‘Blade Runner 2099’ Creator Sees ‘Silver Linings’ in a World Run by Replicants

Silka Luisa, showrunner of Prime Video's limited series Blade Runner 2099, spoke on Wednesday at the WIRED World Fair event in Miami about how she approached the well-known sci-fi franchise. The show continues the story of Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner and Denis Villeneuve's 2017 sequel Blade Runner 2049, and it premieres on November 25.

Replicants in charge

The earlier films featured humanoids known as replicants. In the new series, set 80 years after the original and 50 years after 2049, replicants are the ones making the decisions, while humans do the grunt work that replicants once performed.

The story follows Olwen, a replicant Blade Runner played by Michelle Yeoh, who hunts rogue agents. She is teamed up with Cora, played by Hunter Schafer, a human pretending to be a replicant in order to survive.

A different take on dystopia

Luisa said that over the last couple of decades "the present caught up to the films," as megacorporations and environmental collapse became real. Her aim is to show a post-revolution world rather than focus on the fears people live with today.

According to her, the series is not purely dystopian but shows the "silver linings" of a world run by replicants. It picks up the environmental theme from Villeneuve's film, depicting replicants who use skills gained while working for humans to pull the planet back from ecological collapse. "They're able to rehabilitate the planet," Luisa said.

Action role for Schafer

Schafer said the action-hero role was new to her and physically demanding. For the fight scenes she received help from Yeoh, whom she called a master and said she felt lucky to have as a scene partner.

Replicants and AI

Luisa stressed that replicants are not the same as the AI bots people are fixated on in 2026. In her words, they are more akin to humans, and she does not have the same sympathy for AI.