Almost every shadow soldier standing behind Sung Jinwoo used to be trying to kill him.
That’s the detail competing rankings tend to skip. Jinwoo’s army isn’t a collection of loyal monsters he tamed — it’s mostly a graveyard of the things that came closest to ending him, rebuilt into soldiers who kneel the moment he raises a hand. The stronger the shadow, the closer Jinwoo usually came to dying to get it. Ranking them by strength is really ranking his closest calls — with one deliberate exception, right at the bottom of this list, who was never an enemy at all.
Through the end of Season 2, streaming on Crunchyroll, seven of these shadows have earned names on screen. This ranking sticks to that anime canon — what “Arise from the Shadow” has actually shown, recapped arc by arc here — and saves the manhwa’s official Grade system for a clearly marked spoiler section at the end, for anyone who wants to know where the story eventually places them. If you’re still deciding whether the show is worth the time investment at all, our spoiler-free take on that is here.
How This Ranking Works
The manhwa eventually assigns every shadow a formal Grade — Normal, Elite, Knight, Elite Knight, and so on up to Marshal. The anime hasn’t confirmed most of those titles yet for its current cast, so building a ranking around them would mean borrowing information Season 2 never actually put on screen.
Instead, this list goes by what’s been demonstrated: the fight each shadow won or helped win, the skills they’ve shown using, and how much Jinwoo has come to depend on them specifically. A shadow that’s carried one of the season’s toughest fights ranks above one that’s mostly been window dressing in a crowd shot, regardless of what a databook might eventually say.
#7 — The Healer (Min Byung-Gyu)
He’s the one entry on this list who never wins a fight, and he still belongs here.
Byung-Gyu was the S-rank healer who died on Jeju Island trying to keep the raid alive, killed by the Ant King before Jinwoo could turn the battle around. After defeating the Ant King, Jinwoo raises him as a shadow for one specific reason: Cha Hae-In is still critically injured, and no potion has been enough to save her.
It’s the quietest extraction in the season, and arguably the most human one. Every other name on this list gets pulled from the corpse of something Jinwoo had to overpower in single combat. Byung-Gyu gets raised because Jinwoo needs him to heal someone he cares about, not because he needs another weapon. That distinction is worth more to the story than any stat would be.
#6 — Tank
Tank is what Jinwoo’s shadow army looked like before it started collecting monarchs and master swordsmen: an ice bear, extracted during the chaos of the Red Gate, built for exactly one job.
He doesn’t cast spells, and he isn’t the shadow anyone quotes. What he does is absorb hits and keep moving forward, which matters more than it sounds like in a story where Jinwoo’s early armies get overwhelmed the moment a fight turns into a numbers game against an entire dungeon full of monsters. Tank is the answer to “what happens when Jinwoo just needs a wall that doesn’t fall down,” and the Red Gate is exactly the kind of fight where that answer gets tested.
#5 — Kaisel
Kaisel used to be Baran’s dragon, extracted after Jinwoo cleared the Demon King’s castle midway through Season 2. In practice, he’s spent more time as Jinwoo’s ride than as a frontline fighter — the anime leans hard into his flight, using him to cover ground the rest of the army can’t.
That utility is exactly why he ranks where he does. Kaisel isn’t positioned as a heavy hitter the way Igris or Beru are; he’s positioned as infrastructure. A shadow army that can only fight and can’t move fast enough to reach the fight is missing something, and Kaisel is Jinwoo’s answer to that gap. It’s a quieter kind of value than winning a fight outright, but it’s the same reason real armies keep scouts and pilots around even when they’re not the ones holding the front line.
#4 — Iron
Iron has the single most ironic origin story in the entire shadow army. He used to be Kim Chul, the A-rank hunter who turns on Jinwoo mid-battle during the Red Gate arc, blaming him for the mess the whole party is trapped in. Jinwoo has Igris kill him on the spot — then extracts his shadow anyway and renames him Iron, turning the one hunter in the story who broke his loyalty into a soldier who can no longer do anything else.
That backstory is doing more work than raw stats ever could. Iron isn’t the flashiest name on this list, but he’s the shadow whose service is genuinely spiteful — a betrayal punished by permanent, absolute obedience. It’s also Iron’s help, right after his own resurrection, that finally lets Jinwoo bring down Baruka, the Ice Elves’ leader — a boss strong enough that Jinwoo tries and fails to extract his shadow three separate times.
#3 — Tusk
Tusk used to be Kargalgan, the high orc shaman running the mining-expedition dungeon Jinwoo gets trapped in a few episodes into Season 2. Unlike Tank or Iron, Tusk brings actual spellcasting into the shadow army — the anime shows him working magic that the show frames as a genuine tactical option, not just an extra set of fists.
That versatility is the reason he ranks above two shadows who arguably hit harder in a straight fight. An army built entirely out of melee soldiers has an obvious ceiling. Tusk is Jinwoo’s first real proof that his shadow army can scale in more than one direction.
#2 — Igris
Igris is Jinwoo’s oldest shadow, and by the end of Season 2 he’s still the most complete one. He was the Job-Change Quest dungeon’s final boss, the “knight who defends an empty throne,” and losing to Jinwoo is what gives Jinwoo his necromancer powers in the first place. Extracting Igris isn’t just Jinwoo’s first big shadow — it’s the moment the entire shadow-army mechanic becomes real.
The show keeps proving the extraction was worth it. Igris is the shadow Jinwoo actually sends in to execute Kim Chul the moment his betrayal happens, without needing to think twice about whether Igris can handle it. He’s a master swordsman with the kind of durability that lets him tank hits other shadows can’t, and unlike Tank or Iron, he reads as having something close to independent judgment in a fight rather than just following orders.
What keeps him at #2 instead of #1 is simple: the season’s biggest fight isn’t his. That one belongs to Beru.
#1 — Beru
Beru is the Ant King, defeated on Jeju Island in the Season 2 finale after a fight that nearly costs Jinwoo the raid entirely. Cha Hae-In is already down by the time Jinwoo turns to face him, and the Ant King is the closest thing Season 2 has to a fight Jinwoo might actually lose. That alone would be enough to put Beru at the top.
What makes him more than “the strongest one” is how quickly he stops behaving like a monster. Within the same finale, Beru is already picking up language and showing something closer to personality than instinct — a shift no other extraction in Season 1 or 2 goes through this fast. It’s the reason later material treats him as something closer to a second-in-command than a weapon, a role none of the other six shadows on this list are positioned to take.
If you want the deeper dive into where that personality actually comes from — including the detail the anime leaves out entirely — we’ve covered Beru’s full origin separately.
Where the Official Ranks Actually Land Them (Manhwa Spoilers Ahead)
⚠️ Spoiler scope: everything above this point is anime-only, through the end of Season 2. From here down, we’re naming where the manhwa eventually ranks these shadows — skip ahead if you want to stay clean for Season 3.
Everything above is scoped to what Season 2 has confirmed. The manhwa eventually gives the shadow army a real Grade system, and if you’re caught up past the anime, here’s how that system is structured and where these seven currently sit within it.
The Grades run, from weakest to strongest: Normal, Elite, Knight, Elite Knight, General, Marshal, and finally Grand Marshal — a tier the story reserves for exactly one shadow.
Tank sits at Knight. Kaisel and Iron both land at Elite Knight. Tusk eventually reaches General. Igris and Beru are both confirmed at Marshal grade — but notably, neither anime season shows that promotion happening. Both of them get there later, after Jinwoo’s own power grows well beyond where “Arise from the Shadow” currently leaves him.
Above all of them sits Bellion, the Grand Marshal — a shadow who doesn’t exist yet in the anime at all, and who the manhwa treats as being on a different level from every name on this list combined. A release window for Solo Leveling Season 3 is already confirmed, and part of what makes the wait genuinely frustrating is knowing how much of the shadow army’s real hierarchy the anime still hasn’t touched.
The Ranking Will Keep Changing, and That’s the Point
A shadow army ranking made after Season 1 would have had one entry worth discussing. This one has seven, and the manhwa makes clear that’s still an early snapshot. Every new arc gives Jinwoo a harder fight, and every harder fight is a candidate for a new name on this list.
That’s arguably the most interesting thing about how Solo Leveling structures its power scaling. The strength of Jinwoo’s army isn’t a fixed number going up — it’s a running record of exactly how much danger he’s survived. Beru holds the top spot right now because the Ant King was the worst fight Season 2 had to offer. The moment something worse shows up, the list moves again.
