Unlike the first season, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners II’s story takes place after the events of Cyberpunk 2077. As such, fans have been looking throughout the anime for any sign of characters from CD Projekt Red’s RPG, including V, the customizable protagonist the player inhabits. However, since the show takes place post-2077, V’s appearance would open up a whole messy box of questions about the show’s continuity and whether the broader Cyberpunk franchise now has a “canon” ending from the choice-driven game it will adhere to in stories set after V’s adventures. In fact, those questions have already been raised, and according to showrunner Bartosz Sztybor, there’s no intention of canonizing or invalidating any of the game’s potential endings.
In an interview with IGN, Sztybor talked about what some fans believe to have been a V cameo in the new Edgerunners season, specifically of the “default” female V with a red undercut seen in the game’s promotional artwork. The person’s face appears in an Arasaka database alongside other cyberware-compatible individuals (including Edgerunners season one protagonist David Martinez), and though the show doesn’t make a big to-do about this person specifically, some fans are taking this as a sign that V is alive and in Night City in a post-2077 timeline. However, Sztybor says that any such read of the show is just fan speculation.
Yeah I ain’t crazy that’s deadass V https://t.co/bT6OmOWXDw pic.twitter.com/3XC5KtlrDa
— 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗶 𝐀s̸s̸ꏳ𝐄 🇯🇲 👽 (@_morijinn) October 20, 2026
“We don’t want to set a canon ending,” he says. “So there were a lot of conversations again with the lore team to see what we can do to somehow satisfy all the endings, and what will be the state of the world after the game. That’s why the scene that you asked about, we don’t want to be straightforward, but we are giving some suggestions that will probably reveal the state of the world in more comic books and other stuff. So there are discussions. There are discussions, but we are not setting one kind of ending.”
If held up to some scrutiny, the supposed V cameo is questionable. As some fans point out, the character’s hairstyle isn’t exactly the same as that of the “default” female V, and her cyberware isn’t identical to that seen in 2077’s promo art, so even if the show were to be “canonizing” a specific version of V, this person doesn’t look quite like the one you see on the game’s box art. But ultimately, the show goes out of its way to not directly address V’s fate, which can go in several directions depending on the player’s choices.
“When we were creating Edgerunners [season one] and multiple comic books and board games, the canon was before the game, so we knew the state of the world.” he says. “And for the things post-game, it’s not that there are super-detailed canon things, but one important canon information is that Arasaka is weakened and that’s it. And it gives us a lot of opportunities to show the city in a different way.
But again, it’s not detailed. So it doesn’t make any of the endings canon. But the things that happened in the game could lead to that, whatever your choice was.”
I appreciate when creators for choice-driven franchises have this mindset, even if it means that future Cyberpunk projects can’t incorporate characters who have multiple fates depending on the choices you make in 2077. Notably, Rogue, the owner of the Afterlife nightclub, makes a brief appearance in the first Edgerunners season, but is never seen in the second season, likely because she can die in one of the game’s endings. It takes characters who exist in quantum states off the board, but it better allows all fans to enjoy a work without feeling like their choices are being portrayed as incorrect or invalid.
Cyberpunk 2 is currently in development at CD Projekt Red. We’ll see if it sticks to this principle and allows for all potential endings of the first game whenever it comes out.
