Tamal Kundu
Created by Rafal Jaki, ‘Cyberpunk: Edgerunners’ is a science fiction action-adventure series. The anime is a spinoff of the open-world role-playing video game ‘Cyberpunk 2077.’ Set in the futuristic Night City, the plot revolves around David Martinez, a seemingly ordinary teenager who finds a military speedware. After a great tragedy, he decides to use it himself, drawing the attention of mercenaries, competing organizations, and a mysterious girl named Lucy. David soon learns that if he wants to survive, he must become an edgerunner or a cyberpunk. Here is everything you need to know about the ending of the first season of ‘Cyberpunk: Edgerunner.’ SPOILERS AHEAD.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Season 1 Recap
David lives in Arroyo, Santo Domingo, in Night City, with his mother, Gloria, who is an emergency medical technician. The mother and son live in an apartment in Megabuilding H4. David is a straight-A student, but Gloria struggles to keep him enrolled at Arasaka Academy, a part of the educational system created by Arasaka, a Megatech corporation. David is expelled from the academy after corrupting the data and hardware of the academy with a bootleg wreath update. While he and a furious Gloria are returning home after their meeting with the principal, a gang randomly starts shooting at their car. There is an accident, and Gloria is seriously injured.
Gloria eventually dies, not because her injuries were untreatable, but because David doesn’t have the financial means to save her. He also gets beaten up by a classmate, the son of one of the Arasaka executives. Angry at the world, David convinces his friend Doc to implant on him the speedware he found among his mother’s things. The speedware is a military-grade tech called Sandevistan, an operating system that slows down time for a particular period. Equipped with it, he gets his revenge on the bullying classmate and meets a netrunner named Lucy.
David is instantaneously drawn toward Lucy, who exploits this and hands him over to her edgerunner mercenary crew, led by a man named Maine. David finds out that Gloria was working with Maine and his crew, and the Sandevistan, which she harvested from a cyberpsycho, was supposed to be delivered to the edgerunners. David reveals what happened to his mother and eventually becomes part of the crew.
David learns that Maine and his edgerunners work for a fixer named Faraday. Given how fixers, by definition, don’t work for themselves, it stands to reason that he works for someone else. In episode 6, Maine and his lover and second-in-command Dorio are killed. This prompts David’s rise to the leadership position among the edgerunners. By then, he has several other hardware installed on him, including the projectile launch system that originally belong to Maine.
In the season finale, titled ’My Moon My Man,’ the team reels following a betrayal. David comes to believe that Lucy is dead. Armed with a cyberskeleton, David takes on the might of the Arasaka Corporation. Unbeknownst to him, Arasaka has called in the trump card they use against any form of resistance: Adam Smasher.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Season 1 Ending: Is David Dead?
In the series, the phrase edgerunner is a street slang for cyberpunk, referring to the fact that the edgerunners live on the edge. The cyberpunks have immersed themselves completely in the technologically advanced world around them. They have multiple hardware installed and are generally found on the other side of the law. Although they don’t traditionally work for megacorporations, exceptions like Maine’s crew exist.
As mentioned above, Gloria collected the Sandevistan speedware off a cyberpsycho, the victim of a condition named cyberpsychosis in which the cybernetic implants in a patient’s body overload. Maine perishes this way. Lucy notes at one point in the series that David doesn’t have his own aspirations; he tends to adopt what people close to him want. When Gloria was alive, David was content to live her dream, which was for David to become successful and rise to the executive level of Arasaka tower. When David takes over the edgerunner crew, he adopts Maine’s hope of keeping his team safe and turning them into one of the best mercenary groups in Night City.
Towards the end of the series, as David starts to fall apart because of the extensive cybernetic installations on his body, he makes Lucy’s dream his own. She wants to go to the Moon, and he does everything he can to keep her safe so she can fulfill her dream. Faraday initially works for Militech, Arasaka’s rival corporation. Arasaka has developed a cyberskeleton that is even more revolutionary than Sandevistan. This is what Faraday and Militech are after. After Maine kills Tanaka, the father of David’s classmate mentioned above, during his cyberpsychosis, Arasaka’s elite MaxTac unit eliminates him. Shortly before Tanaka’s death, Lucy infiltrates his mind and what she finds terrifies her. After David takes over the crew, Lucy stops going to the jobs, staying at the apartment she now shares with David.
However, even at her home, she continues to search for more information on cyberskeleton. When Arasaka approaches Faraday with the offer to switch sides: they state two conditions: He will give up the netrunner still sneaking into their system and eliminate everyone who knows about the cyberskeleton. Faraday uses Kiwi, a member of the crew and Lucy’s mentor, to lure her in. Kiwi also helps set a trap for David and the rest of the crew.
Since he has begun using Sandevistan, David has come to believe that there is something special about him. And it seems Arasaka agrees with him. Faraday and Arasaka set up the entire trap to force David to use the cyberskeletons against the Militech operatives. However, when things start to go out of hand and David starts to become a cyberpsycho, Adam Smasher, a full-borg solo (assassin and mercenary), is called in. The cyberskeleton suit was originally designed for Smasher. Faraday kills Kiwi. Becca, another member of the crew, also dies. Faraday and two of the top executives of Arasaka are killed during the confrontation between David and Arasaka operatives. However, David is no match for Smasher. He ensures that Lucy has gotten away before Smasher kills him.
Does Lucy Go to the Moon?
Lucy was raised in an Arasaka facility in a different country. As a netrunner, a hacker with cybernetics implants in their body, she was trained to serve the world’s most powerful megacorp one day. Eventually, Lucy escaped and found her way to the Night City. Her experience at Arasaka defined her life. This is why she keeps telling David to find his own purpose, and not live by someone else’s.
As for Lucy, her dream has been to go to the Moon. In the ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ universe, the Moon has been turned into a human colony, though with limited success. Lucy knows exactly what it is and even agrees with David’s assessment that it’s a prison camp, but she believes it’s still better than Night City.
As the series progresses, a relationship develops between Lucy and David, and they plan to visit the Moon together. But toward the end of the season, David begins to realize that he might not live long. He has put himself through so many installations that even a gifted young man like him is gradually becoming overloaded. During a confrontation with Smasher, David faces the reality of his life one more time and sacrifices himself so Lucy and one other crew member can escape. Lucy and that crew member split the money they have gotten between themselves, and the former uses a part of her portion to finance a trip to the Moon, keeping the promise she made to herself and David.
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