David’s heart-wrenching fate in ‘Cyberpunk: Edgerunners,’ explained

Fans of Netflix’s new anime Cyberpunk Edgerunners have no doubt wondered what the ultimate fate is of its protagonist, David Martinez.

What Cyberpunk Edgerunners so deftly taps into, which gives it an emotional punch, is the theme of loss of innocence. David starts off as a regular high school-aged student whose struggling emergency medical technician of a mother pays for his education at the upscale Arasaka Academy by working long hours. He is bullied in school, and would probably be a gifted student if it weren’t for the street calling to him.

Due to a combination of tragedy, circumstance, and a motivation to get revenge on his tormentor, David slips into the lifestyle of the streets so common to Night City. With his mother now dead from a car accident and nothing left to lose, David gets the mysterious Sandevistan modification that was in her possession grafted to his body, despite the fact that he knows full well from a news report that the tech’s previous user succumbed to cyberpsychosis. Eventually, he becomes a cyberpunk mercenary, dropping out of school and living a dangerous lifestyle in a somewhat self-destructive manner due to his increasing obsession with getting cyberware upgrades. David’s entire story evokes self-reflection about one’s own life and how certain events can drastically change the trajectory of it, for better or worse.

What happens in the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners ending?

David’s struggle with cyberpsychosis ultimately proved to be a losing battle. With his transformation from a caring and gentle soul with no enhancements to a ruthless mercenary who left countless bodies in his wake came a stretching of his limits with regard to bodily upgrades.

They say pride comes before the fall, such was the case with David, who became dangerously cocksure after tech expert Jimmy Kurosaki told David he was special. The final piece of the recipe that proved deadly in this concoction of David’s personality traits was his overwhelming grief over the death of his mother and role model, Maine. Rather than being motivated by simply being the best, David’s increasing amount of body modifications became a way to anesthetize the pain of losing his mother, thus cementing his full-blown descent into madness.

Not even David’s love, Lucy, could reign in his bloodlust. However, it is the killer for hire known as Adam Smasher, a cyborg who is more machine than man, that does David in at the end. Not only does Adam Smasher beat David within an inch of his life, it is also implied he shoots him in the head.

The series ends with a vision of happier times, with Lucy and David living out a happy existence. However, in reality, Lucy finds herself alone on the lunar landscape she always imagined she’d be sharing with David.

It can be confusing to determine whether David really died or not, since the nitty gritty of the incident is shown through artistic means, and then we are treated to a vision of him after the fact. However, dispelling any ambiguity about his fate is the fact that there now exists a memorial for David in the video game on which the series is based, Cyberpunk 2077, as The Gamer reported. Spotted by @SynthPotato on X (formerly Twitter) after the game’s 2.0 update dropped last month, the gravesite can be found in North Oak in the Westbrook portion of Night City with the inscription: “David Martinez | You didn’t take me to the moon, but you were there with me.”