The world of Blade Runner will be redefined in Prime Video's upcoming series, Blade Runner 2099, as depicted in the first official trailer released at San Diego Comic-Con. The trailer signals a significant departure from previous installments, with showrunner Silka Luisa explaining that the narrative takes place after a successful replicant uprising, resulting in humans becoming second-class citizens.
"We already fought a war, we lost," states the trailer's opening, setting a grim tone for the year 2099. This contrasts sharply with the 1982 film, Blade Runner, and its 2017 sequel, Blade Runner 2049, where humanity maintained dominance over bioengineered replicants. The new series explores a future where this hierarchy has been completely inverted.
Hunter Schafer stars as Cora, a human who is posing as a replicant to survive in this new societal structure. "Replicants, they keep taking it all away," Schafer's character laments. "How much longer, until we have nothing, until we are nothing?"
Michelle Yeoh joins the cast as Olwen, a replicant Blade Runner tasked with hunting down rogue replicants. Her character asserts the shift in power, saying, "Humans want what was taken from them, but it’s our time now."
The visual aesthetic of Blade Runner 2099 is also set to evolve. While the franchise is known for its dark, rain-soaked neon cityscapes, Luisa describes the look of the new series as "sunshine noir." This visual style, characterized by heat and a coastal setting, reflects the show's themes of birth and the emergence of a new replicant era. "You’re still very much in the Blade Runner world, but the show is about a birth," Luisa elaborated. "It’s about a birth of a city. It’s about a birth of a replicant era. These characters are discovering who they really are. And so the climate is hot, it’s sticky, it’s sunny. We’re on the coast a lot. We’re in Santa Monica a lot. So it’s like you’re seeing Ridley’s texture, but you’re seeing it in the sunshine noir filter."
Despite the intriguing premise, the trailer's visual direction may present a departure for longtime fans of Ridley Scott's original cyberpunk vision. The series is slated to premiere on November 25 on Prime Video.