While Prime Video’s upcoming series was always an exciting prospect, the show’s revelation of what happened after Blade Runner 2049’s ending just made this Blade Runner franchise reboot unmissable. The Blade Runner franchise might be great, but no one could ever accuse the series of being too straightforward. When Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi thriller Blade Runner was first released, critics were confounded by the byzantine plot of the director’s masterpiece.
Since author Philip K. Dick’s original novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was arguably even more bizarre and ambiguous, it took multiple director’s cuts of Blade Runner before viewers fully understood what was going on in the trippy sci-fi mystery. However, by the time 2017’s sequel Blade Runner 2049 was released, the original movie’s ambiguity was no longer viewed as a bad thing. The Matrix movies and other ambitious sci-fi blockbusters, like Total Recall, had made trippy, ambiguous sci-fi a viable subgenre.
In the years since, hit sci-fi TV shows like Foundation, Silo, and Severance have deepened the average viewer’s appetite for complex sci-fi lore and world-building, meaning it is now time for the Blade Runner franchise to get even more ambitious with its next outing. The upcoming Prime Video series Blade Runner 2099 released its first full-length trailer recently, and this promo reveals a massive twist in the franchise chronology that occurred after Blade Runner 2049’s foreboding ending.
Blade Runner 2099 Reveals The Outcome Of 2049’s Teased Replicant Rebellion
Credit: MovieStillsDBBlade Runner 2099’s early synopsis revealed that the show would star Everything Everywhere All At Once’s Michelle Yeoh as Olwen, a Replicant reaching the end of her life cycle. Viewers could reasonably have assumed that Olwen would spend the series avoiding the grips of the titular blade runners, but the show’s first trailer reveals that something very different is afoot. After Blade Runner 2049 hinted at a potential Replicant rebellion, Blade Runner 2099 reveals that this rebellion ended in a full-blown war.
As if this didn’t upend the status quo of the series enough, the trailer then reveals that Replicants won the war against humans, so humans are now the underclass living beneath the cybernetic beings. With humans like Hunter Schafer’s Cora now acting as the underdogs, Replicants are in control of society in Blade Runner 2099’s story. Even in a landscape of TV dystopias like Hulu’s Paradise and Silo, this premise is unique and daring.
Blade Runner 2099 Is Flipping The Original Movie’s Premise
Throughout its first two movies, the Blade Runner franchise explored the potential humanity of Replicants in an era when they were hunted by humans and treated as sentient property. This automatically made them more sympathetic since viewers were primed to see the mistreated robots as victims of an unfair system that treated them as an oppressed underclass.
In contrast, Blade Runner 2099 now reintroduces the question of the sentience of Replicants in a setting where they are clearly the ones with all the power. After the Star Trek franchise wasted Yeoh in a disappointing role as a morally murky character, the star has a chance to shine as Olwen, exploring the nuances of a character who has valid issues with humans but who has also seemingly gained an iron grip over them in the show’s post-war society.
In an era when one could argue that, via job losses and environmental impacts, real-life AI is at war with humans, Blade Runner 2099’s story couldn’t be more timely. The show takes the ending of Blade Runner 2049 and uses it to completely invert Blade Runner‘s original setup, making Blade Runner 2099 one of the most compelling, innovative, and exciting sci-fi shows that is due to be released in the coming months.
