Diksha Sundriyal
Things get more violent and chaotic in the second season of Netflix’s ‘Cyberpunk: Edgerunners’ Season 2. Moving on from the story of David Martinez, the sophomore season brings forth the interconnected stories of three people: Roman, D, and Talia. While the major events revolve around them, the secondary characters devoted to them also push the narrative in interesting ways. For Talia, the person who never stops fighting for her is her mother, Avida. Meanwhile, D finds a dedicated follower in a girl named Yupi, who also has a bone to pick with Arasaka. With each episode, the situation keeps getting worse, and by the end, both Avida and Yupi feel the brunt of it in the worst possible way. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Avida Dies Trying to Find a Cure For Her Dying Daughter
Avida’s daughter, Talia, is born with a terminal illness that slowly eats away at her body. There is no medical cure for her situation, and if nothing were done about it, the girl would have died pretty soon. So, when her body parts begin to fail, the only way to make them work again seems to be chroming her up. It works for a while, and then Talia gets so obsessed with completely removing all organic parts of herself that she ends up overdosing in a sense and borders on cyberpsychosis. Now, to save her, the doctors suggest she should significantly dechrome herself and live off of the most basic stuff she needs. But then, her illness is still around, and without the implants she will die.
Avida refuses to let her daughter die so easily, so she starts looking into other options with the help of her ex-boyfriend, King. Through his connections, he finds out about a program called Soulkiller. With it, a person’s consciousness can be transferred into a digital copy. When the person dies, the engram can be put inside a different body, bringing the person back to life. With no other option, Avida decides to give this a go, but there is a major problem. The Soulkiller program originated in Arasaka, which would be impossible to break into. Still, there is a chance that Kang Tao may also have been working on something similar—the only way to find that out is for Avida to break into her husband Kiril’s system.
Her efforts bear fruit, and it is confirmed that the company has created its own version of the program that Avida now wishes to use to save her daughter. However, she is not very careful with her snooping, and Kiril figures out what she is after. With some help from his previous crew members, King manages to break into a Kang Tao facility with Avida. They steal a body that the heartbroken mother chooses for her daughter even as she struggles to make peace with the idea that her original form will be completely gone. By the time they come out, Kiril and his forces have already surrounded them.
What makes things more shocking is that he is not there to reprimand his wife. Instead, he orders his men to fire, knowing Avida is right there with King. The duo manages to flee, but a bullet ends up hitting Avida in a critical spot, and by the time King can get her help, she bleeds out and dies, her last words being a plea to help her daughter survive. Avida’s death shakes King and later, Talia, especially after she discovers that her father is behind it. It also proves that Kiril has no regard for anyone, even his family, and he is ready to stoop to any level to get what he wants.
Yupi Goes Out With a Bang
When D comes to Night City looking for revenge, he has no one to back him. The first friend he makes is 12-year-old Roman, with whom he manages to figure out the existence of Arasaka’s top-secret Project Capricorn. However, at some point, it becomes clear to him that he cannot go it alone against the megacorp. So, with Roman’s help, he starts making videos, attacking Arasaka employees, while trying to find a trail that would lead him to the person responsible for the massacre of his clan. Unexpectedly, the videos strike a nerve, which brings people like Yupi to join the cause.
Yupi reveals that her father was a PR manager who Arasaka hired to hide their dirty laundry. He had no choice but to work for them, and while she doesn’t elaborate, it is clear that things didn’t end well for him. Since then, Yupi has hated the company and, much like D, is driven by a desire to avenge her loved ones. She offers help in the form of the resources her money can buy, and sure enough, D’s revenge quest turns into a full-fledged revolution against Arasaka. The situation snowballs to the point where the city is thrown into anarchy. Riots erupt everywhere, leading to violence and blackouts.
In the middle of it is D, who, powered by Capri, is ready to bring the whole thing down. He is also mentally broken by the discovery that Tanaka, who ordered the attack on his clan, is already dead. It makes his quest seem pointless because his revenge and anger are no longer directed at anyone. Still, he keeps fighting, and eventually, Kang Tao sends its best soldiers to tackle him. They use custom tech to bind him and send electric currents through his body to subdue him if he tries to use his powers. Their instructions had been to bring him back to the Kang Tao lab, and they didn’t really care about anyone else in the riots.
Had Yupi stayed away, she would likely have survived. But the sudden subduing of D, whom she’d put on a pedestal as the leader of anarchy, leaves her helpless. With him gone, her only chance at bringing Arasaka down is gone. So, as the soldiers approach to take D away, she decides to give it her all in this moment. She pulls out her gun, ready to take them all down. However, she has no chance against the highly trained, highly armed soldiers. The moment she reaches for her gun, they shoot at her, gunning her down on the street, making her yet another casualty of a megacorp’s greed.
Read More: Cyberpunk Edgerunners: Why was Capri Looking at the Sky? Why did She Point at the Satellite?
You must be logged in to post a comment.