Major spoilers for Blade Runner 2049.

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Blade Runner 2049 is the rarest of things: a belated sequel that lives up to the original (read our full review here). And that's especially true with it's ending, which is as big and thoughtful as that of Ridley Scott's 1982 sci-fi classic. But why did it go down that way and what is it really saying?

The movie follows K, a new-age replicant operating as a titular cop hunting down rogue Nexus 8s who discovers a potentially world-changing secret: a replicant reproduced. His journey to solve the case and find the child takes him across America to trash-strewn San Diego (basically the city the day after Comic-Con) and a desolate, empty Las Vegas, during which time he begins to (erroneously) suspect he himself is the child. Along the way, he unites with original hero Deckard and, upon discovering a selfless replicant underground, sacrifices himself to reunite the former Blade Runner with his true daughter.

It's a big movie of a visual and thematic scale you rarely see, and the ending - indeed, the whole plot - is much more twisty and nuanced than a single paragraph summary can provide. Let's dive deep and take a look at what's really going on in Blade Runner 2049 and its ending.

Deckard and Rachael's Child (This Page)

What Happened With Deckard and Rachael After The Original?

Rick Deckard holding a gun in Blade Runner 2049

At the end of the 1982 film, Rick Deckard ran away with one-of-a-kind replicant Rachael, a rejection of his Blade Runner ways. Some versions of the film showed them ride off happily to the countryside, but the canon Final Cut left that fate ambiguous. Across Blade Runner 2049, we slowly learn what happened to them.

Related: Which Is The Best Version of Blade Runner?

After they ran away, the pair were hunted just as Deckard knew they would be and wound up involved with an underground group including Sapper Morton and one-eyed Freysa. This gave them a potential link to the Black Out, a cataclysmic event where a replicant rebellion shut down the Earth's technology for a period of ten days and wiped most computer records, removing any trace of their artificial origins.

Prior to that happening, the pair had a child together. Rachael died in childbirth and was buried under the dead/fake tree by Sapper's house, but the baby survived thanks to the former medic. By this point, however, Deckard had already gone as part of the plan to keep the child safe - it's immediately understood her very existence would change the entire discussion on replicant rights (this is the miracle Sapper mentions to K in the opening), making her a serious target - and hides out in a deserted Las Vegas even post-Black Out.

How Could Rachael Have Child If She's A Replicant?

Rachael and Deckard in Blade Runner

The biggest question arising from this is how Rachael is able to have a child if she's a replicant. This is kept purposely vague in the movie, but is intrinsically allowed by the way they're designed; while in the original script of the 1982 film, replicants were meant to be proper automatons with nuts and bolt innards, by the finished movie they'd become flesh-and-blood, a purposeful blurring of the lines between man and machine.

From what 2049 teases, it appears that Tyrell, the original creator of replicants, designed Rachael this specific way. She was a sort of prototype Nexus 8 - presumably with a natural lifespan - and, evidently, he developed a working reproductive system for her. It's not clear if any others have one, although given the child is treated as such a miracle it's safe to say she was the only one.

Whatever the case, the baseline technology was lost with Tyrell's eye-gouging death and the events of the Black Out, meaning nobody knew explicitly of the potential or method.

Who Was Deckard and Rachael's Child?

Memory Creator in Blade Runner 2049

After Rachael's death, it was decided that the child needed to be protected, and so the underground hid her at the "orphanage" - a sweatshop in San Diego where she could pass as a real human. While here, the horse incident happened - the child was chased by bullies and hid a wooden horse with their birthdate in a disused furnace.

After that, she and some stand-in or adoptive parents tried to take her off-world, but due to an autoimmune deficiency (perhaps as a result of her hitherto unheard of origins) she was refused travel and kept quarantined in a memory-creation bank outside the L.A. city limits. Quite how and why she ended up here is another vagueity in the film, but it's possible she was placed there as a form of protection. Regardless, by 2049 she's working on all manner of artistic memories as a subcontractor for the Wallace Corporation, going under the name of Ana Stelline.

Niander Wallace holds up his hand in his chamber in Blade Runner 2049

What Did Wallace Want?

The primary "antagonist" of Blade Runner 2049 (although we'll see that term is as loose as it was in the original) is Niander Wallace, a serial industrialist with Alexander-level ambitions. After the collapse of the Tyrell Corporation in the 2020s following the death of its creator and the prohibition of replicants in light of the Black Out, he brought up the company as well as all its patents and ideological rights. Developing a new wave of seemingly-controllable replicants, in 2036 he was able to force restrictions to be relaxed and begin mass production again. Alongside artificial creation, he's a colonist, helping expand the off-world expansion of the human race onto nine separate planets.

Related: Blade Runner 2049: Should You Watch The Prequel Shorts?

His goal is simple: power. Alexander the Great was said to have wept when he discovered the stars were worlds he could not conquer - Wallace, who's already saved the world once with his artifical crops and has building towering over the once giants of Tyrell's, wants to do just that. And the method of doing so is replicants; he views them explicitly as slaves - a disposable, less-than-human workforce. This is reflected in Luv, a replicant who never once escapes being a dutiful henchman - right through to her "I'm the best" final words. She has her own, artificial glass ceiling.

Wallace's barrier to his dream is, like any massive company, scaling. He just can't increase production to match his high demand. This is where the child comes in. If replicant reproduction is possible, then Wallace has the means to create a near infinite army. However, due to all records of Rachael's creation being lost and her death remaining a mystery, he has no way to replicate it. He's driven in the film to find the child and crack the mystery after K draws a potential solution to his attention. At first he tries the bones, but once that fails follows K to Deckard; while Rick by design doesn't know what happened to the child, the chain of people he does could lead Wallace to it.

The irony, of course, is that the child has been right under his nose the entire time.

What Does The Resistance Want?

The Resistance in Blade Runner 2049

The other big force present in the world is what we'll call the Resistance; an underground group of replicants working for freedom from the prejudiced society. Or, more targeted, a slave uprising aiming to overthrow Wallace.

They're an evolution of the group that helped Deckard and Rachael and later caused the Black Out, still led by Freysa. Their driving ideology is a mixed one of selflessness and identity; an appreciation of the individual but an understanding that their cause is bigger than them. They're powered by belief - in both the child of Rachael existing and the symbolic longing that it could be them - which, in their eyes, makes them human. Evidently, everything they represent is the opposite of Wallace.

We're almost dealing with a Biblical allegory. 2049 is full of nods and references to Christian doctrine, but on a macro scale both sides are powered by traditional yet opposing religious structures; the creator sees himself as God, even calling his creations "angels", while the Resistance are the pilgrims trying to form Israel. The child is thus a prophet - except not the son of God, but the son of man. It's a reclaiming of the myth.

Where Does The Ending Leave This Fight?

Wallace's Office in Blade Runner 2049

The state of Wallace and the Resistance at the end of the film may just be 2049's version of the original's defining question of if Deckard is a replicant. It could almost be sequel set-up if the movie's story wasn't emotively resolved; instead, their conflict fades into the background.

As the credits roll, Wallace has lost Deckard and by extension any way to find the child - K is dead and Deckard is likewise presumed deceased in the sinking spinner - but the Resistance also didn't have K kill Deckard to end the chain to her; the final twenty minutes are powered by K grasping their ideology, but apart from their official structure. There's an obvious moral right in this war, but true peace comes from something else. Which brings us to our protagonist.

What Is The Point Of K's Journey?

K is, at the start, a good replicant. He works for the LAPD under a cloud of prejudice but gets on with his job - perfect test scores, efficient record, content home life. It's only when the creeping suspicion he's Deckard's child enters his mind and he begins to suspect his supposedly implanted memories are real that things begin to crack. He fully believes this new, alternate truth. But, no, he is just a replicant who has been - by presumed chance (although there's a possibility it's part of a bigger conspiracy) - built with memories of Deckard's daughter. It's an embodiment of the Resistance plot.

His really representative arc, though, is the love story. Joi is an artificial intelligence made to give an artificial human a sense of living; a construct to love the unloved in a society so removed from itself. We see her evolve from an in-flat projection to a perpetual A.I., and their relationship grows alongside that. The question of if she's truly cognitive is an underlying worry throughout - does she really care for K or is she simply programmed that way? - which serves as an extended mirror of the original; we're having the same debate that Deckard had over Rachael. And because the movie hinges on their relationship and child, we're left to seriously consider that Joi's a real, aware being with genuine emotion.

Her "death" - the destruction of her portable home and with it that consciousness - stings because of that; she loves K, in its own way a miracle of life. Indeed, the subsequent realization of that is what powers him to save the day; their shared emotion is something that cannot rationally exist and yet he feels it. He thinks nay knows she was alive, and so she was.

His story is about the life-giving power of love (to both him and his partner); his subsequent death is obviously tragic, but it comes with a soul. He's done a good thing for a good reason and arrives at the end - something that is itself a proof of life - with a sense of closure. Crucially, though, his final moments are scored to the original's iconic track "Tears in Rain", which not only makes for a tear-jerking end, but also a realigning one.

K is Roy Batty

Roy Batty in Blade Runner

Because he's a stoic Blade Runner unexpectedly thrust into a plot bigger than himself, we're initially meant to view K as a Deckard parallel. He's our protagonist, after all. However, there's a different character who he's actually closer to: Roy Batty.

Batty was the "antagonist" of the original film, a rogue Nexus 6 who rebelled on his off-world colony and returned to Earth in a bid to be gifted more life from his creator. Things didn't go well; his team of replicants were slowly picked off by a dragged-out-of-retirement Deckard and he eventually discovered that by design he couldn't escape his four-year lifespan. In anger he killed Tyrell and with his final minutes entered into a brutal showdown with Deckard that culminated in him saving his combatant and accepting his fate; he laments how his life and its unique experiences are lost, but in his last moments comes to terms with it by way of the incomparable Tears in Rain soliloquy.

What's so striking about Roy is that while he's framed as the bad guy, his villainy really is all in the presentation. His motivation is survivalist but not selfish. He has an altruism for his team and fully understandable motivations. To call him a good guy may be too much and he's definitely got a maniacal, manipulative side, yet framed in a world where he's hunted, that's a product of surroundings. In short, Roy Batty was right.

Even though Batty isn't mentioned once, Blade Runner 2049 underscores that. K is the compliment to Roy, fitting the role of the tragic figure finally finding their place in the world and accepting their existence in death. Telling the story from his perspective - and in the end even using the same music to hammer the point home - makes an unavoidable conclusion about the universal replicant humanity, how it's powered by the self, and that love is what ultimately achieves it.

The Deckard Replicant Question - Resolved?

Blade Runner's ultimate unanswered question is whether Deckard is a replicant. In fact, the original movie is so ambiguous and subtle in its handling that the prospect is not even treated as some seismic twist, but a slow wearing away of expectations. There are explicit parallels between Deckard and the artificial humans he's hunting, an obsession with photos (ones that are too old to be of real significance), the dangling question of if he's ever taken the Voight-Kampff test and a shot where his eyes appear to glow replicant red. In later cuts of the film, Scott added in a dream/vision sequence of a unicorn, making the final origami piece a strong hint that it was an implant. Still, the debate has raged for 35 years. Some, like Ford, believe Deckard is human. Others, like Scott, are firm he's a replicant.

Blade Runner 2049 purposely doesn't provide an explicit answer. In the sequel's narrative, it doesn't really matter; the miracle lies in Rachael reproducing, not Deckard. Gaff clearly believes he is, maintaining the integrity of the original ending (he placed the unicorn), while Deckard seems to be conflicted; when we reunite with him, he's leaning towards believing it, yet remains ultimately unsure (mirrored in his passive care about if his dog is real or not). The Resistance are the same, fitting of how much of their purpose is the literal not knowing.

Related: Blade Runner 2049 Has One Strange Plot Hole

The film actually uses this debate for an emotional climax. Wallace posits a popular theory that Deckard was created - or brought to life - by Tyrell for the events of the original movie. That's traditionally been taken by fans as being to hunt down Batty, but the focus on love makes it more linked to Rachael; it's suggested Deckard was inserted to provide someone to fall for her. Regardless of truth (it doesn't appear that Niander actually believes this, he just wants to pacify Deckard and find the child), the important thing is that Deckard rejects that and the recreation of Rachael to maintain his line. It's the answer that we've known since 1982 made into a key thematic point: Deckard's state of being doesn't matter as much as his actions - something the ending hammers home.

The Ending Makes Deckard Human

Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard looking angry in Blade Runner 2049

In the film's climactic battle, K saves Deckard from drowning at the last minute, finally freeing him from the 35 years of running and hiding; he's presumed dead and so now can finally live. In Vegas, Deckard essentially made himself a replicant regardless of the truth - he lived the life of the hunted - but once you remove that stigma, any classification washes away. And as we now know there is no discernible biological distinction between humans and replicants (except for the eye code), when you delete that classification, they become indistinguishable human.

This is the movie's evolution of Batty's proof of life: K's sacrifice, as we've discussed, has him find meaning in love and duty; Deckard gets a similar freedom, only with a happy ending. He's "dead" and so becomes reborn and able to live on. And it's all for his daughter. Being a descendant of Rachael yet biologically conceived, Stelline blurs the line between human and replicant in a literalizing of what the questions around him did figuratively (something made more pertinent by her shared memories with K).

It's meta-textually powerful too. As Deckard meets Stelline, the plot device a person. All the Wallace and Resistance ephemera falls away as he finally gets to see her, highlighting the individual. And with it, the movie's true meaning.

Blade Runner 2049 Is About Life Coming From Personal Belief and Love

K and Joi in Blade Runner 2049

Deckard's ending brings together the two key themes we've talked about throughout: belief and love, and how these are the key to living. They unfold together, brought in by outside aspects but given body by K's arc. And, in applying them to the hero of the original, 2049 is answering the original's fundamental question.

Read More: Blade Runner 2049 Changes The Original Movie

Now, belief and its associated allegory isn't as restrictive or conceited as in other recent films exploring the topic like mother! or Alien: Covenant. Although the Resistance has religious parallels, the "belief" they open up is broader; it's about having a sense of purpose and awareness of yourself. This makes it go hand-in-hand with love as a personal and selfless emotion that powers good.

K's arc completes this by itself in a tragic way - he finds solace in it - but with Deckard being the culmination of these themes, the film ends on a moment of pure optimism - now and for the past 30 years. We see that his real arc in the original was the romance with Rachael; the positive influence that had him, not the emotional breaking of killing near-human beings.

In 1982, Blade Runner asked what it is to be human. In 2017, Blade Runner 2049 answered what it is to live.

Next: The Original Blade Runner is Not Overrated

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