The ending of the original Blade Runner has been hotly debated by fans for years.
A combination of vague hints from director Ridley Scott and all kinds of studio meddling
resulted in viewers being split on just what we were supposed to pull from the end of the
1982 sci-fi film.
And now that Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 has arrived, there's plenty more dystopian
ambiguity for viewers to pick apart for years to come.
Here are our best guesses and interpretations as to what exactly — probably — the ending
of the film really meant, and where the franchise might go from here…or if it'll go anywhere
at all.
And it should go without saying: major spoilers ahead.
Decoy Boy
There's a lot in Blade Runner 2049 that simply goes unsaid, meaning that untangling and unpacking
some of the plot's details and revelations is going to be a little fuzzy — just like
the original.
But one thing seems pretty clear by the time the credits roll: Ryan Gosling's character,
K, is the decoy Replicant made of Deckard and Rachael's daughter, Ana.
We can glean from the clues K follows throughout the story that there is a decoy, and before
the big revelation near the end we're meant to think that the decoy was a girl, and was
dead.
Sure, the leader of the Replicant rebellion, Freysa, never points her finger at K and says,
"you, guy with the weird face — you're definitely the Replicant decoy."
Still, we can piece together just enough information to know who K is, and what role he was always
meant to play.
K was implanted with Ana's memory of the wooden horse and the orphanage, so if anyone followed
the clues to find the missing baby, they'd end up finding K — the boy that was listed
as alive.
Genuine Joi
Blade Runner's whole schtick has always been asking about what it means to be human.
What defines life?
Is a person a person only if he or she comes from standard babymaking procedures?
Are we more than the sum of our biology?
But in all the excitement of meeting K, unearthing Deckard in Vegas, and lots of punching in
the rain, one character's journey into humanity should definitely not be overlooked.
Joi, played by Ana de Armas, is K's holographic girlfriend, an artificial intelligence he
bought from the big robot store.
As the story progresses, we see Joi transform into a true companion for K, who even says
she loves him right before her death.
"We have to go."
"I'm coming with you."
Later on, K sees an advertisement for Joi, and he starts to doubt whether or not she
— and her feelings — were ever real at all.
And those are the very same kinds of questions he's asking about himself.
Both movies ask us to take K and the other Replicants' quest for humanity and personhood
as something that's plausibly attainable — despite the fact that they're made in a factory and
implanted with memories and programmed.
And if we do, then we have to also believe that Joi is capable of the same growth as
an actual person, regardless of whether or not she's got an actual body.
What's in a name?
It's impossible to look at the names of two of Blade Runner 2049's most prominent female
characters — Joi and Luv — and not see them as highly symbolic.
Joi was something that K longed for, and could only find as a prepackaged product that he
could buy.
Ultimately, Joi was something he could only see and hear, but never actually touch.
And by the end, his Joi is crushed by Luv.
And Luv, as we see throughout the film, is both beautiful and cruel.
By the end, K literally grapples with Luv and drowns her, all to save Deckard and reunite
him with his daughter.
For Deckard's love to live, he has to destroy Luv himself.
The Deckard question
If you thought Blade Runner 2049 would settle the Deckard debate once and for all…well,
think again.
In terms of the original Blade Runner, director Ridley Scott says Deckard is a replicant,
while actor Harrison Ford says he isn't.
And even though the various non-theatrical cuts of the film heavily imply that Deckard's
memories are implants, we're never told for sure.
Well, don't find out in Blade Runner 2049 either — but there are plenty of insinuations
and implications that let viewers speculate.
For instance, Deckard tells K
"We were being hunted!"
That certainly implies that they were two rogue skin-jobs on the run.
But the fact that he loved Rachael and then went and fathered her robo-baby is also enough
to make anyone — replicant, human, or otherwise — stay in hiding.
Wallace, too, suggests that Deckard was programmed to meet and fall in love with Rachael so they
could create a baby together.
But we never get confirmation that this was what happened in the original movie, and we're
left to keep speculating.
But it's better that we don't know for sure whether Deckard is a Replicant.
After all, the main point of these films is to ask the question of what it means to be
human, right?
It's not really necessary to be told about Deckard's origins.
It's far more interesting and symbolically effective to leave it ambiguous.
In fact, answering the question would kinda ruin the movie, wouldn't it?
Another sequel?
They Repli-can't resist
If this latest sequel performs well — and its excellent reviews seem to indicate it
will — there's no reason to think the studio won't hop to work on making a third movie.
One of the best aspects of this film was the way it continued to build the world we only
saw hints of in Ridley Scott's original.
And leaving Deckard and his daughter Ana alive at the end of the film means Wallace could
still find and capture them for his nefarious ends.
Plus, we've got a whole Replicant rebellion waiting to kick off.
Better reserve your ticket for Blade Runner 3: Revenge of the Replicants now, before they
sell out.
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