Who Is Talia In ‘Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2’ & How Old Is She?
In the wide world of cyberpunk, few locations compare to Night City. It’s a city where companies rule, and the citizens modify themselves with cybernetic enhancements, some out of a need to survive, some out of a sense of fashion. It’s one of the great modern dystopias, and whether it's in Netflix’s Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022) or video games like Cyberpunk 2077, there are no happy endings in Night City.
Case in point: Talia Yang, one of the new main characters of Cyberpunk Edgerunners’ second season, is arguably this season’s most compelling character. Her design is also the most striking of the four new leads, featuring plenty of chrome modifications that ooze that cyberpunk aesthetic so well. But that design is also raising plenty of eyebrows, mostly because of how provocative it is, and thanks to some hints dropped by the show, she may or may not be a minor, which opens up its own whole can of worms. So let’s break down exactly who she is, how old she is, and why Studio Trigger designed her the way they did.
What Is Talia’s Background in ‘Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2’?
Talia is a rebellious young woman, one who embodies the edgerunner lifestyle pretty well, but she didn’t start like that. In fact, she was born as a member of the corpo class with a silver spoon in her mouth.
Talia is the daughter of Avida Yang and Kiril Yang and the heir apparent to Kang Tao, one of Night City's top five companies that run the city. While she initially lived a life of luxury, she eventually left that posh lifestyle and began to get involved in the Maelstrom Gang, a group that is all about implants and cybernetic enhancements and is one of the most dangerous gangs in the world of cyberpunk. She also discovers that, much in the same vein as David Martinez from Season 1, she has a high tolerance for implants, allowing her to graft more and more of them on her body, all but replacing certain parts wholesale. Now, with a body mostly composed of Chrome, she’s the crew’s brawler and eager to get up close and personal in fights.
Now, at first glance, this may seem like a classic case of a rich girl with privilege rebelling against her uptight parents and embracing all of the vices that she was denied growing up. But it doesn’t take long in the second season’s 10-episode run to learn the truth about her implants. Talia actually has a degenerative disease that has compromised numerous organs and limbs, slowly killing her. The Chrome were seen as a way to keep her alive, but with how pervasive they are across her body, she’s developed cyberpsychosis and is constantly teetering on the edge of completely losing herself to the modifications. She’ll either die from her disease or from losing herself to the Chrome, and it's a coin flip as to which will do it.
How Old Is Talia in ‘Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2’?
Tragic as Talia’s condition is, there’s a subsection of fans who are put off by her and her appearance, not because of how extensive her implants are, but because of how the show is coy with her age.
In case you couldn’t tell, Talia’s appearance leaves little to the imagination. She’s frequently depicted as being half-naked, and Weak Kingsley, Talia’s father-like figure in the gang, refers to her as a kid. Together, it’s not impossible to connect the dots and think that Talia is a minor, which raises plenty of alarm bells with fans and how uncomfortably sexualized she can be in the show. However, if King’s nickname for her isn’t true and she’s an adult, while her appearance becomes somewhat more excusable, the relationship she develops with Roman, who is canonically 12, becomes even more uncomfortable and raises just as many alarm bells. So just how old is she exactly?
While it’s never implicitly stated within the show, there’s enough evidence to show that Talia is 16 years old. Talia herself claims to be a teenager, and the 16-year-old argument gains further merit when you examine what the culture of real-world Japan is like. In Japan, plenty of anime, like My Dress-Up Darling (2022), have often depicted underage children in ways that are seen as taboo here in the States. But in Japan, up until 2023, the age of consent was 13, one of the lowest in the world, which resulted in plenty of anime that depicted middle-schoolers and high-schoolers in ways that simply aren’t appropriate in other parts of the world.
However, the Japanese government voted in 2023 to raise the age of consent to 16 in the country, which is in line with the majority of the United States. From there, anime and manga series have been more in line with those standards, and with Studio Trigger aware of the series' greater global appeal, they probably decided it was in their best interest to at least make her the age of consent. Granted, the legal age of adulthood in Japan is still 18 years old, and it doesn’t excuse the blatant sexualization of her character, so there is definitely still some tricky territory to navigate with Talia, but at the very least, putting her closer to Roman’s age does make their romance more palatable and believable.
