Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty Endings Guide: Firestarter Choices and Consequences
Covers the Firestarter split, what happens on the Songbird and Reed routes, and how to unlock the new Tower ending.
Phantom Liberty funnels everything toward one moment. About halfway through, a job called Firestarter puts you inside Kurt Hansen's stadium with a fake identity and a live wire of a decision: back Songbird, or back Solomon Reed. That one pick decides which missions you play for the rest of the expansion, who walks away breathing, and whether a whole new ending for the base game opens up. Fair warning, this is an endings guide, so big spoilers from here down.
Make a manual save before the stadium. You'll want it.
The Firestarter Branch
Getting past Hansen
Firestarter takes place at the EBM Petrochem Stadium, Hansen's fortress in Dogtown. V and Alex roll in disguised as the Cassel twins, Aurore or Aymeric, depending on who you picked back in You Know My Name. A Barghest soldier named Albert Murphy meets you at the door and makes you dump your guns in a locker, so note where that is. You'll want them back on the way out.
Then Hansen quizzes you. Blow too many answers and it's an instant game over, no fight, no retry from inside the room. A few wrong answers can be rescued with the right follow-up line or with 20 Cool, but don't lean on that. The safe plays as Aurore: take the drink when it's offered, remember she's a Kerry Eurodyne fan, and keep in mind she did her prison time in a VIP wing, so she wouldn't recognize anybody from the regular blocks. As Aymeric: skip the drink or hand it to Aurore, answer Porsche 911 on the classic car question, and know that his stored memories from Petrochem were stolen, so gaps are normal for him. The gambling question just has to match how the twins did on that last bet earlier in the story.
The actual choice
Once Hansen is done sniffing around, Songbird walks V over to the Neural Matrix, the thing this whole spy plot has been chasing. She tells you the truth: the handoff is happening now, and Reed means to drag her back to Myers. So you pick. Help her run, or help Reed take her. There's no third option and no takeback on that save.
Side with Songbird and you give Alex the signal. She's the one who puts Hansen down, quietly, upstairs. Your job is the getaway. Grab your gear from the locker, move through the market while So Mi holds doors open for you with her hacks, dodge the drones, and watch for Murphy, who shows up mid-escape. You can sneak around him or drop him for Murphy's Law, an iconic one-handed club. Hansen's body is worth looting too, for his Bald Eagle revolver and the Wild Dog light machine gun. The job hands off to The Killing Moon.
Side with Reed and it goes sideways fast. Songbird tips off Hansen the second she realizes she's losing. Hansen kills Alex on the spot, and So Mi still slips out in the chaos, only for MaxTac to scoop her up while you watch from the parking garage. Before any of that settles, Hansen and a squad of Barghest jump you at the market entrance. The boss fight opens with him on a light machine gun and revolver, and at half health he swaps to a knife and charges you. Same two guns on his body afterward, plus Fang, his thrown knife. Then you ride out with Reed into Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos.
| | Help Songbird | Help Reed | |---|---|---| | Hansen | Killed by Alex | Killed by you, boss fight | | Alex | Lives | Dies | | Songbird | Escapes with you | Taken by MaxTac | | Next job | The Killing Moon | Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos | | Route-only loot | Murphy's Law | Fang |
One thing stays constant either way: Hansen is done by the end of the night. Only the trigger changes.
Songbird Route Outcomes
The Killing Moon
This whole job is one long, gorgeous escape run to the NCX Spaceport out at Morro Rock. You wait for So Mi's message, meet her, and ride out in a van before switching to foot inside the spaceport. First hurdle is a security gate, and the guard gives you a choice. Obey him and you jack in with your personal link, then stall for time while So Mi rips the biometric database, which mostly means looking at the camera and playing casual. Disobey and you talk her through the intercom instead, then shoot your way out of the security room. The polite way keeps things quieter.
There's also free stuff if you poke around. A suitcase near the terminal (code 930604) holds a Corp-Bud uniform you can change into, and the service shaft or the restroom ventilation shaft both beat walking through the front door. From there it's the construction site, the rooftop elevator, pulling So Mi up a wall, stopping fan blades with your hands, then the Tycho Terminal, the maglev station, and finally holding the control tower until the train arrives.
On that train ride, So Mi stops pretending. The Neural Matrix has one dose in it. The cure she dangled in front of V the whole expansion was never meant for V, it was her way out. She collapses not long after, and that sets up the last call of the route.
Ending: hand her to Reed (King of Swords)
Carry her toward the shuttle, and Reed shows up at the launchpad. Give her up, or call him from the train while she's down, and you've got the King of Swords outcome, achievement text "Take Songbird home." So Mi goes back to the NUSA, Reed lives, Alex lives. That buys V a shot at the cure, covered two sections down.
The wind-down here is small: a job called Through Pain to Heaven, where Reed calls and you meet him at a CHOOH2 station in Rancho Coronado to talk it out.
Ending: put her on the shuttle (King of Wands)
The other option at the launchpad is to draw on Reed. Note there's no middle ground, the game will not let you take him down non-lethally here, so shooting him is shooting to kill. The payout is Pariah, his silenced iconic Tech pistol, looted off his body. Then you carry So Mi to the shuttle, strap her in, and watch the launch from the observation deck with Johnny. Achievement text: "Take Songbird to the stars."
Two aftermath jobs follow. Unfinished Sympathy has Alex invite you for drinks at The Moth, and you get to pick a toast, Reed included, if you're feeling guilty. A postcard, "It's Always Sunny in Monte Carlo," shows up on V's apartment door some time later. Then about 24 hours after that, From Her to Eternity sends you to Tranquil Terrace, where a container by a chair holds the Quantum Tuner, an iconic frontal cortex cyberware, plus a metal pin from So Mi.
The price is the big one: no cure, and the new base-game ending stays locked. You fall back on the regular Nocturne Op55N1 picks, same as before the expansion existed. Small consolation, but Mr. Blue Eyes cameos twice during the escape (watch the construction site and the monorail platform), and So Mi noticeably dodges the question of who arranged her flight. Read into that what you want.
Reed Route Outcomes
Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos
Alex is dead and So Mi is in MaxTac custody, so now you and Reed have to steal her back off a prisoner convoy. First step is paying a netrunner to crack the convoy intel, and you've got options. Nix meets you at the Arasaka Memorial in 6 hours and throws in a Self-ICE implant. Chang-Hoon Nam takes 12 hours at his Japantown shop. Sandra Dorsett wants 8 hours at Reconciliation Park and asks you to plant a Trojan in MaxTac as payment. Carol Emeka just refuses and mails you a weapon or quickhack instead. Or you pay Mr. Hands €$15,000 to put his runner Yoko Tsuru on it, 10 hours, done in Kabuki.
That last one has a hook. Agree to Yoko's side proposal and send Mr. Hands the ambush coordinates when the job asks. That's the flag that gets you the MaxTac Mantis Blades later, after Leave in Silence wraps up.
The ambush itself runs out of an abandoned Pacifica hotel with 6th Street and their boss Will Gunner providing muscle. You place turrets or mines and pick a starting spot, then hit the NCPD escort first. After that come four named MaxTac ops, each with a role: Faye Russo on assault, Asher Peterson on mantis blades, Dallas Foster as the heavy, Jasper Collins as the netrunner. Kill Collins early unless you like eating overclocked quickhacks.
Doesn't matter how clean you run it, So Mi slips away in the truck anyway. You follow her Blackwall traces down into the Cynosure Facility, and that's where the expansion turns into a horror game.
Somewhat Damaged
The Militech Cerberus robot hunts you through this entire bunker, and there is no fighting it. It's flat-out immune to damage and to quickhacks. Stealth only. Your HUD glitches when it's near, which is your tell. Your Sandevistan malfunctions down here too, and leaving it active bleeds roughly 5 health every 2 seconds, so keep it off unless you're dashing between rooms. There are a few rooms it won't enter, like Experimental Prototyping and Datafort Central Command, and the game autosaves whenever it crawls into the vents. Use those beats.
The path is four data terminals, Alpha, Bravo, Sierra, and Victor, then three subsystems at the core. Gates with a 20 Body check can be skipped by swimming the flooded passages if your Body is low. Now the loot, because it's missable:
- The iconic Crowbar sits on crates to the right, past the first 20 Body gate after the crashed MaxTac truck.
- The Erebus crafting spec, an iconic power SMG that fires Blackwall-infused rounds, is in Maintenance. You'll need to rewire a distribution box (Technical Ability check) to power the door.
- The Canto Mk.6 spec, an iconic cyberdeck with unique Blackwall quickhack bits, is in Experimental Prototyping, behind an Intelligence check or the door code 714212.
- The behavioral system component comes off the Cerberus at the very end, once it drops. Grab it before you leave the core room.
The core choice: her life
At the bottom, So Mi is half-consumed by the Blackwall and she asks you straight: end it. Leave in Silence then drives you and Reed to a border checkpoint where surgeons take her and President Myers shows up in person.
Spare her, which the game calls refusing her request, and you get King of Pentacles. Myers hands you a NUSA distinction medal (you can turn it down on principle) and $30,000 lands in V's apartment afterward. In Four Score and Seven, Reed meets you at the basketball court where you two first talked and admits So Mi will live on as Myers' Blackwall puppet. Rough outcome for her. But Reed keeps his promise about the cure, and the new ending opens up.
Honor her request, kill her, and you get King of Cups. Myers offers no thanks and a token $5,000. No Neural Matrix, no cure, Tower stays shut, and the expansion wraps with Reed bitterly conceding you might've been right. That's the mercy-kill path, and it's the only one of the four outcomes with no way back.
Either way, about 24 hours later the side job This Corrosion pings you from an unknown number. Meet Yoko at Kabuki Market, let her decrypt that Cerberus component, and you get to craft one, and only one, item: Erebus or the Canto Mk.6. Pick with care, the other spec just sits there. And fair warning, NetWatch agents may jump you afterward trying to confiscate whatever you built.
New Main Game Ending Requirements
The Tower is the added base-game ending, achievement text "Survive Night City, and start a new life." The requirement is blunt: Songbird has to go back to the NUSA alive. Either branch can get you there. On the Songbird route, let Reed take her at the launchpad. On the Reed route, refuse her request at the core. The wiki for Who Wants to Live Forever says it plainly: as long as you surrendered So Mi, the cure option exists no matter what you say afterward. King of Wands (she flies, Reed dies) and King of Cups (you kill her) both flush it.
So say you did it right. Finish Through Pain to Heaven or Four Score and Seven, then wait about a day in-game. Reed calls, and Who Wants to Live Forever starts. Here's the trap in the timing: accepting his offer right away fires the ending chain immediately, rooftop chair, last talk with Johnny, FIA AV, gone. If you've still got base-game work lined up, decline. The call option comes back during Nocturne Op55N1, sitting on Misty's rooftop right next to the Hanako, Rogue, and Panam picks, and it'll wait for you there.
Take it, and Things Done Changed plays out. V wakes up in 2079 at the Edward Kernaghan Military Medical Center, two years into a medically induced coma. The Relic is out, and Johnny's gone with it. The surgery worked, but V's brain took permanent damage and can't handle cyberware anymore. Not "expensive to replace." Can't. Viktor runs his own scan, says the motor cortex has gone deaf to implant signals, and his clinic is a Zetatech franchise now, which tells you how those two years went.
Then you work through the phone calls, and they sting. Judy lives in Pittsburgh, married to a woman named Bianca, and if you romanced her, that door closes on the call. Panam doesn't pick up at all, and Mitch's video message makes it clear the Aldecaldos want nothing to do with V. River sold everything he knew about the NCPD to Trauma Team to pay for Randy's rehab, so he's a wanted man hiding from you specifically. Kerry's the only friendly voice, mid-tour at the Crystal Palace, and a romanced Kerry at least promises to reconnect after the tour.
On the way out, a single alley thug beats V down and Misty picks you up off the pavement. That's the new normal, body-wise. She's moving to Poland, of all places. One small branch difference: if you came in through the spaceport attack, the epilogue brings up rising tension between Orbital Air and Night Corp, with talk of a Fifth Corporate War, and Reed's credits call is different.
So the checklist for The Tower: Songbird surrendered alive, Reed and So Mi both breathing, wait a day, then take his call either right there or from the Nocturne Op55N1 rooftop. That's it. No secret dialogue, no attribute checks.
Choosing Without Spoiling Side Jobs
"Without spoiling" here means picking a path with your side content intact, so here's what actually locks.
Do Balls to the Wall before Firestarter. Full stop. That's the one where Paco Torres and Babs Okoye drink outside the Black Sapphire and drag you into their mess with Hansen, available after Spider and the Fly. Finish Firestarter on either branch and the job dies with it, failing outright if it's mid-progress, and those two characters stop existing as contacts. It pays an iconic pistol called Carmen (on some outcomes), a Solo skill shard, 1832 XP, and 167 street cred, so it's worth the twenty minutes.
After Firestarter, three jobs unlock instead. Run This Town has Mr. Hands call you up to Heavy Hearts to play kingmaker over Dogtown's succession, Chester Bennett versus Jago Szabó, with a whole disguise gimmick as a cartel merc named Aguilar. It pays 8000 eddies and Hands' iconic Mancinella pistol, but heads up, he'll block any new Dogtown gigs until you take his meeting. Moving Heat sends you back into the stadium garage to quietly steal the Quadra Sport R-7 "Charon" and wipe its data. And Dirty Second Hands only appears if you left your guns in that locker during Firestarter, in which case Mr. Hands very reasonably charges €$20,000 to give V's own arsenal back.
The route split hands out different epilogue content too. Songbird's side gets the Alex drinks scene and the Quantum Tuner care package. Reed's side gets This Corrosion and the Erebus-versus-Canto craft, which, again, is one item forever. Neither side locks Dogtown itself, so gigs and the stadium market stay open post-story either way.
Save discipline ties it all together. One manual save before So Mi's chat at the Neural Matrix covers the whole Firestarter branch. One more before the launchpad standoff (Songbird side) or before the talk at the Cynosure core (Reed side) covers the ending split. With those two files you can sweep all four ending achievements and both craft routes without replaying ten hours of spy story. And hey, that locker by Murphy on the way in is free, while the same guns bought back from Mr. Hands later cost twenty grand. Check the locker.