Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘Cyberpunk: Edgerunners‘ takes place in a futuristic world ruled by mega corporations, where normal people have to fight every day to survive. The second season follows three young people who become embroiled in something with far deeper implications than initially thought. One of them is a young man named D, driven by a desire to avenge the brutal deaths of his people. The story stands separate from the events of Season 1, which focuses on a teenager named David Martinez, whose life changes when he receives a military-grade implant from a tech known to drive people into cyberpsychosis eventually. His death in the Season 1 finale suggests he won’t be part of the story going forward, but a shocking revelation not only brings him back into the story but also explains certain plot points from Season 1. SPOILERS AHEAD.
David’s Has a Crucial Similarity With the Protagonists of Season 2
The story of David Martinez comes to a violent and heartbreaking end in the Season 1 finale, where his quest to save Lucy from Arasaka leads him to go out in a blaze of glory. His Sandevista implant had already started to take a toll on him, and even though he survived for much longer, he was eventually headed towards cyberpsychosis. Knowing his fate, he unleashes hell on his enemies and is eventually killed by Adam Smasher. There is no question about the fact that he is gone for good by the time D comes to Night City to exact his revenge. He comes from Snake Nation, the nomads who were brutally attacked and killed by a group of mercenaries. D was the only one left alive because he and his friend, Omi, had been away when the attack happened.
Having lost everyone he loves, D has vowed to find and kill the ones responsible for the massacre of his people. This quest leads him to Arasaka’s records, where his name appears on a list. Interestingly, David Martinez’s name is also on the list, and D’s friend, Roman, discovers that another name belongs to Talia, a heavily cyber-implanted girl he’d recently come across. It turns out that the list contains the names of individuals who show high tolerance for cyber-implants with a considerably lesser chance of them losing their minds to cyberpsychosis. Notably, this is what had set David apart in Season 1. After getting implanted with Sandevista, he used it so frequently that everyone worried he was pushing his limits.
Ideally, using the tech just once would take its toll on a person, but David doesn’t start to feel its impact until he’s used it about eight times. He is warned that he will break down eventually, but to everyone’s surprise, the tech tends to show shocking affinity to him. This also brings him to Arasaka’s attention, and they try to get him back to school, ready to forget all about his transgressions that had landed him in trouble in the first place. Arasaka executive Tanaka, whose son David beat up at school, also shows considerable interest in him, which shows that David’s compatibility with the tech is of great interest to the megacorps. While we are repeatedly made aware of this, it isn’t until the second season that we discover exactly what Arasaka wanted from him.
Arasaka Wanted Subjects for Project Capricorn
While the Sandevista remained at the focus of Season 1, the reason Arasaka truly wanted David was for a new weapon they had been working on. Called Project Capricorn, it focused on creating an AI construct with unprecedented powers. The true extent of this weapon’s potential comes to light when D and Roman come across the chip that had earlier been stolen from Arasaka. When D inserts the chip into himself, he is introduced to an entity called Capri. It turns out to be an amalgamation of several human personalities, which had been extracted with the Soulkiller, a program aimed at preserving a human consciousness even after their body dies.
Project Capricorn is an extension of Soulkiller in that both require the digitally saved consciousness to be uploaded to a new body for the person to come back to life. Capri, too, needed a human body to function, but the problem was that it was too potent to be harbored by just anyone. In its experiments, Arasaka found that people uploaded with Capri would break down at shocking rates. Even if this breakdown were slowed, the subject would end up dying 48 hours later. This made the whole thing entirely unsustainable, because Capri had been designed such that it couldn’t work without a body despite being a program. This was meant to dampen its unparalleled power and gain some control over it (though it eventually becomes clear that they had sorely miscalculated).
This wasn’t entirely shocking, because other powerful techs, like Sandevista, were also known to break down people’s minds and bodies pretty quickly. All Arasaka needed was to find people physically and mentally compatible with the tech, at least long enough for Capri to remove the original consciousness and take complete control of the body as its own. When David shows unprecedented compatibility with Sandevista, Arasaka wonders if he could exhibit the same thing with Capri, which is why they wanted him in the first place. Because they couldn’t hedge their bets on a single person, they had compiled a list of potential candidates for this project.
Talia was also on the list, having already shown her high tolerance for cyber implants, which she received from a young age owing to her deteriorating body from a terminal illness. However, she could not be brought in because she was the daughter of Kang Tao’s executive, Kiril. This left them to pursue other options, which included D, whose real name is also, coincidentally, David. After D learns more about David, his fight against Arasaka, and how he died to save his friends, he wonders if he, too, is headed for the same fate. Pondering David’s final thoughts gives D a sense of closure about his own death, which will come either at the hands of the megacorp forces or when Capri finally wipes out the last remnant of his consciousness and completely takes over his body.
Read More: Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Season 2 Ending Explained: Are D and Capri Dead?
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