A little upgrade (or three) goes a long way between survival and flatlining.
Time has passed and David has become the new leader of his Edgerunner group, having taken on more cybernetic implants including Maine's arms and becoming a Night City legend with his own fans. However, he has been unable to convince Lucy to rejoin the crew.After successfully completing a job for the Fixer, Wakako, to rescue a rich man's daughter from the Maelstrom gang, David is approached by Faraday, who offers him a job from Militech against Arasaka as a test to see if he is worthy of inheriting Maine's last job to recover the data Tanaka was hiding.
Faraday also requests that David try to recruit Lucy again. They are unaware it was Lucy who erased Tanaka's knowledge of the cyber-skeleton project. Returning home, David talks with Lucy, wanting to know more about her past. She reveals that she used to part of a special team of Arasaka netrunners raised and trained to delve into the Old Net to recover lost data. However, the work was extremely dangerous as it exposed them to rogue A.I.s and malware which killed much of the team.
Eventually, Lucy was able to escape Arasaka and ended up in Night City. She also admits that while she used to only worry about herself, she is now more worried about David's health. Later, Lucy kills an Arasaka agent investigating data about a test subject that was mysteriously erased from Tanaka's records.
Tropes in this episode:
- And Then What?: David has achieved a fortune in a short amount of time but clearly has no idea what to do with his money other than continue Running.
- Character Development: David has become far less cocky but no less self-assured, handling his missions with an air of boredom.
- Child Soldier: While more like child hackers, Lucy's background as one of Arasaka's adopted orphans is the same as they're sent into no less dangerous situations.
- Cool House: David and Lucy are living in the same style of apartment as V lives in during certain endings.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Lucy reveals hers to David at last. She was part of an Arasaka experiment that was designed to recover data from the Old Net.
- Dramatic Irony:
- David continues to borg himself up due to Maine's advice to do so, despite Maine being Driven to Suicide by his cyberpsychosis.
- Lucy is killing Arasaka operatives sent to investigate the cyberskeleton project but this is just drawing attention to the project.
- Hopeless Suitor: David either doesn't notice Rebecca's attempts at flirting with him or is deliberately ignoring them.
- Human Trafficking: The Maelstrom gang is involved in this as we find David and company rescuing one (and possibly all) of their victims.
- Irony: David has become rich and successful as an Edgerunner but it has brought him no happiness despite the fact he's also in a relationship with Lucy. He also just wants Lucy to return to the team despite how traumatic and violent the life is. David has everything he could ever want but just wants to go through the motions of what he did to acquire it.
- Mid-Season Upgrade:
- David, in more ways than one. He not only has been improving on his Sandevistan implant abilities, but now has additional implants to balance things out. He has also become buffer.
- Rebecca also gets an upgrade of her own, now using a pair of massive Power Fists that let her wield heavier weapons.
- Mythology Gag: Doc drops the name Adam Smasher to David, believing that David could wind up like him in the future with further chroming. Smasher is The Dreaded of the world of Cyberpunk, first introduced in the tabletop game and serves as the final boss of 2077.
- Not Quite the Right Thing: Lucy's attempts to protect David by killing Arasaka's Netrunners is causing Arasaka Counter Intelligence to take notice of the Edgerunners. It also puts herself in Arasaka's crosshairs.
- Rags to Riches: After the Time Skip, the design of David's apartment makes it very clear that he is living large.
- Rank Up: David has taken the position of Edgerunner team leader despite being only seventeen or possibly eighteen now.
- Red Shirt: Julio, a new recruit in David's gang, gets killed after accidentally triggering a tripmine.
- Shotguns Are Just Better: David dismisses Julio's weapons of choice, a Militech Lexington, on the grounds that it'll be ineffective against Maelstrom, and gives him a Rostović Satara.
- After emptying the magazines of her machine guns, Rebecca pulls out two Guts shotguns, which she uses to mow down several Maelstrom members.
- Single-Stroke Battle: The battle between David and a bulky foe is decided with a single attack from each combatant. To outside observers, it looks as though David Flash Stepped behind his opponent and blasted his head off in the blink of an eye.
- Time Skip: Some time has passed for the crew with David having become far more borged up as well as a Night City legend. It is still apparently the same year, however, due to the fact it was 2076 in the first episode and the show ends before 2077.
- Tragic Keepsake: David has taken on Maine's arms as a way of honoring the man.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: With Lucy killing Arasaka netrunners to cover up the information she picked from Tanaka's ICE to protect David, she has unknowingly drawn a lot of heat on them with the higher ups looking into why all of their runners are being murdered.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Julio is a new runner who joins David's gang... Only to die shortly following the opening credits. His boss, Wakako, expected him to die sooner than later, so she's doesn't bat an eye when David gives her the bad news.
