Blade Runner 2049

Blade Runner 2049 Plot

In 2049, 30 years after the events of Blade Runner, bioengineered humans known as replicants are slaves. K (short for serial number, KD6-3.7), a Nexus-9 replicant, works for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) as a “blade runner”, an officer who hunts and “retires” (kills) rogue replicants. After retiring replicant Sapper Morton, K finds a box buried under a tree at Morton’s farm, containing the remains of a female replicant who died during a caesarean section, demonstrating that replicants can reproduce biologically, previously thought impossible. K’s superior, Lt. Joshi, fears this knowledge could lead to war between humans and replicants and orders K to retire the replicant child.

K visits the Wallace Corporation, successor to the defunct Tyrell Corporation in the manufacture of replicants, where DNA archives identify the deceased female as Rachael, an experimental replicant. K learns of Rachael’s romantic ties with former blade runner Rick Deckard. CEO Niander Wallace wants the secret to replicant reproduction to expand interstellar colonization. He sends his replicant enforcer Luv to follow K.

At Morton’s farm, K finds 6.10.21 carved into the tree trunk and recognizes it from a childhood memory of a wooden toy horse. Because replicant memories are artificial, K’s holographic A.I. girlfriend Joi believes this is evidence that K was born, not created. He discovers in LAPD records two children born on that date with identical DNA aside from the sex chromosome, but only the boy is listed as alive. K tracks the child to an orphanage but the records from that year are missing. K recognizes the orphanage from his memories and finds the toy horse where he remembers hiding it.

Replicant memory designer Dr. Ana Stelline confirms that his memory of the orphanage is not artificial, leading K to conclude he is Rachael’s son. At LAPD headquarters K implies to Joshi that he has killed the replicant child. He fails a baseline test marking him as rogue. Joshi gives him 48 hours to pass the test, or he will be ‘retired’. Joi hires replicant prostitute Mariette as a surrogate for Joi to have sex with K. Mariette is part of the replicant freedom movement and leaves a tracker on K. Analysis of the toy horse leads K to the ruins of Las Vegas. He finds Deckard, who tells him that he is the father of Rachael’s child and scrambled the birth records to protect the child’s identity; Deckard left the child in the custody of the replicant freedom movement.

Luv kills Joshi and tracks K to Las Vegas. She kidnaps Deckard, destroys Joi, and leaves K to die. Using Mariette’s tracker, the replicant freedom movement rescues K. When their leader, Freysa, tells him that Rachael’s child was a girl, K understands that he is not Rachael’s child, deduces that Stelline is her daughter and that the toy horse memory is hers, one she implanted in replicants whose memories she designed. To prevent Deckard leading Wallace to Stelline or the freedom movement, Freysa asks K to kill Deckard.

Luv takes Deckard to meet Wallace, who offers Deckard a duplicate Rachael in exchange for revealing what he knows. Deckard refuses, and Luv kills the duplicate. As Luv transports Deckard to be interrogated, K intercedes and tries to rescue Deckard. He fights and drowns Luv but is mortally wounded. He stages Deckard’s death to protect him from Wallace and the replicant freedom movement before taking Deckard to Stelline’s office and handing him her toy horse. As K lies on the steps looking up at the falling snow, Deckard enters the building and meets his daughter for the first time.^[a]