The new season of Cyberpunk 2077 animated series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 has been released. The new series is available to stream now, on Netflix. Today, we take a look at Episode Two.
Synopsis –
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 pulls you back into Night City, where lives become entangled to the extreme. Weak, a washed-up cyberpunk legend, is now forced to live without chrome as he searches for a sense of purpose in a world that’s passed him by. Meanwhile, the deadly nomad D sets out on a path to revenge that brings him close to corpo secrets never meant to be found. Across this ten-episode standalone series, uncover a story of family, obsession, legacy — and how your lens reflects the stories of the people around you.
The first season of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners debuted on Netflix in September of 2022, to rave reviews, instantly building a devoted fanbase. It has been a long wait for those fans since the finale of the ten episode season aired nearly four years ago. That wait, however, is over. Season 2 is not a continuation of the story from the first season (and the few surviving characters), but instead focuses on a new cast of characters.
The full 10 episode season was dropped in one go onto Netflix. It would be madness (or perhaps cyberpsychosis) to try to encompass the full 10 episode season in one post, so much as we did with The Ghost in the Shell series, we are going to cover one episode per week as if it were on a weekly release schedule – after all, it’s not like everyone is gonna binge it all in one day? Right?!
Episode One introduced us to the main cast of characters, and it was a wider cast than season one. Episode Two opens with King meeting with Avida, the woman he was seeing visions of when descending towards cyberpsychosis. It turns out they were indeed lovers at one point, and that Talia is King’s daughter! A revelation that is as much a surprise to King as it is to us. As we already know, she is mixed up with Maelstrom, and is hitting the body augmentations heavily. Avida is worried about cyberpsychosis, and wants to hire King to do something about it. King, who as we know is not over Avida, is a bit taken aback that she is approaching it as a cold job hire, but despite his tough exterior, we’ve already learnt that he has a soft heart, and it’s obvious he is going to do what he can for Talia.
We see a flashback, with lots of fire and death. Then Roman’s mysterious rescuer wakes up from this nightmare, and we discover his name is D. He leaves Roman’s home, and Roman follows him. Feeling a twisted kinship with Roman, he offers to help Roman get video footage of Maelstrom, as he follows his own agenda. In contrast to King’s soft heart, it seems D is more singleminded, seemingly not having any qualms about taking Roman, a young boy, into a very dangerous situation. He takes Roman to a building and uses him as bait to flush out Helio. Roman begins filming, and almost gets shot by Helio, but then D takes him down, using his neurolink to incapacitate Helio. Under questioning, Helio assumes D is after the Arasaka chip stolen in the first episode, but D presses him on the fire at the Snake Nation nomad camp. Helio reveals he was asked in on the job, but didn’t go. The rest of his crew did, but were there working for a corp, and are all most likely dead at this point.
Meanwhile, Talia is in hospital, having been taken in when Maelstrom were raided. It seems she is not currently at risk of cyberpsychosis. Why she is so resistant is not known, and considering King was apparently close to cyberpsychosis, it doesn’t seem to be genetic resistance from his side. It feels like this apparent resistance might be a key element of this season. Avida’s husband doesn’t seem to be very present in this whole situation, but King is there for Avida. Talia, however, doesn’t want to stick around. King, wily and cunning, manages to catch up with her, and barters for her time, by removing a tracker chip for her. He tries to relate and engage with her, but as soon as the chip is out, she is gone once again.
Roman and D are sitting around trying to think about their next move. With no leads, they decide to go through a subsidiary company of Arasaka, hoping for direct access to Arasaka’s servers through the smaller company. It doesn’t work, but Roman suggest getting hold of the stolen Arasaka chip to use as leverage. Following this lead, they find themselves at a non-descript building. D’s frankly impressive neuro capabilities analyse all the security and countermeasures, but he finds a door with a gap in them. D tries to hack in, but has some kind of flashback and passes out. When he comes to, Roman has dragged him back to his place, and D accidentally lets slip that he is looking for a woman, and revenge.
Roman’s father sends him on an errand. Talia scopes him using the camera she stole from him. She gives it back, and praises his cinematography, asking him to scroll her again. Talia reveals she has surgery the next day (more augs, concerning), and says she’ll see him tomorrow, and leaves.
Avida calls King in the morning, panicking that Talia’s tracker is offline (oops). King promises he’ll do what he can to find her. D is still gunning for revenge, and insists that Roman is coming with him. This causes Roman to upset Talia by not going to film her. She’s clearly very upset, having thought she’d found a friend, and being brushed off straight away. You can see from her point of view why this would be gutting, she’s clearly someone looking for approval, just not necessarily from the right people. King tracks Talia to Maelstrom, but they easily get the upper hand on him.
The end of episode two, and we now already know how the four main characters tie together, with some idea how the Arasaka chip might fit in. There are obviously still gaps. We don’t know who exactly it is D is gunning for, he mentions a ‘her’, but we don’t know who this relates to. It’s unclear how King, a shadow of his former self, is going to prevail against Maelstrom, but we can see a route for him to get through to Talia – she has fallen in with Maelstrom, but with the augmentations she keeps having installed, and her immediate connection with Roman, it’s clear she’s looking for the right connection. We don’t know what exactly Roman needs, aside from the perfect subject for filming. He’s already gotten good footage of Talia, so is she to be his muse? It’s been shown that Roman is very intelligent, as whilst D is well equipped and motivated by revenge, it is Roman that has been analytical of the situation and coming up with the next move in each situation, which is obviously why D is keen to keep him around.
An interesting second episode. I thought it might take longer to bring the different threads together, but the series is wasting little time – there have been no wasted minutes so far, the story is tight and moving at a clip. The big question is that Arasaka chip. What does it do? Augmentations and cyberpsychosis seem to be a big part of this season again, and it feels like this chip might have a big part to play in that.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 is directed by Kai Ikarashi, with character designs by Ichigo Kanno and a story written by Bartosz Sztybor of CD PROJEKT RED and Masahiko Otsuka. There are 10 episodes in total, and they were released all at once on Netflix on Tuesday 20th October.
You can watch a trailer for the series below –
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