Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Episode Guide: All 10 Episodes Explained

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a ten-episode anime by Studio Trigger and CD Projekt Red, and Netflix put every episode out on the same day, 13 September 2022. It's set in Night City in 2075 and 2076, the year before Cyberpunk 2077, and follows David Martinez from Arasaka Academy dropout to the top of Arasaka Tower. This guide goes episode by episode, with full spoilers. For the cast, see Edgerunners characters. (Let You Down; My Moon My Man; Cyberpunk: Edgerunners)

Before you watch#

You don't need to have played the game. Night City is run by corporations, with Arasaka on top and Militech as its rival. Chrome, meaning cyberware, makes people faster and stronger, but too much of it drives them into cyberpsychosis, and the NCPD's MaxTac squad exists to put them down. Episode 1 shares its title with the series' ending theme, "Let You Down" by Dawid Podsiadło. (Let You Down; Cyberpunk: Edgerunners)

Episode 1: "Let You Down"#

Released 13 September 2022, 25 minutes. It opens on MaxTac hunting down a cyberpsycho, which turns out to be a braindance David is watching at home. He's a scholarship kid at Arasaka Academy, and his mother Gloria, a paramedic, is working herself into the ground to pay for it. An illegal mod he uses to dodge paying for a school update crashes the Academy's system. On the drive home, while Gloria is telling him off for wasting her sacrifices, they're caught in a gang drive-by. Trauma Team arrives but won't treat them because they can't pay, and Gloria dies in hospital. At home David finds a military Sandevistan and learns that his mother had been taking chrome off corpses and selling it to pay his fees. (Let You Down)

Key moment: with nothing left, David has his ripperdoc, Doc, put the Sandevistan in his spine. Everything else in the series follows from that choice. (Let You Down)

Episode 2: "Like a Boy"#

Released 13 September 2022, 25 minutes. David uses the Sandevistan to beat up his bully, Katsuo Tanaka, and is expelled. Katsuo's father, the Arasaka executive Tanaka, notices that David can run the implant without going cyberpsycho. On the metro David meets a white-haired data thief, Lucy, and they team up for a run of robberies. When he collapses, Lucy takes him to Doc, who gives him immunoblockers and warns him not to overuse the implant, high tolerance or not. (Like a Boy)

Key moment: Lucy tells David she wants to go to the Moon and shares a braindance of its surface with him. It's also a trap: while he's under, she sells him out to a crew of edgerunners. (Like a Boy)

Episode 3: "Smooth Criminal"#

Released 13 September 2022, 25 minutes. The crew's leader, Maine, turns out to have known Gloria and to have already paid her for the Sandevistan. Instead of taking it back, he gives David a chance to join. The crew is Maine, Dorio, Lucy, Pilar, Rebecca, Kiwi and the driver Falco. Their first job together is to steal navigation data from Tanaka's driver, Maxim Kuznetsov, and it goes wrong. David uses the Sandevistan to get himself and Lucy away from Maxim and a gang of Tyger Claws bikers. (Smooth Criminal)

Key moment: the fixer Faraday is unimpressed with the botched job, but Maine likes what he saw and makes David part of the crew. When the Academy rings to offer him his place back, David turns it down. (Smooth Criminal)

Episode 4: "Lucky You"#

Released 13 September 2022, 25 minutes. This is David's training montage. He runs errands for Pilar, practises shooting with Rebecca, learns to drive with Maine, spars with Dorio and goes night running and train-robbing with Lucy. Then, leaving a bar, Pilar starts harassing a homeless man in the street. The man is a cyberpsycho with a hidden arm cannon, and he kills Pilar. When he goes for Lucy next, David stops him with the Sandevistan and Maine finishes him. (Lucky You)

Key moment: David takes Lucy home, and she admits that what she told him the night they met was true. He promises to take her to the Moon, and they kiss. (Lucky You)

Episode 5: "All Eyez on Me"#

Released 13 September 2022, 24 minutes. Kiwi finds that Tanaka has a taste for illegal braindances made by someone called "JK". David recognises the handle: Jimmy Kurosaki, a notorious snuff braindance director who tunes recordings in person for special clients. The plan is to grab JK and use him to reach Tanaka, but JK outwits them and captures David, and puts him through traumatic braindances until Lucy and Dorio rescue him. JK then agrees to help the crew trap Tanaka. (All Eyez on Me)

Key moment: before he's killed in the crossfire of the ambush, JK warns David that the Sandevistan will turn him cyberpsycho in the end. The crew gets Tanaka, but David can't shake the warning. (All Eyez on Me)

Episode 6: "Girl on Fire"#

Released 13 September 2022, 27 minutes. Maine is losing it: blackouts, hallucinations and mood swings. He lashes out and hurts Kiwi while she's trying to hack Tanaka's cyberware, so Lucy takes over the dive, and whatever she finds in Tanaka's head troubles her badly. Tanaka wakes, begs David to let him go and then dies, which kills the crew's jammer and brings the police, Trauma Team and MaxTac down on them. (Girl on Fire)

Key moment: Maine slips fully into cyberpsychosis and kills Dorio without meaning to. When he understands what he's done, he tells David to run and blows himself up as a distraction. David gets back to Lucy carrying Maine's cyberarms. (Girl on Fire)

Episode 7: "Stronger"#

Released 13 September 2022, 25 minutes. Months have passed and it's 2076. David runs the crew, has added a lot more chrome, Maine's arms included, and has a name on the street. Lucy is still with him but won't come back on jobs. Faraday offers David the job Maine never finished, getting Tanaka's data, and it turns out the client is Militech. (Stronger)

Key moment: out in the Badlands, Lucy finally tells David her past. Arasaka raised her as a child netrunner and sent her into the old Net, ruined since the DataKrash, to dig out lost data. Rogue AIs killed most of the other children, and she was the only one to escape. That night she kills an Arasaka agent who was trying to recover data on a test subject wiped from Tanaka's records. (Stronger)

Episode 8: "Stay"#

Released 13 September 2022, 25 minutes. On Faraday's job David kills an Arasaka lab director, then breaks down and kills an innocent worker who reminds him of his mother. Arasaka, sure Militech is behind the attack, orders a hit on Faraday. He survives, but Militech drops him for failing to get Tanaka's data on Arasaka's cyberskeleton project, so he switches sides and offers Arasaka the netrunner who has been wiping that data and killing its agents. Lucy and Doc both try to get David to cut back on chrome, and he won't. (Stay)

Key moment: Lucy goes out after another Arasaka netrunner searching for Tanaka's records. It's a trap, and the one waiting for her is Kiwi, who has joined Faraday. (Stay)

Episode 9: "Humanity"#

Released 13 September 2022, 26 minutes. Faraday and Kiwi get Lucy's secret out of her. Inside Tanaka's head she had found his plan to use David as the test subject for the cyberskeleton, and she killed Tanaka deliberately, erased David from the records, and has been killing every Arasaka agent who came looking since. Faraday sends David's crew after an Arasaka convoy carrying the prototype cyberskeleton. The job is a set-up. (Humanity)

Key moment: holding Lucy hostage, Faraday forces David into the cyberskeleton to wipe out a Militech force as a field test. David survives it, barely, with Rebecca injecting his suppressants, and tells her and Falco they're going to get Lucy back and make Faraday pay. (Humanity)

Episode 10: "My Moon My Man"#

Released 13 September 2022, 28 minutes. David, falling apart, fights through Militech, Arasaka and MaxTac with Rebecca and Falco to reach Arasaka Tower. Faraday has Kiwi killed as a loose end, but she gets Lucy's location to David first. Arasaka sends in Adam Smasher. David frees Lucy, runs out of immunoblockers and starts to lose himself, until Lucy kisses him and brings him back. Smasher's attack blasts them out of the tower, and Faraday dies in the fall. In the plaza at the bottom, Smasher lands on Rebecca and kills her. (My Moon My Man)

Key moment: David tells Falco to get Lucy out and split the crew's money with her, and stays behind to hold Smasher off. Smasher tears the cyberskeleton apart and executes him. The last scene is Lucy on the Moon, at last, without him. (My Moon My Man)

After the last episode#

Cyberpunk 2077 picks the story up a year later. In the North Oak columbarium, David's niche carries Lucy's message that he didn't take her to the Moon but was there with her. The side job "Over the Edge" sends V after the old Norris braindance from episode 1, and ends with Falco leaving V David's yellow jacket. Rebecca's shotgun, Guts, is still in Memorial Park. (Cyberpunk 2077)

There's no direct second season. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2, out on Netflix on 20 October 2026, is a standalone ten-episode story with new characters. For the whole plot in one read, see Cyberpunk: Edgerunners explained, and for where it sits in the setting, the Cyberpunk timeline. (Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 premiere date announced alongside new trailer)