In the near future, Tyrell Corporation creates bioengineered humans made for slave labor
known as "replicants".
However the company collapses when their models Nexus-6 through 8 begin to revolt, demanding
to have the same rights as humans.
When the ecosystems fall and famine begins to spread all over the planet, industrialist
Wallace creates synthetic farming and saves humanity.
Then he buys what is left of Tyrell to make it his own corporation, which releases a new
model named Nexus-9, made to be more obedient.
Older models are hunted down and retired by special agents known as "blade runners".
The year is now 2049, and Agent K, a Nexus-9 model, is traveling outside Los Angeles to
capture a rogue replicant.
K finds Sapper in his farm and a fight ensues during which Sapper insults Nexus-9 models
and mentions that K wouldn't be killing his own kind if he had seen the miracle Sapper
saw.
K doesn't care and kills him anyway.
When K is about to leave, he sees some flowers precisely placed next to a tree and makes
a drone scan the area, discovering a chest buried underground and asking a forensic team
to come to dig it out.
When he returns to the office, K goes through the usual "baseline test" that replicants
must take to prove they're well and obedient, then he goes home.
K lives with Joi, a holographic woman he bought to keep him company.
She may be just a hologram, but K has become extremely fond of her and has decided to buy
her an "emanator", which allows Joi to roam freely and not be confined to the apartment
anymore.
They go together to the rooftop to hug under the rain, but their sweet moment is interrupted
by a message that lets K know they have the chest from the farm.
K rushes back to the station and learns the chest has a skeleton and some hair that belonged
to a woman that died during an emergency caesarian section around thirty years ago.
Then K notices there's a serial number on one of the bones, which means she wasn't human
but a replicant.
This is quite shocking because replicants aren't supposed to be able to reproduce.
Lieutenant Joshi thinks that the general public learning about replicants becoming so human-like
would tear civilization apart, so she orders K to burn the farm and find the baby to kill
them.
K is hesitant because if the baby was born then they're human, not a replicant, but Joshi
dismisses the idea.
On his way out, K realizes the baby was the miracle Sapper saw.
Moments later, K arrives at the Wallace Company to ask about the replicant, presenting the
serial number and some of her hair to identify her.
The employee explains this model is from before 2022, when an event known as the "blackout"
wiped out almost every digital file the company had, so they'll have to check if there are
any hard copy data left.
They find a file that indicates the replicant was "standard issue" and "unremarkable".
At that moment a replicant named Luv shows up and gives K access to an old audio recording
belonging to an experimental replicant named Rachael, who coincidentally went missing thirty
years ago.
This recording was made by a blade runner named Rick, and K notices he and Rachael seemed
very close.
Next K goes to a retirement home to interview an old man that used to work with Rick, but
all he knows it's that Rick retired and went away to be alone, nobody knows where.
Meanwhile Luv brings the latest model to Wallace for testing.
Wallace uses a special device to check all the replicant's vital functions and ends ups
killing her because she cannot procreate, which is something he's trying to program
to no avail.
He knows there's a child out there that was given birth by a replicant made by the old
Tyrell Company, and he orders Luv to find it so they can build a new future where replicants
are born instead of made.
Later in the evening, a mysterious figure pays a working girl named Mariette to approach
K while he dines and find out how much he knows about Sapper.
Unfortunately Mariette's efforts to flirt and make conversation are turned down by an
unamused K.
The next day, K returns to the farm to find more clues.
He notices the piano has two broken keys, and when he checks inside, he finds a tin
with a baby sock and a picture of a woman with a baby standing by the tree.
K goes to check the tree again and discovers the date 6.10.21 inscribed at the base.
These numbers make him have a vision of a house on fire and a kid holding a toy horse,
which disturbs him greatly.
Then K sets the farm on fire and leaves.
At that station, Luv sneaks inside the morgue and steals all the evidence from the farm
including the bones, killing the lab technician in the process.
In the evening, Joshi visits K to let him know about what happened at the station.
Joshi wonders if K has any memories, and he explains he does, but they were implanted,
therefore not real.
He shares a memory of him growing up in an orphanage and how the other kids would chase
him around to steal a wooden horse from him.
To avoid that, little K hid the toy in the furnace, and the other kids beat him for it.
The next day, K begins searching for babies born on the date he saw at the farm.
Joi keeps him company and teases him about the wooden horse story, reminding him that
the toy had the same date on it, but K thinks it's just a coincidence.
Since searching by dates provides no information, K begins searching by DNA and finds two kids
with the exact same DNA, which shouldn't be possible.
The files show the birth of two children that were sent to Morrillcole Orphanage: the girl
died from a genetic disorder, and the boy simply disappeared from the records.
Afterward, K and Joi go to San Diego to look for the orphanage.
On their way there, scavengers shoot his flying car down and cause him to crash.
K passes out and Joi tries to wake him up to no avail before she disappears due to malfunctions.
The scavengers come closer to force the door open and K wakes up just in time to defend
himself from an incoming attack.
K gets rid of some men and takes out his gun, only to notice there's a huge armed group
coming after him.
At that moment, something begins shooting at the group from the sky, saving K from the
potential fight.
It turns out this is Luv, who is controlling a drone remotely.
She wants K to keep going and find the child for her.
Eventually K finds the orphanage and the kids are eager to welcome him.
K talks to Mr. Cotton to ask for the records of the kids that came here thirty years ago,
and when Cotton at first refuses, K hits him to make him collaborate.
Then Cotton takes him to his office, and on their way there, K can't help noticing this
place looks a lot like the orphanage from his memory.
When Cotton finds the records, he discovers someone took out the pages of the year they
need.
Cotton leaves the office and K notices the ashtray is a horse, inspiring him to look
around the place.
He finds the furnace from the memory and when he looks inside, he discovers his wooden horse
is still there, causing him to have a breakdown because if the memories are real, he may be
human after all.
When K returns home, Joi is delighted to hear the story and begins calling him "Joe", claiming
to have always known he's special.
K wants to be sure that the theory of him being the miracle baby is real, and Jo advises
him to contact the person in charge of making the memories for the replicants.
The next day, K visits Doctor Ana, who shows him how she makes the memories that she later
sells to Wallace for his replicants.
Ana explains it's illegal to copy real memories to put inside replicants, everything she's
ever done was from scratch.
She accepts to use her machines to look at K's childhood memory, and with tears in her
eyes, she informs him they're the real thing.
K has an emotional outburst before leaving the building, where he's suddenly arrested
by his own coworkers.
Moments later, K is put through the Baseline examination, and his emotional state causes
him to fail it.
A furious Joshi brings K to her office to scold him for wasting his time, but K immediately
tells her he traveled far because he found the kid, who was being used as a regular worker,
and he's already retired him.
Joshi's glad to hear this and gives K forty-eight hours to put himself together before taking
the test again, but he makes him leave his badge and gun.
Afterward K goes home and discovers Joi hired Mariette for the night.
Since Joi can't touch anything, she puts her hologram on top of Mariette, and this allows
K to technically get frisky with her.
The next morning, Mariette hides a tracker in K's jacket.
She also finds the horse, but Joi makes her leave before she can take anything.
Moments later, Joi gets ready to leave the city since he knows the police will come for
him soon.
Joi wants to go with him and asks him to take her in the emanator, she also advises him
to delete the copy of her on his computer so the cops can't use her against him.
K protests because if something happens to the emanator he'd lose her forever, but Joi
convinces him he needs her, thus K wipes out his home system and breaks the emanator's
antenna.
At the Wallace Corporation, Luv notices this and immediately rushes out to K's apartment,
where she finds the broken antenna.
Then she goes to see Joshi, who explains she doesn't know where K is and that the case
is over.
Luv informs her K lied about killing the born replicant, but Joshi still refuses to share
more information and Luv kills her.
Afterward Luv uses the police computer to find K's location.
Meanwhile K sees a man at a pawn shop who can analyze the origins of the horse.
His machine indicates high levels of radiation as those found in Las Vegas.
When he makes it to the ruins of the old abandoned city, K's drone scans the area and finds a
pocket of heat in the distance.
K goes to investigate a finds a whole beehive near a series of dirty statues, making him
decide to enter the nearest abandoned building which turns out to be a casino.
After looking around for a while, K goes upstairs and is shocked to find a dog.
This distraction allows Rick to surprise him from behind with his gun.
Rick can tell K is a blade runner and doesn't believe him when K says he only wants to ask
some questions, so K jumps to the ground floor right before Rick shoots.
Rick goes looking for K and activates the hologram show in the casino scenario as a
distraction.
K jumps on him and after asking him to talk again, he lets Rick hit him repeatedly to
prove he means no harm.
Rick is convinced of K's intentions and takes him to the bar for a drink.
K guesses Rick and Rachael had a kid together, and Rick confirms it.
He explains that he never got to meet his own baby because of a plan: Rick taught Sapper
and the members of the Replicant Freedom Movement how to scramble the records and cover their
tracks, then he left Rachael with them and disappeared to avoid bringing his family trouble
with the police.
Upset by the memories, Rick leaves the bar, and K continues to look around, finding a
series of wooden animals.
Moments later while he's resting, K allows Joi to come out for a while.
This triggers something in a machine, and K immediately turns Joi off before Rick comes
to see what's happening.
They look outside with binoculars and discover a group of cars approaching the building.
The two of them run to get Rick's car to escape, but at that moment the room explodes.
Then Luv and her men come to kidnap Rick, whose attempts to defend himself fail.
K tries to fight too, but Luv kicks him down, accidentally activating Joi.
The hologram begs for mercy, but Luv destroys the emanator and leaves with her men, leaving
K for dead.
In the evening, a mysterious group rescues K and gets rid of the tracker.
When K wakes up, he finds himself with the Replicant Freedom Movement, which Mariette
is part of.
She promises him he can trust them and introduces him to their leader Freysa, who has a picture
of Rachael and the baby.
It was Freysa who assisted Rachael during the birth and helped her hide the baby.
Sapper let K kill him because he also had been part of their group and swore secrecy.
Freysa reveals that the baby had been a girl and she grew up to be Dr. Ana, but when they
hid the baby, they dressed her in blue to create confusion.
K is devastated to hear he isn't the miracle baby after all and realizes that when Rick
taught the group to scramble records, K got some of the baby's data, including her memories,
causing the fake DNA match he found in the computers.
Freysa knows that the existence of Ana proves replicants are more than slaves and she wants
the revolution to come for her people, so K should join them.
Because of him Wallace found Rick, and now it's K's duty to kill Rick before Wallace
uses him to find their group.
Meanwhile Rick wakes up in a room with Wallace, who reveals he has Rachael's skull and the
recording of her interview with Rick.
Wallace tries to imply that Rachael's feelings for Rick had been programmed by her creator
because he wanted to test if Rick could make a child with her, but Rick refuses to believe
it.
Determined to get information on the child, Wallace introduces Rick to a copy he made
of Rachael.
Rick is moved by the sight of his beloved but doesn't fall for it because they got the
eye color wrong, so Wallace makes Luv kill Rachael before reminding Rick he can hurt
him to make him talk.
Back to K, he's wandering the streets when he suddenly sees an ad for the Joi AI that
interacts with him to make him buy her.
K remembers all the lives that have been lost and decides to get revenge for his Joi.
He finds a car and follows Luv's vehicle, which is transporting Rick to Wallace's secret
building where he keeps all his pain machines.
K shoots Luv's car and causes it to crash against a dam.
Then K approaches the car as he opens fire, but Luv shoots back and they both get hit
by bullets.
While the water from the dam begins flooding the car, K and Luv start fighting hand to
hand, but Luv reveals a hidden knife and stabs K. Assuming she's won, Luv kisses K and leaves
him to die before returning to the car.
However she's attacked by surprise by K, who used the water to approach her without being
noticed.
After some struggle, K manages to kill Luv and then releases Rick from his bindings.
The two of them swim to K's car and watch Luv's vehicle sink.
K points out now everyone will think Rick is dead, so he's free to reunite with his
daughter.
Rick and K travel to Ana's labs, but before going inside, K gives Rick the horse.
While Rick enters the building and finally gets to meet his daughter, Rick sits on the
steps and watches the snow fall as he wonders if he'll survive his stab wound.