Every Cyberpunk 2077 Ending Explained, Including Phantom Liberty

Cyberpunk 2077 came out in December 2020, and its ending is decided by one conversation on a rooftop. V is dying, because the Relic chip in their head is overwriting them with the engram of Johnny Silverhand, and the last stretch of the game is about who V trusts to get them into Mikoshi, the data fortress Arasaka reaches from under its Night City tower. The 2023 expansion Phantom Liberty added a new way out. This guide covers every ending, how each is unlocked, and what each one means. Full spoilers. (Cyberpunk 2077; Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Before the endings: why V is dying#

V and Jackie Welles stole the Relic from Yorinobu Arasaka's suite at Konpeki Plaza. Jackie died, V was shot in the head by the fixer Dexter DeShawn, and the Relic rebuilt V's brain while loading Johnny's engram into it. The ripperdoc Viktor Vektor found that the chip was slowly overwriting V's personality with Johnny's. (Cyberpunk 2077)

Most of the story is a hunt for a fix. V and Johnny learn that only Arasaka has the tech to separate them, and that the answer may sit in Mikoshi, where Arasaka stores the minds it has captured with Soulkiller. The game builds to one question, which is who V trusts to help them break in. (Cyberpunk 2077)

How the ending is chosen#

The final main job, Nocturne Op55N1, starts once the main story is done and puts V on the roof of Misty's Esoterica with Johnny. The options there depend on what V has done before. (Cyberpunk 2077)

• Hanako Arasaka is always there, as long as the main jobs are complete. This leads to The Devil. (Cyberpunk 2077)
• Panam Palmer is there if V finished her side job Queen of the Highway. This leads to The Star, or Temperance if V gives Johnny the body. (Cyberpunk 2077)
• Rogue, through Johnny's plan, is there if V finished Rogue's side jobs and chose the right replies for Johnny in Chippin' In. This leads to The Sun, or Temperance. (Cyberpunk 2077)
• Solomon Reed is there in Phantom Liberty if V gave Songbird up to him. This leads to The Tower. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)
• Waiting for about five minutes without choosing, after the right replies in Chippin' In, makes Johnny offer the secret ending. (Cyberpunk 2077)
• Ending it is the first option on the roof. V can tell Johnny they'd rather put it all to rest. (Cyberpunk 2077)

The game also asks V which pills to take. The omega blockers suppress Johnny and keep V in control for the assault. The pseudoendotrizine hands control to Johnny, which is why Johnny, not V, leads the attack with Rogue. (Cyberpunk 2077)

The Devil: the Arasaka ending#

How to get it. Call Hanako Arasaka on the rooftop and take the omega blockers. The ending's achievement needs Goro Takemura alive, which means saving him earlier in Search and Destroy. (Cyberpunk 2077)

What happens. V goes to the Arasaka estate, helps Hanako and Takemura expose Yorinobu as the man who killed his father Saburo Arasaka, and fights Adam Smasher in Arasaka Tower. V wakes up on an Arasaka orbital station, where doctors run test after test and Johnny is removed from V's mind. The news is bad: the damage is permanent and V has about six months. Arasaka offers a contract. V can sign and become an engram stored in Mikoshi, with a vague promise of a new body one day, or refuse and fly back to Earth to live out those months. If Takemura died earlier, the Arasaka scientist Anders Hellman makes the offer instead. (Cyberpunk 2077)

What it means. The Devil is the bleakest of the main endings. V trades the people who stood by them for help from the corporation that caused the whole mess, and gets nothing real back. Johnny is gone, V's friends have moved on in the credits messages, and the choice at the end is between dying slowly on Earth or becoming exactly what Johnny was: a captured mind in Arasaka's vault. (Cyberpunk 2077)

The Star: leaving with the Aldecaldos#

How to get it. Finish Panam's Queen of the Highway, call Panam Palmer on the rooftop, take the omega blockers, and in Mikoshi choose to return to V's body. (Cyberpunk 2077)

What happens. The Aldecaldos agree to help. They hit Arasaka Tower with their armoured Basilisk, and V uploads Alt into Arasaka's network from inside the tower to reach Mikoshi. There, Alt Cunningham, the netrunner Arasaka captured with Soulkiller decades earlier and now an AI beyond the Blackwall, meets V and tells V the truth: the Relic damage can't be undone. V can go back to their body with months to live, or let Johnny have it. In The Star, V goes back. Johnny goes with Alt across the Blackwall, and V leaves Night City with the Aldecaldos, slipping past the border through an old Aldecaldo tunnel with Panam, bound for Tucson, with Panam's promise that V won't be alone any more. (Cyberpunk 2077)

What it means. V doesn't beat death here, but V finds a family. The nomads are the people who never asked V for anything except loyalty, and this ending is the one where V walks away from Night City instead of trying to conquer it. If V romanced Judy or Panam, the relationship carries on in this ending. (Cyberpunk 2077)

The Sun: legend of the Afterlife#

How to get it. Finish Rogue's side jobs, including Blistering Love, with the right replies for Johnny in Chippin' In. On the rooftop, follow Johnny's plan to ask Rogue, take the pseudoendotrizine, and in Mikoshi choose to give V the body back. (Cyberpunk 2077)

What happens. Johnny takes control of V's body and leads the attack on Arasaka Tower with Rogue Amendiares, his old partner from the 2023 raid. Rogue dies fighting Adam Smasher. In Mikoshi, Alt gives the same verdict, and V returns to their body. Some time later V is the most famous merc in Night City and the owner of the Afterlife. The ending closes with V taking a job from the mysterious Mr Blue Eyes: a heist on Crystal Palace, a casino station in orbit. (Cyberpunk 2077)

What it means. The Sun gives V what they wanted at the start of the game, to be a legend, with a few months left to enjoy it. It is triumphant and hollow at the same time. Rogue is dead, many of V's friends have left, and V is heading off on one last big score. (Cyberpunk 2077)

Temperance: Johnny keeps the body#

How to get it. Reach Mikoshi through Panam's, Rogue's or the secret route, and choose to let Johnny keep the body. (Cyberpunk 2077)

What happens. V crosses the Blackwall with Alt, and Johnny wakes up in V's body. In the epilogue he says goodbye to the people V cared about and leaves Night City to start a different life. (Cyberpunk 2077)

What it means. Temperance is V's sacrifice. V's body won't last much longer with V in it, but Alt can save one of them, and V picks Johnny. It also finishes Johnny's story: he gets a second chance only after he has learned to care about someone other than himself. (Cyberpunk 2077)

The secret ending: storming the tower alone#

How to get it. At the end of Chippin' In, give Johnny the three replies that show V trusts him again. On the rooftop in Nocturne Op55N1, wait about five minutes without picking an option. Johnny suggests that he and V go in alone, starting the quest (Don't Fear) The Reaper. (Cyberpunk 2077)

What happens. V and Johnny walk through Arasaka Tower's front door with no backup. If V dies at any point, the credits roll and the people in V's life react as if V killed themselves. If V makes it to Mikoshi, the ending plays out as The Sun or Temperance, depending on what V decides. (Cyberpunk 2077)

What it means. It is the only route where nobody else dies for V. In its version of The Sun, Rogue is still alive and greets V at the Afterlife before the Mr Blue Eyes job. (Cyberpunk 2077)

The suicide ending#

How to get it. On the rooftop, choose the first option and tell Johnny you could just put it all to rest. (Cyberpunk 2077)

What happens. V decides that every plan gets someone killed, and that it is better to end things now than let the chip destroy them both. Johnny says it isn't what he would do but accepts it. The camera pans over Night City and a gunshot rings out. The credits messages are from friends grieving V. (Cyberpunk 2077)

What it means. It is a quiet, deliberate ending, and the only one where V chooses to stop fighting. (Cyberpunk 2077)

Phantom Liberty: The Tower and Songbird's fate#

Phantom Liberty is set in Dogtown and pulls V into a spy story between Songbird, a netrunner for the New United States' FIA, and Solomon Reed, the FIA agent sent to bring her in. Songbird promised V a cure in exchange for help. At the quest Firestarter V must choose between them, and the expansion ends in one of four ways, named after the four Kings of the tarot. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

• King of Wands. V sides with Songbird, carries her through the NCX Spaceport to the shuttle, and kills Reed when he catches up. Songbird flies to the Moon. Along the way she admits she can't give V the cure she promised, so V gets no way out from this path. Alex Xenakis later meets V to drink to the dead, and a message from Songbird leads V to a small parting gift. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)
• King of Swords. V sides with Songbird but hands her over to Reed at the spaceport. The FIA takes her back, and Reed keeps his side of the deal: he offers V the cure. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)
• King of Cups. V sides with Reed, and after the convoy job V follows Songbird into the Cynosure facility under Dogtown. She asks V to kill her rather than let President Rosalind Myers use her again, and V does. There's no cure on this path. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)
• King of Pentacles. V sides with Reed and refuses Songbird's request. She survives and goes back to Myers as her netrunner on a leash, tied to the Blackwall, and Reed offers V the cure. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

The Tower#

How to get it. Reach King of Swords or King of Pentacles, accept Reed's offer, then call Reed when the option appears in Who Wants To Live Forever or on the rooftop in Nocturne Op55N1. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

What happens. NUSA doctors operate on V. In 2079, two years later, V wakes from a medically induced coma in a military hospital with Reed beside them. The Relic is gone, and so is Johnny. V is alive, but the surgery left V's brain unable to handle cyberware. V calls old friends and finds that their lives have gone on without them: Judy has settled down elsewhere, Panam doesn't want to talk, River has his own trouble. Back in Night City, Viktor's clinic is now a Zetatech franchise and he confirms the diagnosis. V gets beaten up by street thugs, Misty helps V up before leaving for Poland, and V walks off into the crowd as an ordinary person. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

What it means. The Tower is the only ending that actually saves V's life, and it takes almost everything else. V can never be a merc again, two years are gone, and the friends are scattered. It answers the game's question in an unexpected way: the price of living is giving up being a legend. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Which ending is the most hopeful?#

For most players, The Star. V is still dying, but V leaves with Panam and the Aldecaldos, the people who treated V as family, and they set out together. It is the one base-game ending that looks forward instead of back. (Cyberpunk 2077)

The Tower has the best case for being the "good" ending, because it is the only one where V survives long term. But it is bittersweet by design, and plenty of players find V's life after the surgery sadder than six months on the road with the nomads. The Devil is the darkest of the main endings, and the suicide ending is the darkest overall. (Cyberpunk 2077; Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Where it fits#

Cyberpunk 2077 takes place in 2077, half a century after Johnny's attack on Arasaka Tower in 2023, and its endings are the latest point in the setting's history. For the full plot leading up to the rooftop, see Cyberpunk 2077 story explained, and for where it all sits, the Cyberpunk timeline. The people in each ending are covered in the Cyberpunk characters guide. (Cyberpunk 2077)