Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty Story Explained: Full Plot, Every Ending and What It Means

Phantom Liberty is the only story expansion for Cyberpunk 2077, released by CD Projekt Red on 26 September 2023. It slots into the middle of V's story in 2077, during Act 2, and takes place almost entirely in Dogtown, a walled-off corner of Pacifica run by a private army. It's a spy story rather than a heist story, and it adds a new ending to the base game. This page covers the whole plot and every ending, so it has full spoilers. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Before the story begins#

V is dying. The Relic chip in their head is slowly overwriting them with the engram of Johnny Silverhand, and nobody in Night City has a way to get it out. That desperation is what the whole expansion runs on. (Cyberpunk 2077)

The bigger picture is political. Night City broke away from the New United States after the Unification War and stayed a free city, backed by Arasaka. Dogtown is the leftover scar from that war: a half-built district in Pacifica seized by Kurt Hansen, a former Militech colonel, and run by his private army, Barghest. The NUSA, now led by President Rosalind Myers, a former Militech CEO, has no legal reach there. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Space Force One and the rescue of Myers#

The story starts with a voice in V's head. Songbird, a netrunner aboard Space Force One, breaks into the Relic, says she knows about the "bomb" ticking in V's skull, and offers to save V's life if V does one thing for her: get into Dogtown and rescue President Myers, because the plane is about to come down there. Moments later it does, shot out of the sky by Barghest. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

V gets into Dogtown through the EBM Petrochem Stadium's underground car park and reaches the crash site ahead of Hansen's soldiers. Myers has survived in the plane's safe room, and V gets her away through the ruins. When Barghest catches up with them at the old Expo, Songbird hacks a decommissioned Militech Chimera war machine to fight them off, but she loses control of it, and V has to destroy the Chimera to get Myers out. Songbird is burned out by the effort and captured by Hansen. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Myers has a contact in Dogtown. She sends V to find Solomon Reed, an FIA agent who has lived undercover there for years. V tracks him down at the Capitán Caliente restaurant, and Reed takes over. Myers leaves, but the deal stands: V helps Reed get Songbird back from Hansen, and the NUSA saves V's life. Walking away from the deal here ends the expansion, with Myers and Reed dead. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Reed, Alex and the Black Sapphire#

Reed's plan needs people. He introduces V to Alena Xenakis, Alex, another FIA sleeper whose hideout sits under The Moth, the bar she runs under a cover name, and the two of them become V's team. A detour to the Eventide Resort and Spa brings V face to face with a Voodoo Boys cell working in Dogtown, and how that goes is up to V. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

To get close to Hansen, V needs the plans of the Black Sapphire, the casino hotel where he's holding a gala. Those come from Mr. Hands, Dogtown's fixer, who wants Hansen gone and hands them over once V has proved useful. Around this time the Relic gives out and V collapses at The Moth. While V recovers, Reed explains his history with Songbird: he recruited So Mi years ago, trained her, and was betrayed by her on an earlier mission. He still wants to bring her home. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

At the gala, V and Reed slip in through the flooded tunnels under the hotel. Songbird reaches V again and says Hansen has what she needs, a neural matrix, and that two French netrunners at the party, the twins Aurore and Aymeric Cassel, are due to work on it with her. V scans the twins' behaviour at the roulette table so they can be impersonated, until Hansen walks up, makes clear he knows V is working for the NUSA, and has them thrown out. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Songbird's confession and the Cassel twins#

Before the next move, So Mi asks to meet V alone at Tranquil Terrace, a spot that reminds her of home. If V goes, she admits she was the one who told Hansen when and where Space Force One would be flying. Her plan had been to escape with the matrix and save Myers at the same time, until her capture wrecked it. Now she wants out, and she wants V on her side. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Reed doesn't fully trust her either. At a ripperdoc's, he has V fitted with a faceplate that can copy the twins' behavioural imprints and a module that can put So Mi's defences on ice if she turns on them. Johnny, who has been knocked out every time So Mi takes over the Relic, makes it plain what he thinks of the choice coming up. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Then the trap. V tags the Cassels' car as it comes through the Dogtown gate, hides in the boot, takes over its controls and drives the twins straight into the FIA's garage, where Reed and Alex kill them. V and Alex put on their faces and drive to the stadium to meet Hansen. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Firestarter: the choice#

Hansen questions the "twins" closely, and one wrong answer too many is fatal. Then So Mi arrives and takes V to the neural matrix. With it in hand, V has to decide who to betray. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

If V sides with So Mi, Alex kills Hansen and So Mi breaks V out of the stadium. The two of them drive off together, and Reed's plan is in pieces. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

If V sides with Reed, So Mi sounds the alarm. Hansen kills Alex, V's module stops So Mi's attack, and she escapes into the chaos. V fights and kills Hansen on the way out, then watches MaxTac capture So Mi. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Reed's path: into Cynosure#

MaxTac moves So Mi in an armoured convoy. V and Reed ambush it with help from a netrunner contact and the 6th Street gang, but So Mi escapes in the truck and crashes it into a hidden underground complex. This is Cynosure, an old Militech facility under Dogtown, and V follows her down alone. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Cynosure was Militech's abandoned project to capture rogue AIs from the Net, and what's left of it is now tangled up with So Mi. V moves through echoes of her memories, from her FIA surgery to her oath to Myers, while a Militech Cerberus robot, controlled by So Mi, hunts them through the corridors. When V finally shuts down the core and reaches her, she's wired into the facility and the Blackwall damage in her mind is past fixing. She asks V to kill her rather than go back to Myers. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Songbird's path: the Killing Moon#

On So Mi's path, the two of them hide from the FIA and head for the NCX Spaceport at Morro Rock, where she plans to board a shuttle to the Moon. On the way she finally tells V the truth: the matrix was never going to save V. It can only help one person, and she needs it. As Johnny puts it, she took everyone for a ride, Myers, Hansen, Reed and V. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

At the spaceport V carries her towards the shuttle while NUSA forces close in. Reed confronts them at the end, and V has to choose again: surrender So Mi to Reed, or fight him. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

The ending explained#

Phantom Liberty has four endings, two on each side of the Firestarter choice. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Reed's path, V kills So Mi. V grants her wish. At the border, Myers meets them, says no word of thanks and pays V a token sum. Reed later admits V was right to do it. There's no cure on offer, because So Mi's death leaves the NUSA nothing to trade for. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Reed's path, V refuses. V brings So Mi out alive. Myers is grateful, offers V a medal and pays properly. Reed later tells V that So Mi survived, but only as Myers' netrunner, chained to the Blackwall, and he keeps his promise of a possible cure. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

So Mi's path, V hands her over. V gives So Mi up to Reed at the spaceport. Afterwards, Johnny notices her presence in the Relic has gone silent. Reed offers V the cure. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

So Mi's path, V fights Reed. V kills Reed and puts So Mi on the shuttle. V gets nothing for it except a postcard, and later a message from an unknown number pointing back to Tranquil Terrace, where a small gift is waiting. Whatever happened on the Moon, V is still dying. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

The cure is the expansion's real ending. On the two paths where So Mi ends up in NUSA hands alive, V can accept Reed's offer when the base game's final choice comes, and that unlocks The Tower, a new ending for Cyberpunk 2077. Johnny says goodbye before the surgery. V wakes up in a military hospital in 2079, two years later. The Relic is out and V will live, but their brain can no longer handle cyberware. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

From the hospital V can call old friends, and nothing is the way V left it. Judy has moved to Pittsburgh and married. Panam doesn't want to hear from V. River is a wanted man. Kerry is on tour at the Crystal Palace. Viktor, now working out of a Zetatech franchise, confirms the diagnosis. V gets beaten by street thugs, is helped up by Misty, and walks off into a crowd as an ordinary person. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

What it means is the question the whole expansion asks: what would you give up to live? The Tower lets V survive, but takes everything that made them V, and on every route to it someone else paid the price, either So Mi's freedom or her life on Myers' terms. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Where it fits#

Phantom Liberty sits inside Act 2 of the base game and must be finished before the point of no return. It changes nothing in the main plot unless V takes The Tower ending, which replaces the final heist into Arasaka Tower and Mikoshi with Reed's surgery. For the base game's own endings, see Cyberpunk 2077 endings explained, and for where 2077 sits in the wider history, see the Cyberpunk timeline and the games in order. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty; Cyberpunk 2077)

Test yourself: think you followed every double-cross? Try the Phantom Liberty quiz, twelve questions on the story above. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)