Is Johnny Silverhand Evil?

Johnny Silverhand isn't evil in the way Adam Smasher is, but he isn't a good man either. He is an antihero: a selfish, violent egomaniac who used the people who loved him, and who, in Cyberpunk 2077's account, armed the nuclear bomb that destroyed Arasaka Tower in 2023. He also means every word he says against the corporations, and over the course of the game he can change. How far is the player's choice. (Cyberpunk 2077)

The case against him#

Start with the bomb. In Cyberpunk 2077's flashback of 20 August 2023, Johnny carries a nuclear device into Arasaka Tower, arms it and sends it down a lift shaft. History remembers him as the terrorist who nuked the tower. Cyberpunk RED puts the dead from the blast alone at more than 12,000, with many more dying later. (Cyberpunk 2077; Cyberpunk RED)

The tabletop books tell that night differently. There the bomb belonged to the Militech-backed raid, Smasher killed Johnny before it went off, and nobody proved who set it. But the game is the version most players know, and it shows Johnny doing it. (Cyberpunk RED; Cyberpunk 2077)

He was also hard on the people closest to him. Kerry Eurodyne spent years being pulled back into Samurai by their friendship, and in the end it was Johnny who walked out. Rogue Amendiares never forgave him for cheating on her. The tabletop never wrote him as a hero, and the game keeps that edge: he is selfish, violent and careless with the people around him. (Cyberpunk 2020; Cyberpunk 2077)

Then there's what he does to V. Once he wakes up on the Relic, Johnny first tries to take over V's mind and body. For much of the game he mocks V, pushes his own old grudges and seizes V's body when it suits him. (Cyberpunk 2077)

The game's database entry is blunt. It calls him "an egomaniac and narcissist", and says that sharing a stranger's head is a living hell for someone like him. (Cyberpunk 2077)

The case for him#

His cause is real. Johnny deserted from America's wars in Central America, lost an arm there and spent his life raging at the corporations and the government that sent him. Night City in 2077 is run by exactly the kind of power he warned about, and the game rarely makes him wrong about Arasaka. (Cyberpunk 2077)

His raids had a personal side too. Both times he went into Arasaka Tower, in 2013 and 2023, he went partly to rescue Alt Cunningham, whose mind the company had stolen with Soulkiller. (Cyberpunk 2077; Cyberpunk RED)

And the game lets him grow. The closer V gets to him, through side jobs such as "Chippin' In", "Blistering Love" and the Samurai reunion with Kerry, the more he changes. If they're close enough, he offers V the secret ending, a run on the tower by the two of them alone, which on our reading shows how far his trust in V has come. In Temperance, given V's body, he spends his second life saying goodbye properly and leaving Night City behind. (Cyberpunk 2077; Cyberpunk 2077, "(Don't Fear) The Reaper")

So, is he evil?#

Interpretation: our answer is no, but only just, and the game is careful not to let you off the hook for liking him. Johnny did terrible things for a cause that wasn't wrong, and he hurt nearly everyone who loved him along the way. What he isn't is beyond saving. The game's real question is whether a man like that can become better, and it hands the answer to the player through how V treats him. (Cyberpunk 2077)

There's one more wrinkle. The Johnny in V's head is an engram, a copy made from a man interrogated and put through Soulkiller, and the game warns that his memories are not a record. On the mission that shows the 2023 raid, the journal notes that memories get replaced by the stories we tell. So even his worst act comes to us through his own unreliable memory. (Cyberpunk 2077)

Read more#

Johnny Silverhand covers his whole life, and who Johnny is to V covers the bond at the centre of the game. For the night that defines him, see Arasaka Tower 2023.