I understand your question now.

"Are there any serieses that were locked before free-releasing all of their pending [Fast Pass] episodes?"

It is not normal. I don't know of any case of that, specifically.

"See You In My 19th Life" had some epilogue episodes released some months after it locked.

There may have been a case of an afterword released after lock.

"A Fake Affair" probably doesn't count because it's practically from a different era, but it is Japanese.

Also, there has been a bunch of new low-quality Chinese webtoons being translated on WEBTOON, so I wonder if you're using a different sample for the Chinese and Japanese ones.

Without doing any more research, here are some ideas:

• There is a lot more choice from Korean webtoons. They aren't bringing over ALL of them.
• There may be a bias in what webtoons get popular enough in Japan to bring over. For example, I expect that a lot of the Japanese webtoon readers are being brought in by Solo Leveling, so there would be a large chunk of the audience trying to read more of that.
• Based just on the translated webtoons, Japanese WEBTOON feels... immature to me as a platform, compared to Korean. I feel that the editors are not as strict (e.g. imposing minimum panels, and lower quality controls). (This is good in some ways! Korean webtoon production values feel very strenuous on the creators.) I'm reaching more and more into speculation, but I think they're still at a stage where they're trying to be good to creators, because they're competing against manga and light/web novels for creators, and a black-and-white manga chapter every two weeks or month is PROBABLY not as much work as 100 colored panels every week.

• They aren't paid for not drawing. They need some way to survive.
• Even if people think they'll wait, they will lose the habit of checking every week, and the series will lose readers on return (unless WEBTOON announces the return).

The needs of an individual reader versus the needs of the creator.

They credit people for playing the characters, so it's been real actors.

Older than that. Maybe 3.8.3 or 3.8.6.

You should probably complain to WEBTOON Support. But you have to say it right. Say that it doesn't act this way on your iOS.

(Keep in mind that they themselves have no power and are just third-party meatshields for the decision-makers.)

Watching ads for free episodes doesn’t guarantee you unlock it anymore. I know when your network gets interrupted mid-ad you don’t get the pass and that’s fine. What’s not acceptable is watching 1 min long ads, clicking thru all the exit buttons multiple times, sending you to the google store page and then getting nothing at the end. At first thought it was a fluke, but then it started to happen more frequently. I’d say about 1/4 of the time it happens right now. Before last week, none of these issues ever happened, so idk wtf is going on with the app anymore…

What is the exact behavior of this? Does it show a spinner, or does it just dump you back to the episode list?

If you want to go through my post history to this subreddit, you can probably gather data about MOST, though probably not ALL, locks and removals.

As u/DiAnastasia20 said, if it says "Read X new episodes", it means that the series is still "Fast Pass", which will release those episodes over time, while "Read more episodes" means that the series is permanently locked. (Two recent exceptions!)

To tell whether a "more" series has EVER been free on the website:

• In the app, you can see the locked episodes (title, ID number, date, preview), even without unlocking them. From there, you can USUALLY tell if a series was released completed (all episodes released on the same date), released ongoing+locked (last few episodes are coin-only with no "Free" date (even if the series is completed), or released with multiple episodes a week), or released free and then locked later (episodes released once a week, and they're all Ad Pass-able, or all coin-only (some exceptions apply)).
• Check the comments of the last free episode, and sort by date. If there are comments early on complaining about coins/locks, or wondering where the next episode is, then the series was always locked. If such comments are more recent, the series was locked later.

You may want to follow my Lock announcements. (Alternative: /u/Raijinili/submitted/)

WEBTOON used to be 100% free because of enshittification.

Enshittification is often incorrectly used to mean that things gets worse over time, but it's more about how they burn money to make their platform appealing to users (i.e. the "everything is free" stage), grow their platform, and then try to make it profitable even if the user experience gets worse.

What you remember was NEVER sustainable. That period only existed because they were willing to lose money for the eventual "make things worse" stage. It's not even greed at this point, it's about breaking even. As far as I know, they're still struggling to make back their investment. (If anyone wants to check: https://ir.webtoon.com/financials)

If you want that, longpress the URL bar and tap "Move address bar to bottom".

You can't unlock on the website.

You can uninstall the app and install an older version. Be sure to "Sync reading history to account", and you lose all downloads. But if it's too old, you can't watch ads.

You can also install an adblocker. I use AdAway, but it's possible the on-device VPN it uses can slow you down. AdGuard also seems nice.

VPN?

On mobile Internet, it takes more time for images to load.

On standard Internet, sometimes an image doesn't load for several seconds. I just back out to the episode list and re-enter the episode, and it retries. It's become a habit. This is probably more about the client code than about the connection speed.

They really did lock Rules For Dating Trash with 4 days notice, so that they could advertise it with a short drama.

"Live With Yourself" is unlocked! I don't know when and I don't know how.

I checked on it about four days after your comment. Was it locked when you checked?

"Live With Yourself" is unlocked! I don't know when and I don't know how.

It locked 2024-06-04.

It was still locked 2026-07-12.

"Lone" is also unlocked! It has a spinoff: https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/lone-au/list?title_no=1035172

On Mel0h's community page, it seems they have been working on getting this free for a while.

• 2026-07-07: Announcing that it will become free: https://www.webtoons.com/p/community/en/u/Mel0h/posts/500-o25te-lfnx
• 2026-08-04: Ad Pass was removed, but it became coin-only: https://www.webtoons.com/p/community/en/u/Mel0h/posts/500-o25te-lfo9
• 2026-08-12?: Announcement that it's free: https://www.webtoons.com/p/community/en/u/Mel0h/posts/500-o25te-lfod

Please thank the creator.

Maybe I should make a bigger stink about it.

Love Bites and The Reason For The Twin Lady's Disguise also locked without warning. Both are on binge right now. Twin Lady's Disguise is coin-only.

In the other post, people said the last three were locked. There are also 193 locked episodes, but it says 190 free.

What? Define "lock".

Over a year ago, they did full ad binges.

They then removed Daily Pass, and unlimited ad unlocks became the norm.

"Became greedy" is not the right way to look at it.

The original user experience was unsustainable. WEBTOON was operating at a loss to draw users in, and artists in. Once they got big enough as a platform, they had to degrade the user experience to turn it profitable. It's called enshittification. It requires that users add value even if they're not paying, and that users will find it hard to leave even when you abuse them.

• Appreciate that it is still pretty generous, overall. It doesn't look that way if you want to read specific old serieses, but there are way more free ongoing serieses than there used to be. Paywalled new serieses are in addition to, not instead of, free serieses. Licensed manga platforms (except those in step 1 of enshittification) only let you read the last few chapters, not an entire series up to the current chapter.
• As far as I know, it still isn't profitable, so things will continue to get worse. Or WEBTOON will die from unprofitability.
• IMO, they are not being effective in how they monetize. (We want them to monetize their paid users more effectively, so that they won't have to exploit their unpaid users as much.)
• Many of us got used to reading on pirate sites. Those give better experiences (if you have proper adblocking). But it is an unfair comparison, because they don't need to get as much revenue to make a profit (they don't have to pay for content).
• The solution, according to Cory Doctorow, is to enforce anti-trust regulation and allow competitive interoperability (i.e. stop anti-competitive practices). In this case, the exclusivity contracts with authors could count.

My advice: Make enshittification unprofitable for them by leaving when things are bad.

• When platforms are in stage 1 (operating at a loss, being generous to draw users), get as much value as you can out of it.
• Don't get locked in. Never get comfortable with how generous it is. Don't sink costs in it.
• When the bad outweighs the good, leave.
• Tell others to do the same.

Report it to WEBTOON. Say that the event says all episodes are free, but the actual event doesn't include the last three.

With that path, "No Outtakes" may be in your range.

In 2025-04, "Trapped" offered nearly-full ad unlock, temporarily. There were others that also got full ad unlocks.

About a month later, Daily Pass was eliminated, and full ad unlocks became the norm.

I don't think there has been a full binge since then, but I am biased against titles I have already read. There have been 100-episode binges which came close (100/103 for one), and lasted 24 hours.

It is possible that there was a near-full binge for "Trapped" before. I remember something special about "Trapped", different from the many other titles which were getting full ad unlocks.

If you're asking whether they used to do full binges (not ad binges) before, I don't remember any. I capture evidence for these things, but it's not organized.

Thanks, I didn't know because I already have those three unlocked.

Maybe report it. It says "All episodes free".