Warning: SPOILERS for Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Cyberpunk 2077
The Netflix series The Witcher. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners sees a return to Night City, but audiences will have to pay close attention to spot the connections to the video game.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners ditches popular protagonist V from Cyberpunk 2077 for David Martinez. He is a street kid from Santo Domingo, one of the significant boroughs in the video game. He attends an Arasaka Corporation charter school but is left orphaned after a tragic event. He finds himself implanted with cyberware augmentation that leads him to become an edgerunner — a mercenary for cyberspace. Edgerunning is an integral part of the Cyberpunk world and one of the primary professions to obtain wealth in Cyberpunk 2077. Netflix is no stranger to anime, so it's not surprising they picked up this series created by Studio Trigger.
Despite sharing the same location as Cyberpunk 2077, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a standalone series. It follows a new cast of characters, but they also interact with some ing characters from the game. A few episodes in, protagonist David Martinez and company enter the Afterlife, the notable mercenary bar at the center of Cyberpunk 2077's most critical missions. Rogue, queen of the Afterlife, and bartender Claire Russell appear to establish some synergy with their gaming counterpart. Unfortunately, there is no cameo from Johnny Silverhand, the popular character played by actor Keanu Reeves. The most significant connector between Cyberpunk 2077 and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is the appearance of Adam Smasher, who serves as the main antagonist for both the show and the video game.
When Does Edgerunners Take Place?
The exact date and year that Cyberpunk: Edgerunners takes place are never explicitly stated in the show. However, context clues throughout the series hint that it takes place before the events of the Cyberpunk 2077 game. Perhaps the biggest clue is Adam Smasher himself. V kills Adam Smasher in the final main storyline in the game. A new patch in Cyberpunk 2077 allows players to receive David Martinez's jacket from the new Netflix video game adaptation. The side quests indicate that David's timeline might not be that far off from V's in 2077.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners' connections to Cyberpunk 2077 are not always clear-cut, but there are parallels between 2077's protagonist V and David Martinez. Both characters attempted to outrun the inevitable fate of a mercenary in the dangerous streets of Night City. Martinez's ending serves as a warning to V, who is on a similar path.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is available now on Netflix.