Blade Runner 2049 is a cultural phenomenon. This follow-up to Ridley Scott’s enigmatic 1982 original did not fare too well at the box office, however. In fact, 2049 was declared a failure. Yet, the film went on to win awards for its technical ingenuity and masterful narration. Although Scott did not return to helm 2049, Dennis Villeneuve never made his absence felt. His creative instincts, vision for the story, and penchant for world-building made Blade Runner 2049 one of the most immersive and haunting cinematic experiences of this decade.
Ryan Gosling look over the leading man duties from Harrison Ford and did a stellar job. Most of the new elements were largely accretive in nature and only enhanced Blade Runner’s extended universe. It is highly unusual for new personnel to come in like this and match the original toe to toe. But the 2049 team conjured up an unprecedented effort.
Blade Runner 2049 Plot Summary
The sequel is set roughly thirty years into the future after the events of the first film. The year is 2049; Wallace Corporation, led by its genius proprietor Niander Wallace (Jared Leto), has saved humanity with their synthetic farming. Tyrell Corporation, who made the bioengineering marvels called “blade runners” is no longer in existence. Wallace has taken their work a notch further and developed a new series of Nexus-9s replicants, whose sense of servitude is even deeper and intense.
These new replicants are tasked with hunting and “retiring” the older series of replicants. K (Gosling) is sent to kill a Nexus-8 replicant, Sapper Morton (Dave Batistuta). Sapper has now turned to farming and lives a solitary life. He talks about having seen a “miracle” that would change the fortunes of their species forever. Before leaving, K spots a box buried deep in the ground. His superior officer in the LAPD, Lieutenant Joshi (Robin Wright), orders the retrieval of the box by another team.
In this ending explainer, we delve deep into the hidden symbols and meaning of Blade Runner 2049, including answering all your burning questions about the plot.
Whose bones are found in the box at Sapper’s farm?
After every mission where they experience trauma, the replicants are asked to come for a “baseline test.” This is administered to ensure that the replicants are not rogue and still loyal to the force. The box is revealed to be an ossuary of a female replicant buried 30 years ago who died in childbirth. This woman is actually Rachael, Rick Deckard’s (Harrison Ford) wife, whom we meet later in the movie – once again. This is the “miracle” that Sapper was referring to. She had a child, even though she was a replicant, something that spooked Joshi.
If this information leaks, it could spark a potential war between humans and replicants. It would also give the latter a sense of belongingness since replicant reproduction has been a troubling mystery until now. K goes to the Earth HQs of Wallace Corporation to get the name of the child. There, he meets Luv (Sylvia Hoeks), Wallace’s personal assistant and his enforcer. Their records do not have much information about the child, since she was born pre-Blackout.
Why did Wallace kill the newborn replicant?
Wallace has been chasing the reproduction of the replicants all his life to further consolidate his position as the “master of the universe.” A brutal scene shows him interacting with a newborn replicant in Luv’s presence. It is a female and Wallace is only interested in one thing: her reproductional capacity. His maniacal pursuit of it has made him so indifferent to the value of life that he kills the newborn replicant when he discovers she doesn’t have the capacity to carry a child.
K revisits Sapper’s farm to carry out Joshi’s instructions of erasing everything. He burns the place down but not before finding valuable clues as to the identity of the replicant child. He finds a box with a sock in the piano and a photo of Rachael under the tree. K also finds a carving at the foot of the giant tree outside with the date “6/10/21.” This is presumably the birthday of the offspring. In an intimate moment with Joi, his artificial intelligence companion, K tells her about a recurring memory he has of his childhood.
In the incident, a group of boys tried to take his wooden horse toy. He hides it in a dark furnace since it is all he has. They beat him but he tells them nothing. More sensationally, the date carved under the horse is the same one as the replicant child’s birthday. This surely cannot be just a coincidence.
Is K the child of Deckard and Rachael?
Although it seemed likely at this point of the film, K is not the “miracle child.” K remarks to Joi that “I have memories but they aren’t real. They’re implants.” But the memories are synthesized by a memory maker, who might use real memories of people as her canvas. K peruses the records at the station. A boy and a girl were born on this date. Both were processed at the Morrill Cole orphanage. The girl died of a genetic disorder (Galatians syndrome) and the boy disappeared.
But one of the records is fake since two people can’t have the exact same DNA. K goes over the San Diego District. The orphanage is situated near the Municipal Waste Processing site. K’s vehicle is attacked by scavengers and he is knocked unconscious. But he is duly saved by Luv, who attacks the scavengers with a drone. She wants him to find the child to achieve Wallace’s dream. He explores the place and finds Mister Cotton instructing small children to pick scrap in the orphanage.
Cotton shows him the journal of records but the relevant pages are all torn off. K goes towards the dark furnace as recalled in his memories in the orphanage. His hand reaches out for the horse. And he finds it wrapped up in a cloth.
What does Ana tell K about his memories?
Dr Ana Stelline is the best memory-maker around. She is immuno-compromised and can’t escape her safe space – a cage in her facility. Ana is a subcontractor, one of Wallace’s suppliers. She tells K that the memories she uses are a mix of fake and real, even though it is illegal to use real memories. So how do you tell the difference? When she sees a stand, Ana can recall real memories with feelings and real human instincts. All real memories are chaotic and imperfect. She investigates his memory and starts crying. It is a real memory but it is not K’s.
Joshi gets K arrested at Ana’s facility. An anomaly is detected in his baseline test – he fails the test. Joshi reprimands him. But K says he found the kid. He lies that he killed the boy. She buys it and offers to help him out of the station. But if K doesn’t get himself back on track within 48 hours and gets his next baseline test right, he will be retired.
Luv, who has killed Coco, takes the bones from the LAPD in her bid to pursue the replicant child.
Why does Mariette follow K into his apartment?
Unbeknownst to K, Mariette is not a doxie but a replicant who is a member of their freedom moment. She has been instructed by Freysa, its leader, to learn what K knows about Sapper and the replicant child. But Joi has also invited her into the house without knowing this. Joi wants to be “real” for K and wants to be with him through her. She syncs up with Mariette and makes love with K.
The next morning, she slips a bug into his jacket. Joi asks K to delete her from the console so that the LAPD doesn’t have access to her memories when they come to the apartment. The moment he breaks the antenna, Luv is alerted. She goes to his apartment. K is told that the horse has traces of Tritium, which is only available in one place. Joshi reassures Luv that K has destroyed the boy. But she isn’t convinced and kills Joshi. Luv gets his location using Joshi’s computer – Deckard’s hiding place.
He goes inside the building fixed right in the middle of the deserted lands and finds Deckard. Although he is suspicious at first, Deckard eventually trusts K and discusses his daughter with him. Deckard didn’t get to meet his child. His task was to teach Rachael and her how to evade systems and disappear into thin air. The Blackout cleared everything after which he had no chance of finding his child.
Blade Runner 2049 Ending Explained:
Luv arrives at the location with her team and takes Deckard captive. She also destroys Joi’s mobile emanator and her system, forever erasing her from memory. Luv and her men fly away with Deckard. Freysa and the Doxies find K, who is left to die, through the transmitter Marietta planted in his jacket. Freysa fought with Sapper at Calantha. She even witnessed the birth of the child.
Freysa hints at a revolution of replicants to set their species free. She orders K to kill Deckard so that he doesn’t lead Wallace to them. Freysa also reveals that the child was a girl, so it was definitely not K. That child is Ana.
Deckard and Wallace meet at the HQ. He wants to know the location of the child. Deckard has kept himself bereft of any information that they can access. Wallace gifts him a replica of Rachael. But Deckard says her eyes were green and Luv kills the replica. Wallace threatens that he has resources off-world to make him talk.
While Deckard is being transported by Luv to be tortured, K intercepts the entourage. K and Luv have a duel, where the former emerges the last man standing but is wounded badly. K and Deckard make it out alive. Deckard will be presumed dead and is now free to meet his daughter for the first time.
K takes him to Ana’s sterile chamber and gives him her wooden horse. K succumbs to his injuries lying on the stairs outside. The movie ends with a glimpse of Deckard seeing his daughter for the first time with tears in his eyes.
What does K’s sacrifice symbolize?
Sacrificing himself was the most human thing K could do. By choosing to protect the human connection between Deckard and Ana, K liberated himself and died a free man, emancipated from the ruins of cold-blooded slavery. He was no longer a “skin job” born out of artificiality. He said previously in the film, “To be born is to have a soul.”
Freysa was right when she mentioned that the replicants are “more human than they think.” Such was the mental and psychological restraint on them by Wallace that most replicants could not freely think about their existence. All they had to do was follow orders and showcase exemplary servitude. In this intense order following, they lost sight of their belongingness in the new world.
K’s journey is one of self-discovery. His actions in the latter half of the film indoctrinate free will and the benefit of a consciousness which had to be acquired by the replicants.
Blade Runner’s commentary about social inequity, the greed of corporations, and the terrifying indifference of the cinematic universe is well established. Change is the order of things. Evolution always finds a place and replaces the old system with a new one.
K became Joe in a sense wherein he was able to take decisions on his own. His will was guided by his own agency to feel and relate to things around him. Emotions like empathy and compassion also came to him when he sacrificed himself so that Deckard could be with Ana. All of this was a consequence of K embracing a self-anointed identity that was taken away from him when he was “manufactured.”
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