Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 episode 9 recap: Humanity
On this episode of the Netflix anime series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Kiwi, and Faraday discover who Lucy really is. Meanwhile, David and the rest of the crew prepare to take on a legendary job that, if they can survive it, will elevate their reputations as bad$%^ edgerunners.
In the barren desert outside of Night City, David and his crew are scoping out the Arasaka convoy they’ve been tasked to smash and then grab whatever they’re transporting. The rest of the crew seem skittish with the kind of firepower they might go up against and the fact that they are hitting up a megacorp.
The two million has already been paid upfront, plus this is the kind of run that is a bonafide maker of reputation is a salve.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 episode 9 recap: Who is Lucy?
Kiwi is quiet in the backseat, but we flashback to her betrayal. She helped lure and capture Lucy into Faraday’s hands.
They both go over what happened when Lucy infiltrated the Arasaka database through Tanaka. The Arasaka management wanted David back in the Academy to become a lab rat since he had meshed with the Sandevistan so well.
But upon finding out, Lucy erased his files and sacrificed both Maine and Dorio in the hope that the megacorp would give up their quarry. Faraday is amused at the revelation, while Kiwi is surprised that Lucy was once a child soldier netrunning for Arasaka.
As well as how far she has gone to protect David (and without him knowing). Faraday contacts David and all the crew are on board for the heist.
David begs Becca not to tell the others when she finds him shaking and almost catatonic before the mission. She relents.
Back at the desert highway, another gang that was setup by Faraday ambushes the Arasaka convoy to split them up. Then David’s crew goes after the one with the transport in a thrilling vehicle sequence where they battle with Arasaka security.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 episode 9 recap: It’s a trap!
While David’s crew are able to neutralize the now halved security, it’s revealed that there is no driver in the cargo truck. The literal armor is as thick as its software protection—unhackable and strong to the point a bomb won’t make a scratch on it.
Against Becca’s curses, David uses his Sandevistan to stop the cargo truck in a complicated maneuver, involving a roped harpoon attached to the crew’s truck and several huge boulders nearby. The truck turns over.
Somewhere offsite, Faraday updates his Arasaka handlers that it is all going well. Apparently the whole smash and grab mission is a farce.
It’s really meant to test David with Arasaka’s shiny new advanced cyber exoskeleton. It is what’s inside the cargo truck.
When Militech is alerted to the capture of the cargo, they must send a force to acquire it. There will be no choice but for David to put it on and use it in the face of the assault.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 episode 9 recap: Militech attacks
With Lucy in Faraday’s mercy, she calls David and urges him to step into the new cyberskeleton even as a small army of Militech’s finest are now in sight of the crew. With no choice left, David installs the cyberskeleton and its software.
He battles the Militech assault team. The suit is a virtual mech with gravity and anti-gravity pulse weapons.
Meaning it can throw around huge vehicles and pull firearms out of hands. In conjunction with the Sandevistan speed, it is a deadly instrument of slaughter.
With its superior tech, they are no longer outgunned. Carnage ensues in the desert as Militech vs David plays out.
Becca and Falco, watch the battle rage from inside the cargo truck, ooh and aah at the cyberskeleton’s abilities and how much neural strain it’s putting on David’s brain. David triumphs.
He vows to track down and end Faraday to rescue Lucy.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 episode 9 recap: Review
As penultimate episodes go this one is a bit of a mess. Plot points are hurried, especially with how Kiwi just simply turned on the crew.
She’s such a neutral character that the writers most likely just wanted her to be a blank page for them to pin any potential crimes or reveals on. Still, how gleefully she turned coat could have been handled way more organically.
What’s worse is how we are given an info dump on Lucy being the missing child soldier that Arasaka’s been hounding. How she’s linked to the plot to capture David, into being the megacorp lab rat, and pitting their new exoskeleton tech vs the Militech elite, is a whopper of a clincher that left me reeling.
Way too sudden, way too many implausible events in the mix. The writers could have laid more foreshadowing crumbs in the earlier episodes.
Also, I don’t think a megacorp would be as loose with the X factors with such a plan like Faraday’s.
That’s not to say the episode isn’t enjoyable! There’s plenty of scheming and surprise feats of tech violence.
Bravery, too. The desert highway shootout is a tasty scene, especially with the other gangbangers that Faraday roped in causing plenty of chaos.
David in the mech exoskeleton is a thing of savage beauty. The way he decimates the Militech soldiers and their armored vehicles with the suit’s gravity weapons is something out of anime heaven.
As the season ender is next, I can’t wait to see how they use the new exoskeleton and the Sandevistan to rescue Lucy. In the process, Faraday and Kiwi getting what’s coming to them would be a nice bonus.
Next. What happened to Cassian searching for his sister in Andor?. dark
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 can be streamed in full on Netflix.