CD PROJEKT RED is heading back to Night City on Netflix. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 premieres on Tuesday (October 20th) as a 10-episode standalone series, animated again by TRIGGER. It has a new story and a new cast, but it is set in the same city players have been running around in since Cyberpunk 2077 launched, and a lot of the names in the character list will sound familiar.
The official Edgerunners account posted on Saturday (October 17th) that the season "will make you laugh one minute and emotionally destroy you the next," which is exactly what the first one did to a lot of people.
Why The First Season Mattered For The Game
The original Edgerunners premiered in September 2022, almost two years after Cyberpunk 2077's rough launch. The timing worked out. The game had been patched into a much better state, the anime was a hit, and a wave of new and returning players went back into Night City to find David Martinez's jacket, visit the places from the show, and see what had changed. It was one of the clearest examples of a show directly helping a game's comeback.
Season 2 lands with the game in a very different spot, with Phantom Liberty long since out and Cyberpunk 2077 well past its recovery. This time the pressure is all on the show itself, and on whether a brand new crew can land as hard as David and Lucy did.
Who Is In Season 2
The lead is Weak, a washed-up legend once known as King, who now has to live without chrome. For a setting where everyone is upgraded to the eyeballs, that is a pretty brutal place to start a character. He is joined by D, a Snake Nation nomad and netrunner looking for the killer who wiped out his clan.
The supporting cast is where the game connections show up most:
- Talia was raised in the corpo towers and hardened in Maelstrom, the chrome-heavy gang players fight early in Cyberpunk 2077.
- Avida is a former jazz singer, Weak's old flame, the wife of a Kang Tao executive, and Talia's mother.
- Kitano works for Arasaka, and Richard works for Kang Tao.
- Roman Carax is a young cinephile documenting the truth in a city that dropped film for braindance.
- Sal owns Braindance Paradise.
- Meshuga, Miguel, and Emily round out King's old team.
Braindance, Maelstrom, Arasaka, and Kang Tao all come straight out of the game's world, so 2077 players should feel at home right away. The official site describes the season as a story about family, obsession, and legacy.
Check out the official trailer below:
The Team Behind It
Kai Ikarashi is directing, with Ichigo Kanno as lead character designer and chief animation director. Bartosz Sztybor, the Hugo Award winning writer, is handling the story, and Masahiko Otsuka is on series composition and scripts. Naoto Uchida is the assistant director.
Sztybor will be at MCM London on Saturday (October 24th) at 1:15 PM BST with Saya Elder for a panel about the emotional storytelling in the show, so anyone who finishes the season fast will have somewhere to bring their questions.
In Japanese, Kentaro Tone voices Weak, Koki Uchiyama voices D, Momoka Terasawa voices Roman, and Akari Kito voices Talia. Akemi Okamura plays Avida, with Takashi Matsuyama as Sal, Nobuo Tobita as Kitano, and Naoya Uchida as Richard.
Could It Push Players Back Into 2077 Again?
It worked once. A new season with new characters and familiar factions is a good excuse to reinstall the game and go looking for things that line up with the show. With the next Cyberpunk game still a long way off, Edgerunners 2 is the biggest new piece of Night City fans will get for a while.
Are you watching Edgerunners 2 the day it drops, or saving it for after another Cyberpunk 2077 playthrough?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.