc when the time comes, making his role feel even more impactful in the long run.
The Solo Leveling Anime Doesn’t Have to Be 100% Accurate to the Manhwa Anymore
Solo Leveling: Ragnarok Confirmed the Anime, Manhwa and Light Novels Take Place in Alternative Universes
In creating content that’s unique to one medium of the Solo Leveling Universe, it’s not as though the anime will have nothing to compare itself to. Solo Leveling Arise has already been doing this exact thing with special manhwa one-shots dedicated to various characters in the videogame. This includes never-before-seen side stories revolving around beloved characters like Esil and Cha Haein, and even more obscure Hunters, like Yoo Soohyun. Arise has even released one-shots for videogame-exclusive characters, further expanding on the game’s unique take on the Solo Leveling Universe.
The anime is in a special position to potentially do something similar in the interim between Solo Leveling Seasons 2 and 3. That doesn’t mean that the anime has to completely become a non-canonical free-for-all that doesn’t respect the source material at all. It does, however, mean that perhaps the anime could expand and embellish on the manhwa and light novel’s storyline in interesting new ways. Considering the new direction Solo Leveling’s sequel series, Ragnarokhas just taken the franchise, there’s never been a time when the IP has been more ripe for expansion.
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In the final few chapters of the Solo Leveling: Ragnarok manhwa Season 1, Sung Suho fights the light novel version of himself, characterized by specific traits which make him instantly identifiable from the version of his character in the manhwa. This surprising twist for the story has proven that the light novel and manhwa take place in alternative universes that both canonically exist in the overall Solo Leveling multiverse. Both series contain similar-but-different versions of Sung Suho’s story, and both versions of that story are canon to the actual series’ timeline. This also seems to suggest that the characters from the anime and Arise videogame series should also exist in alternative universes, helping to further explain the small nuanced differences between their versions of events and those in the other continuities.
Solo Leveling: Ragnarok’s new multiverse gives more leeway to the Solo Leveling anime to expand its version of the story in interesting ways. The anime is known for taking minor liberties in places, and this new multiverse may finally explain why. With a likely 3-year wait at a minimum until the next season of the Solo Leveling anime, there would be no better way to hold the fandom over than to provide additional, never-before-seen storylines surrounding the side characters fans know and love. This is the perfect time to try new things with one of the biggest new anime series in the world, and allow some of the other characters to level up while fans wait for Jinwoo’s next hype moment.
Solo Leveling is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
