The strongest Solo Leveling character is Sung Jin-Woo, the Shadow Monarch, whose endgame powers let him inherit the original Shadow Monarch’s full authority, command an army of arisen shadows, and defeat every other Monarch — including the Monarch of Destruction, Antares — in single combat. That victory is manhwa-and-novel-only as of September 2026, since the A-1 Pictures anime hasn’t animated it yet, and the ranking below sorts ten major characters by raw power ceiling while flagging exactly where each one’s strongest feats currently live: on Crunchyroll, or still only on the page.
Last updated: September 2, 2026.
How This Ranking Works
Every entry is scored on power ceiling — the strongest verified feat that character has on record — not popularity, screen time, or how much the plot favors them. Sung Jin-Woo’s own position, and the Shadow Monarch mechanic that gets him there, is covered in more depth in our Shadow Monarch explainer, so this piece won’t re-tread that ground. What it will do, that most power-ranking posts skip, is mark which feats the anime has actually shown as of Season 2 versus which ones only exist in Chugong’s novel and Dubu’s manhwa — a distinction this fandom cares about and one that changes what “strongest” even means depending on which version you’ve watched. For how Jin-Woo stacks up outside his own franchise, see our ranking of the strongest anime characters of all time.
Why the Anime and the Source Material Disagree About Who’s Strongest
Solo Leveling’s anime, produced by A-1 Pictures, has aired two seasons totaling 25 episodes, with Season 2 -Arise from the Shadow- ending on March 29, 2025 at the close of the Jeju Island raid — roughly chapter 110 of Dubu’s 179-chapter manhwa. In July 2026, Aniplex and Crunchyroll announced a theatrical continuation, Solo Leveling: Beyond the System, described as an original bridge story picking up where Season 2 left off rather than a direct adaptation of the next manhwa arc. That matters for a power ranking because the single biggest fight in the entire series — Jin-Woo’s battle with Antares, the Monarch of Destruction, across manhwa chapters 173-177 — has not been animated in any form as of this writing. Neither has the full reveal of Ashborn, the original Shadow Monarch. Anyone judging “strongest” purely from what Crunchyroll has streamed is working from an incomplete picture, and this list says so at every entry where it applies.
Solo Leveling Power Ranking, Weakest to Strongest
10. Go Gun-Hee
Known as “the Sky Above the Skies,” Go Gun-Hee is one of South Korea’s handful of S-Rank Hunters and adds telekinesis to a combat toolkit that stays lethal well into old age. He anchors this list at the bottom not because he’s weak — he isn’t — but because everyone above him has a power source that scales past what conventional Hunter training can reach. Weakness: his abilities are still bounded by a human body under real physical strain, with none of the regeneration or army-summoning tricks the entries above him rely on.
9. Choi Jong-In
Guild Master of the Hunters Guild and South Korea’s strongest magic-type Hunter, Choi Jong-In is rumored to be able to level a building with a single fire spell. That single-target destructive output is real, but Cha Hae-In — technically his subordinate — is confirmed to outclass him in raw combat strength, which is the whole reason he sits below her here despite outranking her on the guild org chart. Weakness: his kit is built around burst magic damage with limited defensive options, a bad matchup against anything that closes distance fast.
8. Baek Yoonho
The White Tiger Guild’s leader carries peak-human strength and durability even in his base form, then transforms into a towering anthropomorphic white tiger for a genuine power spike. That transformation is what pushes him ahead of Choi Jong-In on a pure power-ceiling basis — Baek’s beast form trades finesse for raw physical output few Hunters can match. Weakness: the tiger form is a last resort he can’t sustain indefinitely, and outside it he’s fighting at a steep disadvantage against anyone above him on this list.
7. Cha Hae-In
The Hunters Guild’s Vice Guild Master is the clearest example of peak conventional S-Rank ability in the series — a swordswoman whose Sword Dance technique and raw speed make her, by most in-story accounts, the third-strongest Korean Hunter behind only Jin-Woo and Go Gun-Hee. Everything above her on this list has a power source outside ordinary Hunter awakening; Cha Hae-In doesn’t, which is exactly why this is close to her ceiling. Weakness: without a shadow army, a Monarch’s inherited authority, or a beast transformation, she has no answer once a fight moves past what a blade can solve.
6. Thomas Andre
Nicknamed “the Goliath,” Thomas Andre is America’s strongest Hunter and, by most rankings, the single strongest of the five National-Level Hunters worldwide — a title that puts him a tier above every guild-based Hunter on this list. His anime debut, folded into Season 2’s episodes 8-9, undersells how far his manhwa feats go, including fights with Monarch-tier threats most Hunters wouldn’t survive. Weakness: National-Level status is still a human ceiling — he has no shadow army and no path to the kind of power multiplication the Monarchs and their strongest shadow soldiers get for free.
5. Beru
Once the Ant King — the hidden boss of an S-Rank gate on Jeju Island and one of the most dangerous magic beasts humanity had encountered — Beru was extracted and arisen as Jin-Woo’s Marshal-Grade shadow soldier at the end of Season 2, which aired its finale on March 29, 2025. In the manhwa his role only grows from there: he’s credited with killing half of Japan’s S-Rank Hunters in his life as the Ant King and keeps evolving as one of Jin-Woo’s core shadow generals. Weakness: as a shadow soldier, Beru’s continued existence is tied to Jin-Woo’s own — he has enormous individual power but no independent agency or army of his own.
4. Baran
The Monarch of White Flames and King of Demons, Baran commands lightning-infused magic and a personal demon army, and his fight with Jin-Woo — animated in Season 2, episode 8 — remains one of the anime’s biggest visual set pieces to date. He ranks as one of the weaker Monarchs in most breakdowns of the full nine-plus hierarchy, but “weakest Monarch” is still well above anything a conventional Hunter can put out. Weakness: Baran’s power is front-loaded into his opening assault; the anime shows the shadow army wearing him down once the fight extends past his initial burst.
3. Ashborn
The original Shadow Monarch and King of the Dead, Ashborn commanded millions of shadow soldiers before voluntarily passing his authority to Jin-Woo — the transfer that makes everything above Baran on this list possible in the first place. The anime has, at most, teased his presence as an unseen voice; his full identity, backstory, and on-screen power are novel-and-manhwa-only material that Season 2 never reached. Full mechanics of that transfer are covered in our Shadow Monarch explainer. Weakness: by the time he appears in earnest, Ashborn is already diminished and functions more as a source of power than an active combatant — strategically important, but not the strongest active fighter in his own arc.
2. Antares
The Monarch of Destruction and King of Dragons, Antares is the oldest Monarch and leads the other eight — even Ashborn is on record saying Antares would win a straight one-on-one due to his purely destructive nature. His climactic fight with Jin-Woo runs from roughly manhwa chapters 173 to 177, deep in material the anime and its upcoming bridge film have not adapted as of September 2026 — this is the single biggest unanimated fight in the franchise. Weakness: Antares fights almost entirely through overwhelming force and a soul-erasing breath attack, with little tactical flexibility against an opponent who can out-adapt him, which is ultimately how Jin-Woo beats him.
1. Sung Jin-Woo
By the manhwa’s ending, Jin-Woo has absorbed Ashborn’s authority, defeated every other Monarch including Antares, and stands as the single most powerful being in the story’s universe — the Shadow Monarch in full. The Jin-Woo the anime has actually shown through Season 2 is already an S-Rank-crushing outlier, but he has not yet reached this endgame form on screen; that gap is the entire reason this list exists rather than being a settled argument. Weakness: even at his manhwa peak, Jin-Woo’s power is explicitly tied to the shadow extraction system — strip that mechanic away and the ranking underneath him gets a lot more competitive.
Solo Leveling Power Ranking at a Glance
| Rank | Character | Power Source | Anime or Manhwa/Novel? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | Go Gun-Hee | S-Rank Hunter, telekinesis | Anime (Seasons 1-2) |
| 9 | Choi Jong-In | S-Rank Hunter, fire magic | Anime (Seasons 1-2) |
| 8 | Baek Yoonho | S-Rank Hunter, beast transformation | Anime (Seasons 1-2) |
| 7 | Cha Hae-In | S-Rank Hunter, swordsmanship | Anime (Seasons 1-2) |
| 6 | Thomas Andre | National-Level Hunter | Anime (S2, ep. 8-9), fuller feats in manhwa |
| 5 | Beru | Marshal-Grade shadow soldier | Anime (S2 finale, March 2025) |
| 4 | Baran | Monarch of White Flames | Anime (S2, episode 8) |
| 3 | Ashborn | Original Shadow Monarch | Manhwa/novel only (teased in anime) |
| 2 | Antares | Monarch of Destruction | Manhwa/novel only (ch. 173-177) |
| 1 | Sung Jin-Woo | Shadow Monarch (full) | Manhwa/novel only endgame |
How the Unadapted Chapters Could Still Reshuffle This List
This ranking treats Antares as the clear #2, but that’s based on a single line of dialogue — Ashborn conceding Antares would beat him in a straight fight — rather than a demonstrated victory over every other Monarch. The manhwa also leaves real questions unresolved for readers who haven’t finished it: Bellion, Jin-Woo’s Grand Commander shadow, is described as growing far more powerful than his introduction suggests by the story’s end, and the full extent of the Rulers’ power — the faction Ashborn originally belonged to before defecting to the Monarchs’ side of the war — is never fully quantified on-page. None of that changes the #1 spot, but it’s a reminder that a manhwa-complete ranking is still more settled than an anime-only one, and this list is deliberately built from the more complete version while flagging exactly where the anime hasn’t caught up yet.
A Steeper Power Curve Than Most LitRPG-Style Anime
What makes Solo Leveling’s hierarchy unusual next to other System-and-Gates anime isn’t the existence of a godlike final tier — that’s standard for the genre — it’s how little room there is between “top human Hunter” and “Monarch.” Thomas Andre and Cha Hae-In represent close to the absolute ceiling of what conventional training and awakening can produce, and the jump from there to Baran, a comparatively weak Monarch, is still closer to a step change than a gradual climb. Compare that to a series like Tower of God, where Rankers scale through dozens of intermediate tiers, or Overlord, where Ainz’s power is capped by his character build from the start. Solo Leveling’s steepness is the mechanical reason a single S-Rank Hunter reaching Monarch-adjacent power, as Jin-Woo does, reads as such a dramatic escalation rather than the next rung on a long ladder — there are very few rungs between “strongest human” and “world-ending threat” to begin with.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is the strongest character in Solo Leveling?
Sung Jin-Woo, once he becomes the Shadow Monarch in full by absorbing Ashborn’s authority and defeating every other Monarch, including Antares. That endgame version of Jin-Woo is manhwa-and-novel-only material as of September 2026 — the anime hasn’t reached it yet.
Has the anime shown Sung Jin-Woo’s full Shadow Monarch power yet?
No. Season 2 of the anime ended on March 29, 2025 at roughly manhwa chapter 110, before Jin-Woo’s fight with Antares (chapters 173-177) or the full reveal of Ashborn. The 2026-announced film Solo Leveling: Beyond the System is described as an original bridge story, not a direct adaptation of that material.
Is Antares stronger than Ashborn in Solo Leveling?
By most accounts, yes — Ashborn himself is on record conceding that Antares, the Monarch of Destruction, would win a direct fight due to his purely destructive nature, even though Ashborn was the original Shadow Monarch.
Who is the strongest human Hunter in Solo Leveling before the Monarchs get involved?
Thomas Andre, nicknamed the Goliath, is generally ranked as the single strongest of the series’ five National-Level Hunters worldwide, ahead of guild-based S-Rank Hunters like Cha Hae-In, Baek Yoonho, and Choi Jong-In.
Sources
Season 2 finale timing and adaptation coverage via ScreenRant. The July 2026 Solo Leveling: Beyond the System film announcement via Crunchyroll. Manhwa chapter references for the Antares fight and series ending via ScreenRant.
