Now Is the Time to Rewatch Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

Major spoilers for the first season.

The ending of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners makes a persuasive case against watching it again. I cared about David and Lucy. I wanted them to be happy. Returning to the beginning means watching them move towards an ending that already felt inevitable by the time it arrived.

But there is a good reason to go back now. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 arrives on Netflix on October 20, 2026, and before a new cast takes us into Night City, the original deserves another watch on its own terms.

I knew about Cyberpunk 2077 without having played it. I wasn't sure what to expect from the anime, and it exceeded those expectations by a long way. David and Lucy's love story was the part that won me over. The series needed no prior investment from me to make their future matter.

That is worth remembering before treating the first season as preparation for the next one. The follow-up is a standalone story with new characters. A rewatch is an opportunity to spend more time with the people who made this world worth returning to, rather than homework to understand a continuing plot.

David and Lucy get so little time. Ten episodes have to take them from strangers to lovers, through the decisions that pull them apart, and into a final attempt to save each other. Yet the Moon becomes familiar enough that the last scene can hurt without anyone explaining what has been lost.

Early on, Lucy takes David there through a braindance, a virtual experience. She shares the place she wants to escape to, and for a while they have room to enjoy being together. The trip is interrupted by Maine's crew, who want David's implant. Even this glimpse of somewhere better ends with trouble waiting in the apartment.

Knowing the ending changes what there is to watch for in that sequence. The Moon is already the place Lucy will eventually reach alone. The younger David beside her is the person she will briefly imagine seeing there. An early scene that introduces a dream also supplies the memory the finale will return to.

The show trusts those two scenes to speak to each other across the story. It lets the destination change meaning as the relationship grows. Going to the Moon can begin as an escape and end as a reminder of the person who cannot come with her.

There is more to a second viewing than spotting warnings of disaster, though. David and Lucy are alive together through much of this series. Watching only for how it ends would make their story smaller. Their moments of closeness deserve attention even when the ending is known.

That is also where the love story becomes more painful. As David keeps adding to his body and pushing himself further, Lucy wants him to stop. His ability to survive another job cannot reassure her when the work itself keeps wearing him down. The danger develops inside the relationship, through choices that affection alone cannot undo.

Looking back, I can see why happiness was never going to come easily to them. I still wanted it. Edgerunners makes those feelings coexist, which is why simply knowing how it ends doesn't exhaust what it offers.

A rewatch might be harder precisely because there is less uncertainty. There is no need to pretend that revisiting a tragedy will feel comforting. But it gives the earlier scenes room to stand apart from the rush to find out what happens next.

Before meeting the new cast, it is worth returning to David and Lucy while they still have time together. Lucy's final visit to the Moon gets much of its power from the first one. Go back far enough, and David is still there beside her.