This is a spoiler-free piece for Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2, but will contain spoilers for the first season.
It's no exaggeration to say that 2022’s Cyberpunk: Edgerunners was a smash hit for Netflix. This collaboration between CD PROJEKT RED (Cyberpunk, The Witcher) and Studio TRIGGER (Kill la Kill, Delicious in Dungeon, Gurren Lagann) was an emotionally moving and devastating tale that captured and crushed viewers’ hearts. Despite the game’s rocky launch in 2020, the show brought millions of new and returning players into the brutal world of Night City (mainly to exact revenge on Adam Smasher). While I wasn't as captivated by the anime as others, it is still an amazing series that sits comfortably behind Steins;Gate as my second-favorite video game show. Basically, oh no, I thought it was a 9/10 instead of a 10/10.
Needless to say, the hype for the follow-up is through the roof. Luckily, Anime Expo hosted a panel featuring showrunner/writer Bartosz Sztybor, executive producer Saya Elder, and director Kai Ikarashi to discuss their vision for their return to Night City, culminating in an early showing of the first episode months before its fall premiere.
So, let's address the question everyone has: does Cyberpunk: Edgerunners return with a bang? Oh, you know it choom… even if I didn't love the premiere. The initial episode cuts between two isolated storylines. After a catastrophic incident that forced him to retire from being an Edgerunner, Weak spends his days wandering aimlessly around Night City, his body shutting down from the abundance of cybernetic implants. Meanwhile, a young cinephile named Roman navigates around Night City with a camera, wanting to capture the lives of others.
Discussing why the debut episode didn't click with me will be tricky, because the aspects I wasn't fond of could potentially be addressed simply by letting the show cook. For me, a great premiere pulls back the curtain a sliver to take a peek at the turbulence that lies ahead. Edgerunners 2 walks to and places its hands on said curtain, but stops just before the sheets can be moved. In simpler terms, the narrative framing of Edgerunners 2's dual protagonists made the start of the season feel akin to the first half of two separate episodes stitched together. The consequence of this yields a structure that zigzags its narrative progression. Lots of critical events happen, and a good amount of the foundational ground has been trekked. It's just that not much forward distance has been covered in terms of story progression.
Beyond the lack of narrative momentum, my main apprehension when it comes to stories centering around two leads is the pitfalls of character writing. From The Last of Us Part II to Spider-Man 2 to AI nirvanA Initiative, the dual protagonist structure often has both leads duking it out for precious screentime. Often the result is having one character draw the short end of the stick, or worse, neither character reaching their full potential of depth simply by not having enough time to do so.
The first season of Edgerunners didn’t have this issue. Even though the story revolves around the relationship between Lucy and David, the role of the protagonist always centers around the perspective of the young man. Heck, Lucy barely appears and doesn’t speak in the first episode. As a result, I was much more invested in David’s character from the outset compared to Roman and Weak.
To reiterate once more, it is too early to conclude if Edgerunners 2 will completely succumb to these same trappings. These gripes could disappear completely once all ten episodes release at once this fall, being able to see the full scope of the narrative all at once rather than just a 20-minute snippet. Even so, it is a testament to Sztybor’s superb chops as a writer that he efficiently reintroduces the world of Night City on top of establishing the characterization and inciting incidents for the two protagonists. This is how the secondary main characters of D and Talia are introduced, smartly weaving their extremely brief appearances into shaking up Roman’s daily status quo. It makes for strong narrative intrigue that will hopefully pay off during the season.
Again, this episode never reaches the heights of David’s debut, but it is still impressive how much I became invested in the leads in spite of having significantly less initial screentime. As always, the team emphasized a point that will be familiar to fans of the first season’s characters. Get those antidepressants ready for an endless amount of trauma.
Even if Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 doesn’t stick the landing past this first episode, the fact that it centers around a new cast at all is a piece of narrative integrity I deeply respect. Throughout the panel, Sztybor hammered home through both informative explanations and dark humor that David is super duper dead. His story is done, so choom ain’t coming back. As for Lucy, Saya Elder mentioned how she’s off doing whatever she’s doing in Wuthering Waves. That decision lends credence to how the showrunner wants to present this season, and potentially future installments of Edgerunners as standalone anthologies.
The source material of Cyberpunk is a tabletop game, so Sztybor stated that each entry is essentially a brand new campaign still set in the same setting. Anthologizing the series is a choice that stands firmly in its refusal to risk diminishing the powerful legacy of the prior tale. Thus, David Martinez will not return in Avengers Doomsday. This sequel is pitched as a story that trusts itself to stand on its own without needing the first season, or existing for the sake of waving iconic characters back in our faces. Basically, diverging from the critical issues that plagued another one of Netflix's smash hits (cough cough Stranger Things).
Furthermore, just because this is a new story doesn’t mean the familiar thematic concepts from the original series can’t be expanded upon. Sztyzbor reiterated that Edgerunners 2 will retread the first season’s thematic core of humanity and sacrifice. Part of the fun will be comparing and contrasting how this installment will go about depicting these familiar conceits.
Edgerunners 1’s perspective of teenagers entering adulthood revolved around David and Lucy’s dreams of making it big in Night City, before showing how those delusions get crushed by the weight of reality. Conversely, the sequel’s dual protagonists center around two ends of the age range spectrum. Weak, whose deteriorating body hobbles in stark contrast to when he was in his youthful, cybernetic-infused prime. Then there’s the cinephile Roman, a child who wanders around Night City with a camera to document its citizens like the films of old. Their isolated storylines in the premiere don’t have many moments of intersection (at least not yet), but the contrasting nature of how the youth and the old try to reclaim the past is a compelling framework for the show to explore the familiar themes of humanity and sacrifice.
Sztyzbor further wrapped these differences by providing an interesting comparison between the two. He mentioned how the first season of Edgerunners is similar to a Michael Bay film, whereas Edgerunners 2 goes for a Martin Scorsese vibe. Admittedly, throwing the label of “Michael Bay” movie at the masterful first season had me raise my eyebrow, the same reaction as the director of this second season, Kai Ikarashi. However, I can maybe see where the showrunner is coming from. Season one’s narrative throughline traps the off-kilter cast in plenty of bombastic set pieces that consistently left me on the edge of my seat. As David gets more and more implants, the stakes and the danger escalate to match.
This follow-up feels a lot more grounded with a more reserved cast, tone, and setting. Yes, studio Trigger still presents Night City as a hyperviolent and hypersexual place. It can’t be Edgerunners without the splashes of gore and viscera exploding out of corpses. But the few set pieces we see in the premiere opt for punchy firefights rather than having over-the-top choreography.
As for this rendition of Night City, Trigger goes for a retro, 90s aesthetic. The first season played a lot with shadows, the neon lights illuminating the dark underbelly with a hue of green. In contrast, the first episode of the sequel is brightly lit, the sunkissed rays beaming on the rubble of the rural side of Night City. We can see this visual evolution by comparing the key art between seasons. Through Roman’s obsession with filmmaking, the team promises to use his camera as a lens to examine the lives of the folks within the city. A core question the writing team wanted to approach is whether beauty can be found within the underbelly of a cruel world. It lends well to the pulp function inspired setting and themes of humanity Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 goes for.
What I love is how Roman’s hobby seeps into the art direction as well. One of the most impressive animation feats in this episode is how the frame has small specs of grime and dust layered on top of the drawing. These are often accompanied by lens flare, mimicking how the light illuminates the dust residing on a camera lens. There are beautiful shot compositions made possible by using the lens flare as a spacing tool. It is clear the art team is proudly embracing this visual motif, as the key art has a flash of light that depicts this technique. In addition, Roman recording with his camera is depicted with point-of-view shots, the animation portraying the erratic movement mimicking the cinematography of handheld cam.
As for the sound, it is no surprise that Edgerunners 2 is an auditory delight. Similar to the first season, the show is a fantastic gateway to introduce fans to new bands, with this season’s opening theme being 10:15 Saturday Night by the band The Cure. In general, the English voice acting is fantastic, helmed superbly by one of my favorite dub directors, Wendee Lee. The standout highlight of the performances is Mr. Krabs himself, Clancy Brown, who captures the somberness of a man past his prime grappling with how his body is shutting down.
All of this is why I am super stoked for Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 despite not loving the debut episode. Even without the context of the team discussing their vision during the panel, the season premiere possessed intelligent narrative construction that managed to get me invested in the cast and their lives in Night City in such a short amount of time.
Yet, it is that fantastic feat of writing that demonstrates how the first episode slightly stumbles with its ambitions. The rapid-fire events feel constrained by the 20ish minute framework, the division of screentime between the dual protagonists not giving either lead the time they need to elevate excellence into mastery.
Strangely, this being an issue at all is what has me excited to see the rest of the season through. Even if CD PROJEKT RED and TRIGGER bungle the remaining nine episodes, the fundamental choice to cement Edgerunners as a series of anthologies is one I deeply respect. These two teams know it is near impossible to catch the same lightning twice, so they confidently chase other bolts to catch. If they miss, the issues will at least stem from trying to deliver a fresh experience.
Still, with nine more episodes to go, I have an overwhelming amount of confidence that this second collaboration between these prolific studios will amaze and devastate us once more.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 will arrive on Netflix in fall 2026.
