Characters
Levi in Attack on Titan
Elite Survey Corps soldier renowned for his unmatched skill against Titans and unwavering discipline.
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Complete record: Levi
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Profile
Levi is an elite soldier of the Survey Corps whose extraordinary skill against the Titans has earned him a formidable reputation throughout the military. Quiet, demanding and relentlessly disciplined, he serves under Erwin Smith, placing complete focus on protecting his comrades and accomplishing even the most dangerous missions.
Born in the Underground City
Levi is born in the underground city beneath the capital, the son of a woman named Kuchel who worked in a brothel and chose to keep him instead of getting rid of him. Illness takes her while he is still a small child, and the boy stays in the room where they lived, beside her body, because there is nobody to come for him and nowhere below ground to go.
Taught to Survive by Kenny
Kenny finds the child beside his dead mother and takes him in. He feeds Levi and teaches him to fight, handle a knife and read a room where no help is coming. Once the boy can survive alone, Kenny leaves without explaining who he is. The skills that will make Levi the Walls' most feared soldier came from a man he never knew was his uncle.
Custody Through Force
During Eren's Trial, Levi uses open brutality to prove that Eren Yeager can be subdued if necessary. He accepts personal responsibility for watching him and declares that, should Eren lose control, he will kill him himself. On the strength of that promise, Darius Zackly places Eren in the custody of the Survey Corps.
Formation of the Special Operations Squad
Levi takes command of a select unit within the Survey Corps, assigning Petra Ral, Oluo Bozado, Eld Gin and Gunther Schultz to the direct custody of Eren Yeager. At the Old Headquarters, he turns the promise made after Eren's Trial into a strict chain of watch, discipline and immediate response should Eren become a threat.
Hidden Capture Plan
During the 57th Expedition Outside the Walls, Levi leads his squad under Erwin Smith's orders while withholding the full purpose of the operation from his own soldiers. As the Female Titan closes in, he demands that Eren Yeager keep riding and trust the judgment of the Survey Corps, even when fear and doubt spread through the ranks.
Rescue Over Revenge
After the Female Titan defeats his squad and takes Eren Yeager, Levi joins forces with Mikasa Ackerman to recover him. Despite the loss of his comrades, he remains focused on the mission, stopping Mikasa from pursuing revenge and prioritizing Eren's rescue above everything else.
Outmatched in the Capital
Moving Eren and Historia through the capital in secret, Levi runs into an enemy no Titan has prepared him for: Kenny's Anti-Personnel Control Squad, fighting with maneuvering gear and firearms and led by a man who seems to know exactly how Levi moves. He fights to break the encirclement and still loses both of the people he was sworn to protect.
The Interrogation of Sannes
With Eren missing and the regiment hunted, Levi takes part with Hange Zoë in breaking the captured Interior Police officer Sannes during the Uprising. The methods are the ones the enemy uses, and Levi applies them without pretending otherwise: someone has to do what the operation needs, and he has never asked anyone else to carry that weight for him.
Duel in the Reiss Cavern
Levi leads the assault on the cavern beneath the Reiss Chapel and finally faces Kenny on ground that suits neither of them, with gunfire in enclosed galleries and Rod Reiss's transformation swelling behind them. He sends his soldiers on to Eren and takes the man hunting them himself.
The Name Nobody Had Told Him
Levi finds Kenny dying after the battle at Orvud and hears, in the man's last account of his life, what was never explained to him: Kenny was his mother Kuchel's brother, which makes the killer who once watched over him in the underground city his uncle, and makes Levi an Ackerman. Kenny presses a hidden syringe into his hands, refuses to say what it is for, and leaves the decision to him.
The Only Hand on the Serum
When the Titan serum recovered from Kenny is examined by the regiment's leadership after Historia's coronation, Erwin Smith gives Levi alone the authority to decide who receives it if the moment ever comes. Levi accepts a choice no rank obliges him to take, and rides out for Shiganshina District carrying it.
Strikes Reiner Inside the Wall
When Armin exposes the Warriors' hiding place inside Wall Maria, Levi attacks the instant Reiner emerges. One blade cuts through Reiner's neck and the other pierces his chest, but even that is not enough: Reiner falls from the wall and transforms before Levi can finish him, turning a near-perfect ambush into the opening of the battle.
Orders Erwin to Give Up the Dream
With the regiment trapped beneath the Beast Titan's bombardment, Erwin admits that his only plan is a charge that will kill him and every recruit who follows. He asks Levi to decide in his place. Levi tells him to give up the basement, lead the soldiers to their deaths and leave the Beast Titan to him — taking responsibility for the choice that finally frees Erwin from choosing his dream over his command.
Cuts Down the Beast Titan
The recruits' charge gives Levi the blind approach he was promised. Using the surrounding Titans as anchor points, he reaches the Beast Titan, destroys its arms and legs before it can react and cuts Zeke from the nape. Levi is preparing to use the serum when the Cart Titan snatches Zeke away, leaving the promise to Erwin unfinished.
Chooses Armin
One syringe remains and both Erwin and Armin are dying. Levi first prepares to restore his commander, then sees Erwin raise a hand in delirium as if still trapped in the classroom where his dream began. He lets Erwin rest, gives the serum to Armin and accepts that the future will belong to the boy who dreamed of the ocean rather than the man consumed by the basement.
He Took Zeke Alive
The raid on Liberio finally puts the Beast Titan in a street of Marley's own, and the man who made a promise over Erwin's body reaches him through the smoke and takes the whole nape apart. Then he stops. Zeke is worth more talking than dead, so Levi cuts him out, ties him up and carries him onto the airship — the one thing the operation brings home that was actually planned.
The Man He Was Keeping
The island's alliance with Zeke is only workable because one soldier is holding the leash, and everybody involved knows what that soldier promised over Erwin's body. Levi takes him out to a forest with thirty Scouts and keeps him there — not as a guard, as a man waiting for the first excuse.
The Spear in the Forest
He puts a Thunder Spear into Zeke's gut and does not fire it, because a corpse is no use and the man is worth more talking. Zeke sets it off himself. The blast takes Levi's fingers, opens his face and leaves humanity's strongest soldier maimed and unconscious.
He Walked Up Unarmed
Half a face, one hand and no regiment, and the plan he backs is to approach two Marleyan Titan holders in the open and talk. Magath agrees to the alliance specifically because a man in that condition was willing to stand in front of him to propose it. It is the closest thing to diplomacy anybody manages in the whole war.
He Kept the Promise
At the end Zeke comes out of the Founder and calls his name, because there is one person certain to do it properly. He looks at the weather first and says he did not deserve to notice it. Levi takes his head off without a word, and every Wall Titan on the earth stops mid-step.
He Saw All of Them Again
Carried out of the last battle with nothing left to give it, he sees them: Erwin, Hange, Petra, the whole ledger of people he told to dedicate their hearts, standing together and saluting. He has spent the entire story being the only one who came back. This is the moment the story tells him it counted.
All linked characters
- Erwin Smith — Captain and Commander, bound by trust
- Petra Ral — A devoted member of his special squad
- Oluo Bozado — His squad member who imitates him
- Eld Gin — Senior soldier of his special squad
- Gunther Schultz — A watchful member of his squad
- Eren Yeager — Vows to restrain him by force, then takes him under his squad's watch
- Darius Zackly — Accepts his vow as guarantee enough to release Eren
- Nile Dok — Distrusts his vow to restrain Eren by force if needed
- Kenny — Ackerman kin; Kenny took in and raised the orphaned Levi
- Dimo Reeves — Merchant who struck a secret bargain with Levi's squad
- Roy — Sits down with him once the world beyond the Walls is public
- Mikasa Ackerman — Serves under him in the new Special Operations Squad
- Mikasa Ackerman — Ackerman kin: the same hunted bloodline, two generations apart
- Armin Arlert — Serves under him in the new Special Operations Squad
- Jean Kirstein — Serves under him in the new Special Operations Squad
- Connie Springer — Serves under him in the new Special Operations Squad
- Sasha Blouse — Serves under him in the new Special Operations Squad
- Floch Forster — Argued on the rooftop that only a demon should get the serum
- Zeke — Torn out of his nape and pinned before he could harden
- Quadrupedal Titan — Charged the rooftop and stole the man beneath his blade
- Theo Magath — An enemy who walked up unarmed to talk; Magath took the deal
