Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 Reviews Praise the Craft and Split on Its Four Leads

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 arrives on Netflix on Tuesday 20 October 2026, with all 10 episodes released at once, and the first reviews appeared the day before. Three outlets watched the same season and reached three different conclusions. Polygon calls it better than the first season. IGN awards it 9/10 and an Editors’ Choice, then says it does not quite reach the heights of its predecessor. Gizmodo finds it more ambitious than the original and still short of it.

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None of the three reviews calls the season badly made, and Polygon and Gizmodo both single out Studio Trigger’s animation. What they argue about is the structural bet at the centre of the season: four separate leads, four stories folded into one city, and no David Martinez.

CD Projekt Red and Studio Trigger returned for the second season, with Kai Ikarashi directing and Bartosz Sztybor and Masahiko Otsuka writing, according to the official series site and the reviews. The season is a standalone 10-episode story set in the world of Cyberpunk 2077, not a continuation of the first, and it sits after season 1 and likely before the events of the game. The Netflix trailer landed on 14 October.

Three reviews, three measures

Polygon’s Corey Plante is the most enthusiastic of the three. His review calls the season “richer, more rewarding, and downright better” than the first, praising an “extraordinary ensemble” and the relationships inside it. He also argues that the sequel “finds something far more hopeful” in Night City, a change of register for a show whose first season was a self-contained tragedy.

IGN’s Rafael Motamayor writes that the season “delivers a spectacular season of television” with “the gory, action-packed goods”, and still concludes that it “doesn’t quite hit the highs of its predecessor”. A 9/10 carrying that caveat describes a very good season measured against an exceptional one.

Gizmodo’s Isaiah Colbert, writing for io9, is the most precise about the problem. He calls the season “wildly more ambitious, consequential, and warmly aspirational than its predecessor” and the animation “absolutely stunning”, and he names Clancy Brown’s performance as a highlight. Then comes the turn: the season “falls just short of the dizzying highs” of the first, stretched thin across four leads and leaning on montages and time jumps to keep them all moving.

The anthology gamble

Season 1 won Crunchyroll’s Anime of the Year in 2023 and renewed interest in Cyberpunk 2077, as Gizmodo notes. That left the producers two obvious routes: continue David Martinez’s story, or start again. They chose the second, and the choice carries the risk every anthology takes. A returning audience shows up with affection for a cast that is not coming back.

It also puts a different kind of weight on the new leads. A conventional sequel can coast on recognition for an episode or two while it sets up its plot. This one has to establish four strangers, give each a reason to be in Night City, and then find a reason for them to meet, all inside 10 episodes that also have to deliver the action the first season was known for.

That is what the season is testing: whether the format itself can carry a second run. Season 1 was a one-off, a self-contained tragedy with a finished arc. Season 2 has to justify a second trip to Night City without the character who made the first one work, and that question sits behind every review, whatever score the outlet gave.

The commercial logic behind the reset is plain. For CD Projekt Red, the show is a marketing engine for Cyberpunk 2077 and the wider franchise, and a new cast lowers the barrier for viewers who never watched the first season. For Netflix, it is one of its most acclaimed anime properties, and an anthology can in principle keep running without the cast contracts and continuity that make live-action franchises expensive.

Four leads and one digital ghost

Polygon and the official site describe four initially separate stories. Weak Kingsley, voiced by Clancy Brown in English, is a washed-up edgerunner who survived cyberpsychosis and now lives in the shadow of his old reputation. D, voiced by Nazeeh Tarsha, is a nomad netrunner hunting the people who wiped out his clan. Roman Carax, voiced by Valeria Rodriguez, is a 12-year-old filmmaker who documents Night City on a handheld camera. Talia, voiced by Kimoy Lee, is a young woman more chrome than flesh.

The chip that ties them together introduces D to Capri, voiced by Brittany Lauda, a digital construct only he can see and one that can manipulate technology at scale. That is the season’s engine: a mysterious piece of experimental hardware, a private voice in one character’s head, and a power that scales beyond anything the first season’s crew could buy on the black market. A Japanese dub features Kentaro Tone, Kouki Uchiyama, Momoka Terasawa and Akari Kitou.

The ingredients will look familiar to anyone who watched season 1. Corporate cruelty, dangerous chrome and the promise of power all return. What changes is the emotional shape. The doomed romance is gone, replaced by an ensemble and, in Polygon’s reading, an ending that leaves room for something other than loss.

Why the split is the story

Put the three reviews side by side and the pattern is clear. Polygon and Gizmodo describe the same structure and reach opposite verdicts on it. Polygon sees an ensemble with real relationships. Gizmodo sees four leads competing for time, with montages doing the work that scenes should do. Neither critic is confused about what the season is doing. They disagree about whether it works.

The disagreement is more useful than any single score. Season 1 told one story about two people and had the luxury of a single arc, which is part of why its ending landed as hard as it did. Season 2 has to make four arcs share a city, which leaves less room for the quiet scene where a character sits still. Gizmodo’s complaint about montages and time jumps is a description of that trade. If the complaint is right, the cause is structural. The writing and the animation are not the problem.

IGN’s position is the clearest of the three, because a 9/10 with a caveat about the predecessor holds both ideas at once. The season is excellent on its own terms and slightly less than the thing it follows. A second season that arrives without the element of surprise is judged on different terms than the first.

Caveats

Every review in this roundup is pre-release and based on screeners supplied before launch, so none of them reflects how the season plays for viewers who can watch the whole thing in one sitting. Audience scores after 20 October may look nothing like the critical reception.

Metacritic had no critic reviews logged for season 2 at the time of writing. Its user score showed 9.0 from five ratings, which is far too small a sample to mean anything and should not be read as an early audience verdict. There is no aggregate critic score for this season yet, and this article does not present one.

The three reviews also measure different things. Polygon weighs the season against the first one and finds it better. IGN weighs it against the first one and finds it close but behind. Gizmodo weighs the ambition against the execution and finds a gap. There is no single verdict in three reviews, and the ten episodes are the only version of the season that settles it.

“wildly more ambitious, consequential, and warmly aspirational than its predecessor” — Gizmodo, review, 19 October 2026

What to watch

The first number to watch is the audience score once the season has been out for a week, since that is the measure the pre-release reviews cannot supply. The second is whether the anthology format earns a third season. A second installment that reviews well but rebuilds its cast each time is a different proposition from a continuing series, and Netflix has not said which way it is leaning.

Then there is the franchise question. The show sits in the same world as the announced Cyberpunk 2077 film, and any connection between the two would turn Edgerunners from a marketing companion into part of the main storyline. Nothing in the reviews suggests that link exists yet.

For now the season has done what a sequel needed to do. It kept the animation, the soundtrack and the violence that made the first season work, and it changed the shape of the story enough to justify a second trip to Night City. Whether the four-lead bet pays off over 10 episodes is a question three screeners cannot settle.

The season goes live on 20 October. The audience score is the next number that matters.

Cover image: key art for Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2, courtesy of CD Projekt Red and Studio Trigger.