Clear your Tuesday night. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 hits Netflix on 20 October, and CD Projekt Red and Netflix have just dropped what looks like the final trailer. It’s loud, it’s violent, it’s dripping in chrome, and it looks like Studio Trigger is about to put Night City through the blender again.
If the first season somehow passed you by: Edgerunners (2022) was a 10-episode anime set in the world of Cyberpunk 2077, and it was so good it dragged the game’s player numbers back up on Steam and helped turn its rough launch into one of gaming’s great comeback stories. It also left half the internet emotionally wrecked. David and Lucy, we’re still not over it.
A new crew, same hell
Season 2 isn’t a continuation of David’s story. It’s a standalone 10-episode tale with a brand new cast, a “reimagined” animation style, and a pitch Netflix sums up as redemption and revenge in a city that thrives on violence. The four leads, per Netflix:
- Roman Carax (Valeria Rodriguez / Momoka Terasawa): a young film nerd documenting real stories in a city that’s ditched film for braindance. He records something he really shouldn’t have, and it all goes downhill from there.
- D (Nazeeh Tarsha / Koki Uchiyama): a Snake Nation netrunner hunting the killer who wiped out his clan.
- Talia (Kimoy Lee / Akari Kito): raised in the corpo towers, hardened in Maelstrom’s grip, and fully into the gang’s chrome-obsessed, hyper-violent culture.
- Weak (Clancy Brown / Kentaro Tone): once a top-tier edgerunner called “King”, now living in the shadow of his own legend. Yes, that’s Mr. Krabs and Kurgan from Highlander voicing a washed-up merc. We’re in.
The new trailer also leans on the Blackwall and the Biochip, two big pieces of Cyberpunk 2077’s story, so expect plenty of nods for anyone who’s played the game.
Scorsese, not Michael Bay
CD Projekt showed the first episode at Anime Expo in July, and its pitch was blunt: if season 1 was a Michael Bay movie, season 2 is aiming for Martin Scorsese. Kotaku, who saw the episode, called it a more down-to-earth story than the first. CDPR says it wants each Edgerunners season to feel like its own tabletop Cyberpunk campaign brought to the screen, rather than one long connected saga.
The team behind it:
- Studio: Trigger, back again.
- Director: Kai Ikarashi.
- Character designs: Ichigo Kanno.
- Story: Bartosz Sztybor of CD Projekt Red, who also runs the show, and Masahiko Otsuka.
The soundtrack slaps
- Opening: “10:15 Saturday Night” by The Cure. Yes, really.
- Ending: “Watson”, an original track by Petite Meller.
- Trailer song: “You Can’t Run From Me” by Rico Nasty, written for the show and already on streaming.
When can you watch it?
All 10 episodes land on Netflix on Tuesday 20 October. Netflix usually drops these at midnight US Pacific time, which would make it Tuesday evening here, around 8pm in NZ and 6pm on the east coast of Australia. Keep an eye on your Netflix app on the day.
Our take
Season 1 was a ten-out-of-ten gut punch and a better Cyberpunk story than most of the game it was selling. Following that with a new cast, a new director and a “reimagined” art style is a big swing, and we won’t pretend we’re not a bit nervous about it. Trigger’s original look was half the magic.
But everything we’ve seen says they’re not trying to remake David and Lucy, and that’s the right call. A grittier, nastier, street-level story with a washed-up legend voiced by Clancy Brown and The Cure on the opening credits? That’s not a cash-in, that’s a team that knows exactly what it’s doing. Book Tuesday night off, put the phone down, and have the tissues ready. Night City doesn’t do happy endings.
Are you watching day one? And who’s going back to Cyberpunk 2077 afterwards, because you know you will. Sound off in the comments or on the GetRekt Discord.
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