Four years ago, CD Projekt RED and anime studio TRIGGER released Cyberpunk: Edgerunners on Netflix. The show won Anime of the Year at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards, rehabilitated Cyberpunk 2077‘s bad reputation before the game was finally fixed, and transformed Rosa Walton’s otherwise cheerful song, “I Really Want to Stay at Your House,” into a terrible day for rain whenever it played. But mostly, the anime left fans heartbroken at the fate of its protagonist, David Martinez. Turns out we got a better ending than the one originally fated for him. Speaking with Anime Corner, Edgerunners writer Bartosz Sztybor revealed that David could’ve taken a different path than the one fans saw in the 2023 anime. While one of those avenues wasn’t as film-noir depressing as the one we got where… David is brutally murdered by Adam Smasher, letting his lover, Lucy, escape, the alternate ending Sztybor described, in which David ends up alive, is a fate that’s honestly worse than death.
“There was one ending in which David doesn’t die entirely,” Sztybor told Anime Corner. “Arasaka gets him and he ends up fighting in Africa or South America in corporate wars as a robot.” Yeah, don’t like that one bit. We’re fine with the ending we got, thank you. Folks who immediately flocked back to Cyberpunk 2077 to exact extrajudicial revenge on Adam Smasher for David later got a nice tribute to the anime’s hero in Night City’s bars, including a drink named after him, the chance to wear his jacket, and a touching obituary from Lucy before she worked out her issues as a guest character in Guilty Gear Strive.
