Special Preview: Solo Leveling – ReAwakening

Rating (compilation part): 3 (of 5)

Rating (new episodes): 3.5 (of 5)

Solo Leveling is returning to TV for the Winter 2025 season, and this special theatrical presentation provides both a roughly 80 minute compilation of the first season and an advance look at the first two episodes of the second season. It was out in theaters in the States today (Wednesday 12/4/24), so this preview is based on a screening of the subtitled version at an IMAX theater.

The compilation is less a summary of the first season and more a highlight reel designed to help refresh the memories of established fans. If you’re new to the franchise, don’t rely on this to inform you enough to be able to follow the second season, as it skips over a lot of important details. The heaviest emphasis is on Jinwoo’s fight against the snake, the affair with Hwang Donsuk’s party, and the class change battles, the latter of which are replicated almost in full, but you’ll see very little from the set-up in the first two episodes. Since the strength of the first season lay in its detailed battle scenes, getting to rewatch them on an IMAX screen was a real treat. In fact, in general, limiting the content mostly to the major battle scenes emphasizes the strengths of the series while minimizing its weaknesses.

The first two new episodes (which I hope are released together as the debut, since they form a story mini-arc which doesn’t have a good break point in it) involve Jinwoo escorting the high school girl from the C-rank dungeon raids with Jinho (who turns out to be a classmate of his sister) as observers with a raid party of mostly B and A-ranked hunters. Things, of course, go awry when the gate goes red, thus trapping the team in a snowy landscape until the local boss can be defeated. The main threats here are giant bears and elf-like assailants, which combine to pose a severe threat to everyone else but mostly just give the even more dashingly-handsome Jinwoo an opportunity to show off what his new class can do. Various flashy battles ensue, as well as yet another Hunter turning ugly at his failures.

While these two episodes do bring up a couple of potentially interesting world-building points – this is the first time that dungeon adversaries who can talk have been encountered, and they seem to be subject to some guiding force – these two episodes mostly serve to finish a major shift for the story. No longer is this about Jinwoo having to get stronger just to survive; it’s now about him showing off as a total OP badass. Granted, there’s an S-ranked Hunter (and I’m guessing one of the stronger ones?) now gunning for him, but Jinwoo now seems to be at least on that level, and he’s got a whole damn shadow army at his disposal, too, complete with powerful new recruits from these episodes. Could be interesting to see if the series can keep ratcheting up the challenge level enough to maintain the kind of tension which characterized key fights in the first season, but at the very least, the high-powered musical score is back to give the action all of the dramatic backing it could ask for. On the downside, Jinwoo is progressively becoming less interesting as a character as his flaws and self-doubts continue to fade away.

Basically, if you were a big fan of the first season then you’ll probably find a lot more to like with this opening. If you weren’t then these new episodes offer little hope of changing your mind.