Outpost Parallax is a weekly Saturday night musing of all things science fiction.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 2 is coming soon from Netflix, so I figured I’d re-watch season 1 as I partake in all things cyberpunk this summer. It was also a far contrast to go from Cyberpunk 2077’s loud guns and blood aesthetic to William Gibson’s cold, calculating tech noir in Neuromancer.
Warning: Contains Spoilers
This hard-hitting story really takes a look at how grief is processed. While David’s outcome was certainly tragic, Lucy is the one who has to live with losing every member of her team. She also had to contend with the betrayal of Kiwi, the woman who brought her onto the team. Then there’s the downward spiral that was her boyfriend David, who succumbed to the effects of cyberpsychosis.
The world of 2077 is dark, brutal and not for the faint of heart. It’s one vision of the future I wouldn’t pay no mind to, but this story injects slivers of hope. There is real emotion in Becca in the loss of her brother, and her looking after David as a big sister. Kiwi’s regret of her betrayal to the team and to Lucy in particular. Through all the bullets and spattered bodies, there’s high emotion in these characters.
This is what kept me invested in the story. The show was good at keeping me interested in David’s found family in the gang of mercs. There was genuine attachment between the group, but the group’s leader Maine was too stubborn to downgrade once it was clear that cyberpsychosis was taking over. This mirrored David’s stubbornness to slow down on cybernetic implants.
This brings us back to Lucy, who had to endure both the leader’s insistence on keeping his implants, and David ignoring all the warnings about the bad side effects of his implants. She was the lone survivor of the chaos of the climax of the story. At the end, we see her view of Earth from the edge, on the surface of the moon where she imagines David as he was before all the implants. It was a bittersweet moment, and a memory of hope. She fulfilled her dream of visiting the moon, but the price was everything.
