Blade Runner Replaces 2 Main Characters In New Prime Video Sequel

While Prime Video’s Blade Runner 2099 is set to replace both of the sci-fi franchise’s protagonists, the upcoming Blade Runner show also seems set to flip the entire perspective of the cyberpunk series on its head. It can be easy to forget just how divisive cyberpunk was when the literary and cinematic subgenre first emerged in the 1980s. Nowadays, cyberpunk aesthetics can be found in plenty of popular video games, novels, movies, and TV shows.

However, when author Philip K. Dick’s genre-blending sci-fi noir novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was released, the book’s arrival split critics. Like William Gibson’s Neuromancer, soon to become an ambitious AppleTV series, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep confounded as many reviewers as it impressed. While immersive and inventive, the book was also considered confusing and byzantine by many.

Its 1982 movie adaptation, director Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, suffered the same fate. Since Blade Runner is now viewed as a classic of the genre, it can be all to easy to forget that critics were largely left cold by the cyberpunk thriller when it was originally released. Dennis Villeneuve’s 2017 sequel Blade Runner 2049 fared better with reviewers but still struggled at the box office, leading to a long wait for its follow-up. Now, Prime Video’s series Blade Runner 2099 is set to continue the franchise’s tradition with another wild, ambitious change.

Blade Runner 2099 Is Replacing Both Harrison Ford’s Deckard & Ryan Gosling’s K

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Like Netflix’s underrated cyberpunk series Altered Carbon, Blade Runner 2099 is set in the far future. However, the spinoff is far from a straightforward continuation of the story established in Villeneuve’s sequel, with the new show dropping both of Blade Runner 2049’s primary protagonists, Harrison Ford’s Deckard and Ryan Gosling’s K, in favor of Hunter Schafer’s Cora and Michelle Yeoh’s Olwen.

Set after a Replicant uprising that saw the synthetic humans overthrow their human overlords, Blade Runner 2099 takes place in a world where humans are now the underclass and the Replicants run things. The show’s synopsis reportedly sees Olwen, a Replicant Blade Runner who is coming to the end of her lifespan, join with her secretly human partner, Cora, to track down rogue Replicants.

This plot will sound somewhat familiar for fans of the original movies, but with a few changes that make a major difference to the story of the series as a whole. Although Yeoh’s character is the new main Blade Runner, it seems like Schafer’s character will be the show’s true protagonist. While some sci-fi classics like Wild Palms focus on conflicted human characters interacting with technology filled with both promise and threat, Schafer’s Cora inhabits an interesting new space in Blade Runner 2099’s world.

Deckard & K’s Replacement Isn’t Necessarily Who You Think

Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 always played with audience expectations when it came to the true identity of each movie’s protagonists. Without giving away too many spoilers, suffice to say that both movies keep the question of who is and is not a Replicant deliberately ambiguous until their respective endings. In contrast, Blade Runner 2099 has already admitted that Olwen is a Replicant and Cora isn’t.

However, the fact that the Replicants are the ones in power in Blade Runner 2099’s story may explain this change. The show is set to upend the entire power structure of the franchise to date, and introduce a slew of new moral and ethical questions to the Blade Runner universe as a result.

This, even if viewers go in knowing that Cora is a human and Olwen is a Replicant, it will still take time for Blade Runner 2099 to reveal what this actually means in the sequel’s context. Whether the Replicants rule with an iron fist or are more benevolent and understanding than humans were toward them when they were in power remains to be seen as Blade Runner 2099 takes the existing Blade Runner story and flips it on its head.