Despite a middling performance at the box office, Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 was regarded as one of the best films of 2017 and a worthy sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 original.

In March 2022, the sci-fi sequel made its way onto Netflix in the US and quickly rose up the streaming service’s top 10 list of trending films and shows.

As such, Blade Runner 2049 has attracted plenty of new viewers who may not be familiar with the wider world and chiefly the roles that blade runners and the antagonistic replicants play throughout the film.

What are blade runners?

In the Blade Runner franchise, the titular blade runners are a type of police officer who is given the task of tracking down and killing rogue replicants.

Ryan Gosling’s Officer K and Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard both serve as blade runners in the 2049 and original films respectively.

In order to discern whether someone was a replicant, blade runners would utilise something known as a Voight-Kampff test, asking a subject a series of questions and measuring their emotional response, to deduce if they are human or not.

Once a replicant was identified, the blade runner pursuing them would ‘retire’ them; the use of the word ‘retire’ suggesting that replicants are little more than property.

What are replicants?

Replicants are genetically bioengineered humans.

Despite being designed and built, you’re unlikely to find wiring or robotics in a replicant as they were created using organic material, meaning that the only way to tell a replicant from a human was to examine its emotional response to a Voight-Kampff test.

Created by the Tyrell Corporation, replicants were designed to be a slave workforce and many models – such as the Nexus-6s – were modified to have their strength and agility improved to suit their desired purpose.

Due to how early replicants were created, they were often unstable and were prone to turning on their human masters – thus requiring a blade runner to hunt them down.

However, as the models of replicants advanced, they continued to be improved upon and stabilised by implanting memories from actual humans.

This meant that newer models of replicants, notably the Nexus-7 onwards, would be almost impossible to detect using the Voight-Kampff test, necessitating that the latest models had their serial number imprinted on their eye – as seen with Dave Bautista’s Sapper Morton in 2049.

Can you be both a replicant and a blade runner?

Yes, in Blade Runner 2049, Ryan Gosling’s Officer K (short for his serial number KD6-3.7) is both a replicant and a blade runner, hunting down others of his own kind.

He is regarded highly by his superior officer, Lt. Joshi, but is despised by other human members of the LAPD, being spat at and called a ‘skin job’ by another officer and also has ‘skinner’ written on his apartment door.

On top of that, one of the longest-running mysteries in the franchise is whether or not Rick Deckard is also a replicant.

It has never been overtly confirmed in either film but there are several possible hints that suggest that Deckard could well be a replicant – including comments from director Ridley Scott.

One of these hints comes from a very brief shot of Deckard’s eyes glowing in the original film as that’s something seen in the eyes of replicants.

While another hint comes from a fellow blade runner, Officer Gaff, who leaves origami figures for Deckard linked to what he’s been thinking or dreaming about, suggesting that Deckard’s memories have been implanted.

Blade Runner 2049 is available to stream on Netflix in the US after being added to the streaming service in March 2022.

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