Netflix's New #3 Show Is Season 2 Of The Sci-Fi Masterpiece Fans Have Waited 4 Years For

Published Oct 28, 2026, 8:17 AM EDT Nicolas Ayala is a Senior Writer for the Comics team at ScreenRant, with over five years of experience writing about Superhero media, action movies, and TV shows. Sign in to your ScreenRant account This article covers a developing story. Continue to check back with us as we will be adding more information as it becomes available.A highly-anticipated sci-fi series makes it to Netflix's top 3 after a long wait. Within the past year, science fiction has delivered top-tier genre content, including HBO's gritty superhero detective series Lanterns, Apple TV+'s Soviet space-race spy drama Star City, and Disney+'s animated underworld epic Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord. On the big screen, visceral releases like Nia DaCosta's post-apocalyptic virus sequel 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple and David Robert Mitchell's suburban temporal-displacement movie The End of Oak Street have further expanded the genre's range. Netflix's own lineup has made a splash with streaming wins like Jesse McKeown's marine-terror thriller series Below, which instantly dominated the charts alongside the Japanese tokusatsu conspiracy series Human Vapor. Feature-length movies on the service have similarly drawn millions of views. For example, the Alan Ritchson-led action-heavy alien hunt War Machine and the emotional animated space-yuri musical Cosmic Princess Kaguya! offer completely opposite takes on sci-fi. Likewise, the Duffer Brothers-produced sci-fi thriller series The Boroughs and the stunning Kyoto Animation steampunk piece Sparks of Tomorrow provide unique alternate-history and animated concepts. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 Reaches Top 3 In Netflix's Top 10 Non-English Shows Rankings Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 Reaches New Heights For The Franchise Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 shot straight into the top 3 of Netflix's Global Top 10 Non-English Shows chart following its worldwide release on October 20, 2026. All ten episodes of the standalone anime sequel dropped simultaneously, racking up 4.6 million views during its debut tracking week of October 19th–25th. This rapid viewership surge allowed the joint CD Projekt Red and Studio Trigger production to briefly peak as the number two most-watched television series on the entire platform globally. Built-in anticipation played a factor in these high numbers, as the show had an already established fanbase that spent four years waiting for a return to Night City after the original 2022 series. Audience and critical reception for Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 have been solid, though noticeably more polarized than the universal acclaim of its predecessor. Helmed by director Kai Ikarashi and showrunner Bartosz Sztybor, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 purposefully subverted expectations by abandoning the original main characters in favor of a completely fresh cast, a daytime-heavy aesthetic, and a slower standalone plot focused on a washed-up legend and a revenge-seeking netrunner. Critics have praised the mature tone and avant-garde animation, leading to a near-perfect rating from IGN and an 80% score on Rotten Tomatoes. General viewer reception was more divided, with criticism toward a weaker crew dynamic and the departure from the first season's pacing.