Blade Runner Lore: Replicants, Tyrell, Wallace and the Deckard Question
The short version
Blade Runner is about replicants, bioengineered humans built to work off-world and hunted by blade runners if they run. The lore spans Ridley Scott's 1982 film, Denis Villeneuve's 2049 (2017), three shorts, an anime and Philip K. Dick's novel, which tells a different story.
On this page
Era, as text
- 2013: Cyberpunk 2013, the first edition, set in 2013
- 2020: Cyberpunk 2020, set in 2020
- RED: Cyberpunk RED, set in 2045
- Edgerunners: Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, set in 2076
- 2077: Cyberpunk 2077, set in 2077
- This page covers 2019 to 2049.
Timeline#
- 2019Blade Runner: Deckard hunts four Nexus-6 replicants in Los Angeles
- 2022Black Out 2022: an EMP wipes out data worldwide
- 2032Black Lotus (anime series)
- 2036Nexus Dawn: Wallace shows lawmakers his Nexus-9 replicant
- 2048Nowhere to Run: Sapper Morton protects a mother and daughter
- 2049Blade Runner 2049: K finds a secret in Morton's farm
What a replicant is#
A replicant is a bioengineered human built as labor for the off-world colonies. They look like adults, they are strong, and in the first film the Nexus-6 models carry a four-year lifespan. Those who escape to Earth get "retired" by police units called blade runners. That's the euphemism, and it's the point of the movie.
A test sorts replicants from people: the Voight-Kampff, an empathy test built around questions about animals. It's one of the reasons the film is remembered as a story about what it means to be human, rather than a chase.
Tyrell, then Wallace#
Eldon Tyrell runs the Tyrell Corporation, the company that makes replicants. He's the CEO in the 2019 film, and he gives Rachael, an experimental replicant, memories borrowed from his niece. By 2049 his company is defunct.
The Wallace Corporation is the successor in 2049, and its CEO Niander Wallace is the one with a plan: he wants replicants that can reproduce, to expand colonization. The 2036 short Nexus Dawn shows him presenting a new Nexus-9 to lawmakers to get a ban on replicants lifted. K, the lead of 2049, is a Nexus-9.
The timeline#
In-universe, the order is 2019 (the first film), 2022 (the Black Out 2022 anime short, an EMP-triggered global blackout, directed by Shinichiro Watanabe), 2032 (the Black Lotus anime series, ten years later), 2036 (Nexus Dawn), 2048 (Nowhere to Run) and 2049. The three shorts were released in 2017 to bridge the two films, and are on most home releases of 2049.
Philip K. Dick's novel is a separate timeline: it's set in San Francisco in 1992 (2021 in later editions), not Los Angeles in 2019.
Which version of Blade Runner to watch#
Seven cuts exist. The 1982 US theatrical version has a studio-imposed voice-over and a happy ending, which the 1992 Director's Cut removes while adding the unicorn dream. The Final Cut (2007) is the only version over which Scott had full control.
Our read: watch The Final Cut. Skip the voice-over version unless you're curious why Harrison Ford said he found it a nightmare.
Spoilers The Deckard question
Is Rick Deckard a replicant? Ridley Scott has said he imagined him as one. Harrison Ford disagrees, and screenwriter Hampton Fancher preferred it open. The clue is the unicorn: Deckard dreams of one in the Director's Cut, and Gaff leaves an origami unicorn at the end, which suggests Gaff knows Deckard's private memories.
Blade Runner 2049 doesn't settle it. In the sequel Deckard shows no replicant strength in fights, but Gaff calls him "retired" and Wallace hints he may have been designed to fall for Rachael. Our read: the film works better unanswered, and 2049's writers kept it that way on purpose.
Spoilers What happens in 2049
K, an LAPD blade runner, retires a Nexus-8 named Sapper Morton and finds a buried box with the remains of a replicant who died in childbirth. That means replicants can reproduce. K's boss orders the child found and killed. Wallace wants the secret behind it.
K comes to believe he's the child. He isn't: the child is a woman, Dr. Ana Stelline, a maker of replicant memories, and K gets Deckard to her before dying on the steps outside.
Spoilers Fixer's notes: the novel
Dick's book is strange and sad. Deckard hunts six Nexus-6 androids and wants real money so he can buy a real animal, since most animals died in a nuclear war. Rachael Rosen is an android from the Rosen Association in Seattle, not the Tyrell Corporation. There's no Roy Batty speech. There is a religion built on a man named Mercer, and a final scene with a toad.
In the novel, Deckard tests himself and is human, after a rogue police station run by androids claims he might not be. Read it after the film, as a different thing. More on the genre's roots at Best Cyberpunk Books, Cyberpunk Movies and the Cyberpunk Aesthetic. Pondsmith has said Blade Runner was the biggest push behind Cyberpunk 2020.