Cyberpunk: Edgerunners - Season 2

Few anime sequels have arrived with expectations as heavy as this one. The first Cyberpunk: Edgerunners came out in 2022 and quickly became one of Netflix's most loved anime. It even sent players back to Cyberpunk 2077, the video game it was built on. Four years later, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 premiered on Netflix on October 20, 2026, with all ten episodes released at once.

The good news is that Studio Trigger hasn't lost its touch. The harder question is whether a brand-new story can hit like the first one did. Critics have mixed feelings on that, and their reasons say a lot about who will enjoy it most.

A new crew in Night City

CD Projekt Red calls the season a "standalone 10-episode story," and that's accurate. Season one's characters don't return as leads. Instead, the show follows four strangers whose paths slowly cross in Night City, a California megacity run by corporations and gangs, where people replace their bodies with cybernetic implants called chrome.

Roman Carax is a young cinephile who films the city's ugliest stories as they happen. Talia Yang is a rebellious daughter from a rough family who falls in with Maelstrom, a gang obsessed with cyberware. Weak Kingsley, once a famous edgerunner known as King, is a veteran far past his best days. And D is a nomad netrunner from the Snake Nation, chasing the people who wiped out his clan.

The official description promises a story about vengeance and redemption, one that "plunges audiences deeper than ever into the chaos and violence of Night City." That's a fair summary of the tone. You don't need to have seen season one to follow it, though a few references will mean more if you have.

The people behind it

The series is again a partnership between CD Projekt Red and Trigger, the Japanese studio behind Kill la Kill and Promare. Kai Ikarashi directs, and Ichigo Kanno is lead character designer. Bartosz Sztybor, a Hugo Award winner who worked on the first season, is showrunner and wrote the story. He shares screenplay credit with Masahiko Otsuka.

Back in 2022, CD Projekt Red said a second season would be "something completely different." The studio kept that promise, for better and for worse, as the reviews below show.

Voices in two languages

The show is available with Japanese and English audio. The English dub has some strong names. Clancy Brown voices Weak Kingsley, and his gravelly delivery fits a fighter worn down by years of chrome and regret. Kimoy Lee plays Talia, Valeria Rodriguez voices Roman and Nazeeh Tarsha is D. Daniel Wu voices Talia's father, Kiril.

In the Japanese version, Akari Kitō plays Talia, Momoka Terasawa voices Roman, Kentaro Tone is Weak and Koki Uchiyama plays D. Fans of season one will remember how good the Japanese track was, and it's a solid choice here too.

Music with a surprise

The soundtrack is one of the first things people will notice. The opening theme is "10:15 Saturday Night" by The Cure, an old post-punk track that feels oddly perfect for a city full of lonely people. The ending theme is "Watson" by Petite Meller. The score comes from Tsuneo Imahori, best known for his work on Trigun.

Season one's music played a huge part in its success, so this was a big decision. I think picking a song from 1979 instead of something new says a lot about how differently this season wants to feel.

What critics loved

On the visual side, the praise is close to unanimous. Kate Sánchez at But Why Tho? wrote, "Above all else, the series is beautiful, and its expansion of the franchise's lore can't be overstated." Marko Jovanovic of Anime Corner felt the animation and action match or even beat season one, and he had the same praise for the soundtrack.

The darker tone also wins fans. Joshua Martin at Winter Is Coming gave the season a 9 out of 10 and wrote that "Edgerunners 2 makes Night City a threatening place." He also liked how the story finds warmth in all that gloom: "When the darkness is intensified, the light shines even stronger."

IGN's Rafael Motamayor scored it 90, saying the season "doesn't feel as monumental as its predecessor, but it still delivers a spectacular season of television." GamesRadar's Jordan Farley gave it 4 out of 5 and called it "a worthy follow-up to Cyberpunk: Edgerunners."

Where it stumbles

The most common complaint is about time. Ten episodes have to carry four leads, and several critics felt that wasn't enough room. Jovanovic put it plainly: "I think even just two more episodes could've made a huge difference." He named Roman as his favorite character and Weak Kingsley as his least favorite of the four.

Sánchez, who gave the season a 7.5 out of 10, made a similar point. She wrote that "too many good characters can be a bad thing, especially when some feel more like tropes than fleshed-out characters." She also felt that "its focus on the spectacle over substance wounds its larger narrative."

The harshest review came from Jonathon Wilson at Ready Steady Cut, who scored it 40. In his view, "in attempting to be too different from its predecessor, it ends up feeling too scattershot and uninvolving by half."

Scores so far

Rotten Tomatoes lists the season at 75% from 12 critic reviews, with an audience score of 65% from more than 500 ratings. For comparison, season one held a perfect 100% from critics. On Metacritic, the user score sits at 7.5, while the critic score was still waiting on enough reviews at the time of writing.

Those numbers point to the same thing. Most people like it, but few think it beats the original.

The comparison problem

Jovanovic's review is titled around "impossible expectations," and he admits he kept holding the sequel up against season one. "I personally found myself comparing the sequel too much to Season 1, which turned out to be impossible to live up to," he wrote.

That's useful advice for anyone pressing play. This isn't a continuation of David and Lucy's story, and it isn't trying to be. It's a different group of people in the same broken city. Going in with that mindset seems to make the experience much better.

A game update to match

For players, there's a bonus. CD Projekt Red released a free Edgerunners 2 update for Cyberpunk 2077 on October 22, 2026, for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, with content inspired by the new season. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is set to follow. If the show makes you want to wander Night City yourself, the timing is hard to beat.

Should you watch it?

If you loved how season one looked and sounded, yes. Trigger's animation alone makes it worth your time, and the ten episodes go by fast.

If what you loved most was the emotional pull of the first story, adjust your expectations. Critics agree the feelings are there, especially toward the end, but the larger cast spreads them thinner.

The series is aimed at adults, with heavy violence and dark themes throughout. It is not one to watch with kids in the room.

I'll admit the Cure opening is what makes me most curious about this season. Any show that bold with its first minute probably has more surprises waiting, and from what critics say, the ending is one of them.