The following contains spoilers for Solo Leveling Season 3 and the Solo Leveling manhwa.
Solo Leveling Season 3 is definitely coming, even if it has still yet to get an official announcement. In fact, Sung Jinwoo fans may have finally just gotten their first look at the anime’s adaptation of an upcoming arc in the next season. It just came from a place most wouldn’t have thought to look.
Netmarble’s highly-anticipated roguelike game, Solo Leveling: Karma, recently revealed its opening scene animated by A-1 Pictures, the same studio that produced the Solo Leveling anime. This is the first look at Solo Leveling anime footage animated by A-1 since the end of Season 2, making it a great look at what could be in store. Best of all, one of the scenes animated in the OP might have secretly been a hint at Season 3.
Solo Leveling’s Latest Trailer Provides The First Look at a Season 3 Scene
While there hasn’t been an official announcement that Solo Leveling Season 3 is in production, the Karma trailer might’ve already shown what A-1 Pictures is working on. At the start of the trailer, Sung Jinwoo is shown deep in thought, as he recalls three crucial moments in his past.
The first of the moments Jinwoo remembers is a scene from Season 2, where the Ant King kills Min Byunggyu on Jeju Island. The second scene shown in this sequence depicts Go Gunhee’s death at the hands of the Frost Monarch, as well as his funeral. The third scene shows the death of Sung Ilhwan, Jinwoo’s father.
The sequence of these scenes is interesting, because they’re in more than just chronological order. After Byunggyu’s death from Season 2, each subsequent moment shows one scene from each remaining season of Solo Leveling. Go Gunhee’s death is highly likely to occur in Season 3, while Ilhwan’s will almost certainly happen in Season 4.
Solo Leveling Season 3 Will Definitely Adapt the Death of Go Gunhee
Go Gunhee exudes aura while meeting Jinwoo in Solo Leveling. Image via A-1 Pictures
The Solo Leveling: Karma trailer gave fans their first look at an anime adaptation of Go Gunhee’s death, which is very likely to happen in Season 3 if the pacing follows the last two seasons.
Even without a Solo Leveling Season 3 release date or confirmation, manhwa readers have a pretty good indication of what to expect in the upcoming season. The anime has followed the manhwa and light novel’s story very closely, even adapting specific scenes and imagery directly from the manhwa source material. Solo Leveling Season 1 adapted manhwa Chapters 1–45, while Season 2 adapted Chapters 46–110 (though it skipped one chapter presumed to be coming in Season 3).
Season 2 was definitely faster paced than Season 1, adapting 64 to the first season’s 45 manhwa chapters. If Season 3 even found a happy medium between the two at around 50 chapters or so, the next season of Solo Leveling could easily end well after the death of Go Gunhee, which occurs in Chapter 152.
It’s interesting that A-1 Pictures decided to reuse footage from Season 2 of the anime for the scene of Min Byunggyu, instead of just reanimating it to fit with the rest of the Solo Leveling: Karma opening footage. While it’s arguable this was just a time-saving method, there’s a possibility it could be something much more.
It’s possible that the shots of Gunhee’s death and funeral in the Karma trailer were actually pulled from the upcoming anime season, just as the shots of Byunggyu were from Season 2. A-1 Picturess is known to work on multiple episodes at once, instead of just doing them completely chronologically, so it’s not inconceivable that a scene from later in the season can already be partially animated. Additionally, Netmarble recently invested big money into the anime’s production committee, so the fact a Netmarble Solo Leveling videogame and the creation of the anime could be so strongly interconnected is very believable.
The one caveat is that, obviously, it would be strange for A-1 to also have already animated Ilhwan’s death for the anime, so that scene would be unlikely to be the one that is actually from Season 4. Whether or not the imagery of Gunhee Go shown in the Solo Leveling: Karma trailer was actually from Season 3 or not, it’s still an exciting indicator of what’s to come for the series.
Solo Leveling Season 3 may not be officially announced, but it’s absolutely certain the anime will return eventually. Multiple creatives associated with the series have expressed their desire to see it continue, and the series’ immense popularity has garnered comment from higher ups at both Aniplex and Crunchyroll. For now, fans who want an idea of what’s coming in Solo Leveling’s next season need look no further than that Solo Leveling: Karma opening.
