Solo Leveling Really Knows How to Make You Keep Watching

Summary:

• Solo Leveling has an interesting episode structure.
• All three episodes ended on a cliffhanger.
• It makes the audience want to keep watching.
• And it annoys a big part of the fandom, too.

Despite the first episode of Solo Leveling (Ore dake Level Up na Ken) being rather underwhelming, even back then the series knew how to make you keep watching. We still think that it would’ve been better to release two episodes at once, but we have to admit that there’s something about waiting.

Solo Leveling is incredibly good at teasing its audience, and now that three episodes have been released, we’re absolutely confident: the series knows what it’s doing.

All episodes end on cliffhangers

Hadn’t the first episode of Solo Leveling ended on a cliffhanger, a lot of people would have just dropped the series right there. Let’s be honest, watching characters you don’t know and have no attachment to just getting ready for the mission and doing very little was not the thing we expected.

However, the ending left us with a feeling of something terrible about to happen, so we found ourselves thinking “Okay, this might get interesting”. And it did.

The second episode was nothing like the first, it provided all the horror and excitement that fans wanted to see. So the series didn’t really need to end the episode on a cliffhanger, everyone was already sold. And yet again, it did.

It made the entire experience even more intriguing. What was that game-like notification? What happened to Sung? How could he possibly survive everything that happened to him?

The third episode follows suit with the cliffhangers. It ends in the most intriguing way possible: Sung is on another mission, fighting a monster that looks much stronger than the hunter. Will someone save him? Will he find a way to defeat it in a clever way? You have to wait a week to find out.

It can also be irritating

While cliffhangers are something that many viewers absolutely hate, they do much more than just make you say “Oh, come on” at the end of an episode. They keep your interest alive and make you want to come back week after week. That’s why the pacing and episode structure of Solo Leveling works so well for the audience.

Still, there are a number of impatient fans who absolutely hate cliffhangers. They say they don’t make them want to keep watching, they just keep leaving them annoyed every time an episode ends. It’s just a matter of preference.

If Solo Leveling keeps doing that, and you know you’re among those who detest cliffhangers, you might want to save yourself and wait until the entire series is out. Otherwise you will have to suffer every week.