I don't think "implicitly panicked" is an accurate description since unwrap()'s entire reason for existing is to panic if you unwrap an error condition. If you use unwrap(), you're explicitly opting into the panicking behavior.

I suppose another way to think about it is that Result<T, E> is somewhat analogous to Java's checked exceptions - you can't get the T out unless you say what to do in the case of the E/checked exception. unwrap() in this context is equivalent to wrapping the checked exception in a RuntimeException and throwing that.