david martinez death is his death at Arasaka Tower in the final episode of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, where Arasaka's cyborg enforcer Adam Smasher kills him after David holds Smasher off long enough for Lucy to escape. David Martinez dies at Arasaka Tower in the final episode of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. Arasaka's cyborg enforcer Adam Smasher kills him after David holds Smasher off long enough for Lucy to escape. What follows is the road there, episodes 7 through 10, scene by scene, ahead of the Edgerunners 2 premiere on Netflix on 20 October, which arrives with a new story, per the official Edgerunners 2 page.
Pick your path: how David dies · who dies and who survives · the final scene · why it is so sad
Spoilers ahead: this post walks through episodes 7 to 10 of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners in full, including every death and the final scene. The mechanics of each death sit behind taps.
Reading the story is half of it: YourCrush.AI lets you build Rhea Castellanos, the original character at the end of this post, and play your own version of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.
How does David Martinez die?
Spoiler: the short answer
Adam Smasher kills David at Arasaka Tower in episode 10, after David holds him off so Falco can get Lucy out. CBR describes Smasher ripping him apart, "leaving the upper half of his torso", and then blasting him off, in its ending explainer.
The ending of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is episode 10, "My Moon My Man", in which David Martinez dies fighting Adam Smasher at Arasaka Tower and Lucy reaches the Moon without him. The episode titles and every beat below come from Wikipedia's episode summary unless another source is linked. Getting to that tower takes four episodes, and it starts with an image.
Previously, in part 1 of the story: David's mother died in gang crossfire, he put her military Sandevistan in his spine, joined Maine's crew of edgerunners, and watched Maine lose his mind to cyberpsychosis and die covering the crew's retreat.
Maine's arms (episode 7)
The crew watches him walk in. It is 2076, months after Maine's death, and the kid they took in is the man running the crew now. If you want the dates lined up against the game, the Edgerunners timeline has them. Here, only one matters.
Spoiler: who leads the crew after the time skip
David leads Maine's old crew, he is well known in Night City, and he runs heavier chrome than before, including Maine's own arm implants. The showrunner has said David is 18 by now, as Game Rant reports. The crew knows what that chrome did to the man who wore it before him.
Lucy's past (episode 7)
Lucy pulls away from him, and the show finally tells us why she has always watched Arasaka so closely. The answer to what Lucy's backstory is is the key to the ending.
Spoiler: Lucy's past with Arasaka
Lucy was an Arasaka-trained child netrunner who survived exposure to rogue AIs that killed the other children in the program, per Wikipedia. In episode 7 she kills an Arasaka agent who is looking for erased data about a test subject.
The deal (episode 8)
Episode 8 follows Faraday, the fixer with ties to Maine's crew and to Militech. He is a man with ties to everybody, which in Night City means everybody can find him.
Spoiler: who betrays the crew
David kills an Arasaka lab director, but he also kills an innocent worker, a sign that cyberpsychosis is coming for him too. Arasaka orders Faraday killed. Faraday slips Militech's protection and makes a deal with Arasaka: he will find the netrunner who erased Tanaka's data. Lucy tracks an Arasaka agent, it is a trap, and Kiwi, her own mentor, captures her. ShowSnob's recap and Wikipedia both record Kiwi's part.
Why does Faraday sell them? Because Arasaka put a price on his head and a deal was the only door out of the room. The crew was never his family. It was his inventory.
The Cyberskeleton (episode 9)
David knows Lucy is gone and does not yet know why. Faraday and Kiwi find out first.
Spoiler: Lucy's secret and what Faraday makes David wear
Lucy killed Tanaka on purpose, back on the episode 6 job, after learning he planned to use David as a test subject for the Cyberskeleton, Arasaka's prototype combat frame. She had erased David from Tanaka's records and killed the agents who came after her. ShowSnob puts it as keeping Arasaka from making him "a lab rat". Faraday sets up a job against an Arasaka convoy whose cargo is the Cyberskeleton, tips off Militech, and uses Lucy's captivity to force David to install the prototype and wipe out the Militech force. The episode ends with David vowing to find Faraday and get Lucy back.
This is the turn that decides the ending, and it is my reading rather than the show's words: the thing Lucy hid to keep him out of Arasaka's hands is exactly the thing Faraday uses to put him into Arasaka's machine. Anime News Network's reviewer frames the two halves of the story the same way, with David adding chrome to protect Lucy while she goes "on a one woman crusade to eliminate all those who would use David" (ANN review). Each one's protection becomes the other's trap.
Kiwi's last call (episode 10)
Kiwi has done what Faraday asked. Now she is the only person who knows how he did it.
Spoiler: what happens to Kiwi
Faraday shoots Kiwi to tie up a loose end. Before she dies she damages his gun hand and calls Falco with coordinates, per ShowSnob's episode 10 recap and Wikipedia. Her last act gives the crew the way in.
Arasaka Tower (episode 10)
Falco has the coordinates and the car. David has the Cyberskeleton and no plan beyond getting to Lucy. He fights through Militech, Arasaka and MaxTac forces to reach Arasaka Tower and finds her. Arasaka sends in Adam Smasher, and if you want who Adam Smasher is before he lands, his own post has it. David runs out of immunoblockers and slides toward cyberpsychosis until Lucy reaches him and brings him back.
Spoiler: what Adam Smasher does to Rebecca
Rebecca tries to shoot him. In Wikipedia's words, "she dies instantly when he lands on and crushes her into the ground." Rebecca's own post tells how she came to be in that plaza.
Spoiler: David's last order to Falco
David holds Smasher off and tells Falco to get Lucy out and share out the crew's money. Falco escapes with Lucy even though Smasher shoots off his arm, per CBR. Faraday also dies during the Arasaka Tower fight. The sources disagree on how, so this post leaves it there.
Here is our imagining of Falco in the car afterwards, with Lucy in the back seat and one arm gone, not a line from the show:
"He said get her out and split the money. So that's what we're doing. Nobody gets to argue with the last thing he asked for."
Spoiler: how David dies
Before he dies, Smasher tells David, "You could prove an interesting construct", as Looper records, and David brushes the remark off. Then Smasher kills him.
For Smasher, this was a job. Here is our imagining of his after-action note to Arasaka, not a line from the show:
"Tower secure. Intruder showed promise for an amateur. Closing the file."
Is David Martinez dead?
Yes. David dies at the end of episode 10, killed by Adam Smasher, and nothing in the series reverses it. CD Projekt Red's own announcement of Edgerunners 2 says "David's story might be over", and the new series has a different cast.
The writers never planned to save him, and the David Martinez death could have been worse. Writer Bartosz Sztybor told Anime Corner, as Kotaku reported, that "there was never a happy ending," and that one discarded version was worse: David does not die entirely, Arasaka gets him, and he ends up fighting in the Corporate Wars. Measured against that, the ending they chose is a mercy.
How old was David Martinez when he died?
The showrunner has said David is 18 in the later episodes, after the time skip, so he dies at 18. That age comes from showrunner Rafał Jaki's Reddit comment as reported by Game Rant; no official CD Projekt Red or Netflix source gives it.
Jaki's same comment puts David at 17 when the series opens. The story runs from 2075 into 2076, and the time skip between the two halves is described only in months, which is why the math stays fuzzy for anyone trying to pin down an exact birthday.
Who dies in Cyberpunk Edgerunners, and who survives?
Spoiler: the full list
Lucy and Falco are the last members of the crew seen alive, as CBR puts it. Over the series Gloria, Pilar, JK, Dorio, Maine, Kiwi, Faraday, Rebecca and David all die.
| Character | Episode | How | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gloria | 1 | Gang crossfire; Trauma Team refuses to help | Wikipedia |
| Pilar | 4 | Killed by a cyberpsycho | Wikipedia |
| JK | 5 | Dies in the crossfire of the Tanaka trap | Wikipedia |
| Dorio | 6 | Fatally injured by Maine in his cyberpsychosis | Wikipedia |
| Maine | 6 | Blows himself up to cover the retreat | Wikipedia |
| Kiwi | 10 | Shot by Faraday | Wikipedia, ShowSnob |
| Faraday | 10 | Dies during the Arasaka Tower fight | Wikipedia, CBR (they disagree on how) |
| Rebecca | 10 | Killed by Adam Smasher | Wikipedia |
| David | 10 | Killed by Adam Smasher | Wikipedia, CBR |
Adam Smasher survives the episode. Falco survives without one arm.
What happens at the end of Edgerunners?
Spoiler: the final scene
Lucy reaches the Moon and walks it alone, heartbroken because David is not with her, as Wikipedia records. She imagines him there, in a scene that calls back to the braindance she once showed him and is scored with "I Really Want to Stay at Your House", per CBR.
The Moon (episode 10, final scene)
The last scene belongs to Lucy. She gets the one thing she has wanted since her first episode, the one place Night City cannot reach, and she gets it with almost everyone who knew her gone. CBR puts it plainly: her dream "feels hollow without David beside her," and "David essentially became her 'moon'" (CBR).
What follows is our imagining of Lucy on the Moon, not a line from the show:
"Maine, Dorio, Kiwi, Rebecca. I keep counting them like the number will change. The city paid for this ticket. I just can't tell anymore what it cost."
Do David and Lucy end up together? No. David dies at Arasaka Tower and Lucy reaches the Moon alone. No source describes a post-credits scene, and this post does not claim one either way. Every account ends the same way: Lucy on the Moon.
Why is Cyberpunk Edgerunners so sad?
The story is built so that pushing your luck in Night City ends one way. ANN's reviewer writes that "those who keep pressing their luck inevitably die" (ANN), and CBR reads the ending as "fighting a losing battle against the system". The writer has said the whole thing was deliberate, joking at Anime Expo 2025 that "I just wanted to make the whole world sad."
That last line is Bartosz Sztybor's, who added "When people are sad, then I'm a bit happy," as TheGamer reported. CBR counts the losses the ending piles up, Gloria, Maine, Dorio, Rebecca and David (CBR). ANN's review warns that it "might just leave you existentially depressed for days to come," and says of the last scene that "without him, the moon is small comfort."
My own answer is narrower. It is sad because David never makes a stupid choice. Every piece of chrome he adds is for a reason you would accept, and each one is a step toward Maine. The show lets you agree with him all the way to the tower.
Does David's story continue in Edgerunners 2?
No. Edgerunners 2 is a standalone series with a new cast, and the official announcement says "David's story might be over". It follows Weak Kingsley, a washed-up cyberpunk legend now forced to live without chrome, and the nomad D, out for revenge, per the official synopsis on What's on Netflix.
The Edgerunners 2 release date and cast are covered in their own post, so here is only the turn. The first series ended on a kid who added chrome until it killed him. The next one opens on a man who has had it all taken away. Weak was "once known as 'King,' a veteran edgerunner at the top of his game", as Anime Corner quotes the official description, and now he lives without chrome. Part 3 of the story, the Edgerunners 2 story, starts there after the premiere on 20 October.
How YourCrush.AI lets you play out the night after a run goes wrong
YourCrush.AI lets you build the person a crew comes back to after a job like Arasaka Tower and talk the night through with them, using the no-code form at our character builder. The recipe below is an original adult character, not anyone from the show.
YourCrush.AI splits a chat into story branches, so you can stop at the moment the job went wrong and play the version where everyone made it out. YourCrush.AI keeps pinned memories, so the names you gave Rhea last night are still on her wall tonight. YourCrush.AI also drafts the fields for you from a name and an image if you would rather start from a draft. Joining is free. Copy these fields into the form:
- Name: Rhea Castellanos
- Category: Anime
- Behaviour mode: natural
- Traits: Loyal, Emotional, Honest, Supportive, Sarcastic
- Speaking style: warm, blunt, tired, low
- Description: Rhea Castellanos is a 33-year-old who owns a small bar under a Night City overpass where crews meet before and after jobs. She used to be a crew netrunner and walked away from the work. Behind the bar is a wall of names, written in marker, of people who did not come back. She is warm, blunt and tired, and she does not pretend a bad night was a good one. She treats you as a regular who has just come back from a run.
- Backstory: Years ago Rhea was the only one who made it out of a job that went wrong. She bought the bar with her share and keeps the door open late for anyone from a crew, paid up or not. She knows you from before that job and knows who you used to run with, and she is the one person in the city you do not have to lie to about how it went.
- Greeting: Closing time, but Rhea leaves the door unlocked when she sees it's you. She sets two glasses on the bar and a marker beside them, the one she uses for the wall of names. "Heard the job went loud. Before you tell me who made it out, drink. Then tell me everything, in order. I write the names myself."
Frequently asked questions
What episode does David Martinez die in?
Episode 10, "My Moon My Man." That's the finale, and it's the last time you see him alive, per Wikipedia.
Who kills David Martinez?
Adam Smasher, Arasaka's head of security, kills him at Arasaka Tower. Smasher is a full-body cyborg, and he also shows up in Cyberpunk 2077.
Does Lucy die in the Edgerunners ending?
No. Falco gets her out of Arasaka Tower and she reaches the Moon alive. The last shot of her is up there alone.
What song plays at the end of Cyberpunk Edgerunners?
The final Moon scene is scored with "I Really Want to Stay at Your House", per CBR. The series' ending theme is "Let You Down" by Dawid Podsiadło.
Does Adam Smasher die in Edgerunners?
No, he walks away from episode 10. What happens to him in Cyberpunk 2077 is covered in the Adam Smasher post linked above.
What did Adam Smasher say to David before he died?
"You could prove an interesting construct." David brushes the line off, according to Looper and CBR.
More from the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners story
- Also on YourCrush: Anime AI chat: twelve canon adults sorted by how they talk, and how to build your own
- Also on YourCrush: Romance tropes: a catalogue of eight, and how to roleplay each one