An extraordinary ensemble and dazzling animation give the Netflix sequel a warmer, more hopeful heart

Night City makes it easy to confuse becoming a legend with having a life worth living. Mercenaries replace their flesh with increasingly powerful chrome, take gigs they have no business surviving, and hope somebody remembers their name after it all inevitably goes to hell. The first season of Netflix's Cyberpunk: Edgerunners made a devastating romance out of that bargain. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2, which continues the anthology series on Oct. 20, finds something far more hopeful in the same brutal world.

Across 10 episodes, director Kai Ikarashi and the teams at CD Projekt Red and Studio Trigger deliver another spectacular collision of corporate cruelty, dangerous technology, and people pushing themselves past their limits. The ingredients are familiar, sometimes a little too much. But an extraordinary ensemble and the relationships that develop among its members make this return to Night City richer, more rewarding, and downright better.

Edgerunners 2 initially threatens to repeat its predecessor. It opens with a heavily augmented man succumbing to cyberpsychosis after a gig goes south. He goes on a grisly killing spree. Another rampage? Another warning about how too much chrome is always a bad idea? This time, the man at the center of the carnage has a life to navigate afterward. Once a celebrated edgerunner known as King, Weak Kingsley (Clancy Brown) emerges as a shell of his former self, hulking arms replaced by frail robot limbs that make C-3PO look buff.

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