YMMV / Blade Runner: Black Lotus

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Why did Joseph say that Elle passed her Voight-Kampff test? Was he lying or did she actually pass it?
  • Is Davis a Naïve Newcomer and completely oblivious to the cover-up going on around her or just determined to prove her theory no matter how corrupt the system is?
  • Is Elle actually free willed at all or following her programming set out by Niander Wallace Junior?
• Awesome Music: Alessia Cara's "Feel You Now" is an absolutely banging open to go along with the cyberpunk red and blacks. There's also a different closing credit song with each ep.
• Complete Monster: Niander Wallace Sr. is the initial head of the Wallace Corporation. Corrupt to the bone and interested in designing Replicants as a disposable slave race, Wallace engineers submissive Replicants to be used in "Doll Hunts", where wealthy men pay to hunt them down, abuse them, and murder them to their hearts' content. Unlike his icy son who fancies himself a god over Replicants, Wallace Sr. delights in pain and when he learns Replicants can feel suffering, his only response is "perfect."
• Evil Is Cool: Marlowe is a dangerously competent and stylishly dressed Blade Runner who serves as the series No Nonsense Villain.
• Hype Backlash: As far as the actual content of the show goes, most people who dislike it don't have any strong negative feelings towards it. However, [adult swim] and Toonami airing not one, not two, but four marathons of the show before the show even ended (One in November 2021, alongside Black Out 2022 and Blade Runner 2049, another in early December 2021, another on December 10th, and a fourth one that Christmas) caused many fans to decry how hard they are pushing the show, similar to when Adult Swim first started pushing Rick and Morty everywhere. Given the Slow-Paced Beginning and So Okay, It's Average, many fans also feel it's being overhyped.
• I Knew It!: Niander Wallace Jr. being the boyfriend in Elle's memory.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The series doesn't really take off until Episode 6, halfway through the first season.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general response is the writing is decent but unexceptional, the CGI is very mixed, and the plot is a fairly bog standard revenge narrative with stock characters. It's entertaining but nothing great.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Alani Davis is a member of the LAPD who gets assigned to find Black Lotus (Elle) and when things become complicated, she continues pursuing the case even when her boss takes her off of it. Eventually, she finds out the truth, but when she does, Water Lily stabs her with her sword. The ending reveals she ended up surviving, but paralyzed from the waist down, and thanks to Doomed by Canon, she will never be able to reveal the truth about what happened to anyone. You could remove her from the entire show and nothing would have changed.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The show's characters are contrasted strongly with the nearly photorealistic backgrounds, with some comparisons to PS2 characters.
• The Un-Twist: That Elle is a replicant. Any fan of the series will figure this out probably before they watch the first episode from the franchise alone. Done better with the discovery that Joseph is a former Blade Runner.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: Davis is the LAPD officer who's not only the most intelligent, but most skilled in combat (outside of Marlowe), and arguably the most ambitious. She also happens to be a black woman. Though her superiors shunted her because she was getting too close to the truth, her treatment also looks like discrimination within American police forces. Played With as its shown that a cover up is going on but the police are actually tied to the corporate individuals involved.

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