WMG / Blade Runner 2049

Pre-Release

It Will Adapt the Other Half of the Novel

The original book had an entire plot excised from the film version involving a spiritual movement called Mercerism and a TV presenter named Buster Friendly engaged in a "psychic battle" for humanity's soul. To humanity, androids are seen as inhuman because they cannot share the empathetic experience of Mercerism, while Buster Friendly and his Friendly Friends scorn Mercerism as a fake and a sham and profess tacit support for androids which, as it's later revealed, Friendly is. As an allegory for the culture war between religious nationalists and secular atheists, it's still as relevant today as it was fifty years ago, and it will form the backbone of the sequel's plot, possibly with Harrison Ford in the Mercer role.

• Jossed. The plot is completely different, though their are nods and allusions to the novel; such as Deckard having a pet.

A major plot point will be that replicants are able to sexually reproduce.

In the trailer, Wallace laments that he can "Only make so many" replicants, implying that his company is running out of resources to mass-produce replicants artificially. Whatever secret Deckard has is likely the missing link between replicants being able to reproduce biologically, possibly involving Rachel who went on the run with him after the events of the original film. And while Wallace is searching for Deckard, K is ordered by his superiors in the LAPD to terminate Deckard and cover up the evidence, fearing that word of replicants being able to reproduce and potentially outbreed or even breed with humans would result in mass panic and a potentially genocidal war between humans and replicants.

• The plot is motivated by K discovering Rachael's bones on Sapper Morton's farm, which he brings back with him to the LAPD headquarters. The plot is motivated by K (and subsequently Wallace) searching for Deckard for answers — namely, how Rachael was able to reproduce in the first place despite being a Replicant.

K's a replicant

I mean come on! The cold vacant inhuman Drive (2011) stares of Ryan Gosling? You telling me they didn't cast him precisely because we'd all think this?

• Pre-release reviews spoil that K is, in fact, a Replicant. More accurately, he's a Nexus-9/current-gen Replicant (full name: KD6.3-7) who hunts Nexus-6 Replicants have no finite lifespan.

These events may possibly happen in the film:

• I'm willing to put my money on all of my guesses:
  • Gaff appears as a possible clue to Deckard's location
    • Yup.
  • Morton (Bautista's character) is relevant to the plot and will die
    • Yup. He's killed in the opening scene and basically sets off the plot.
  • Joi (the giant pink female hologram) will die/be decommissioned
    • Sort of.
  • K's mission is to kill Deckard, but decides not to
    • It's suggested as an option at one point, but never happens.
  • Luv is the one who attacks the two at Deckard's hideout
    • Yup.
  • Wallace makes it out of everything alive
    • Yup.
  • Deckard will live or die
    • Wow, putting it all on red or black, huh? He lives.
  • On the off chance he does die, it would either be for good or his death would be faked.
    • He's believed to be dead as far as everyone is concerned, but he's quite alive.
  • Deckard still doesn't know if he's a replicant or not.
    • Wallace mentions the possibility of Deckard being a Replicant, but leaves it as a Riddle for the Ages.
  • K will die.
    • Possibly.
  • Sean Young either reprises her role as Rachel, as a newer version of her or different android altogether.
    • Both; she reappears as a replica (heh) of Rachel, and in footage from the original.

Post-Release

Lieutenant Joshi is a Replicant

She seems to be incredibly single-minded about her job, we almost never see her outside of her office or her LAPD uniform, she has the characteristic slicked-back blonde hair, and she's inhumanly calm and collected about her death. She barely even flinches when she has broken glass pressed into her open hand, and it's established that Wallace-manufactured Replicants have a very high pain tolerance.

Luv is an Amalgamation of the Original Nexus-6 Replicants

Luv is secretary and personal assistant to Wallace, much like how Rachael was one to Tyrell. She has a very similar demeanor and attitude in these early scenes to Rachael, calm, polite, and professional. Her outfit is effectively a palate-swapped version of Rachael's, she has a very similar haircut, and their overall appearance is very comparable. Later, when acting as The Dragon, she displays similar characteristics to the other replicants from the original film. Her acrobatic fighting style is similar to Pris, her way of switching from calm and conversational to lethal in a heartbeat evokes Zhora (a Sex Bot-cum-assassin), her brute strength and occasional pre-mortem one-liners echoes Leon, and her sheer relentlessness and pain tolerance, as well as her occasional heightened emotion suggesting she's grown beyond her programming, suggests similar traits from Roy Batty.

Ana put her memories into multiple Replicants as a way to start a revolution

Riffing on a comment made on i09, think about what Lt. Joshi says the memory of Ana's toy represents: fighting for what's yours, for the only thing you have, against impossible odds. She would basically be implanting a rebellious seed in every Replicant she gave her memory too. Ana is sympathetic to Replicants, and may possibly know she's born from them (the exact details of how much she knows are left ambiguous). If she does know her own origin, at some point a Replicant might actually go digging for their memory, assuring that the secret that at least some Replicants can reproduce would be discovered.

K's animal is not the horse

K's animal theme is the sheep that is made for him early on, and this is reinforced by his very wooly jacket lining. He only thinks the horse is his.

Tyrell Planned for the Replicants to be Free

If Tyrell had planned for Deckard and Rachel to become involved (as Wallace believes), then Rachel was more than an experiment, it was part of a long-term plan to free the Replicants. For someone with no qualms about producing Replicants as slave labor, he seems to treat them with admiration and respect. Even when Roy Batty confronted him, he wasn't really surprised or afraid. It would also explain why Gaff let Deckard and Rachel go and didn't give up any information about them; he was working for Tyrell and was his mole in the LAPD. The why simply could be that Tyrell viewed humans as stagnant and in a slump and the Replicants were "more human than human". It would also explain why Deckard was given the assignment: Tyrell chose him because knew he was burned out from all the "retirements". By the end of the first film, between Batty's death and falling in love with Rachel, Deckard finally saw Replicants as people. It therefore makes perfect sense that he would help them.

• That's actually a strong possibility, that Tyrell in his old age regretted dooming his precious creations to a brutal short life of slavery, and was planning in secret to change things up for them.
• It would be kinda tragic that by killing Tyrell, Roy unknowingly screwed up the one good chance the Replicants had.
• 2049 actually plays with that, Wallace claims that Deckard is a replicant designed by Tyrell to fall in love with Rachel. Of course, in context that could very well be a mindjob Wallace is trying to pull on Deckard, but it is there.

K survives his wounds

• He did it in Drive (2011)!
  • Or did he? You know, since we don't know if he survived or died in Drive either?
    • Of course he survived. How could he have shown up in Blade Runner 2049 if he died earlier in Drive?

K is Charlie Brown

• He is constantly depressed, wants to be special, can't win and feels alone - despite all the women obviously attracted to him - simply because is too obsessed with his dream girl. Charlie Brown had his badass moments, so it's possible that he could be considered good enough as Blade Runner's replicant "template".