Replicants are the point of focus in the Blade Runner saga, and while their tragic reason for existence was spelled out pretty clearly in the first film, that reason has skewed completely to the point where they started being made for the last purpose fans would expect.
1982’s Blade Runner introduced fans to the now-iconic sci-fi universe, where sentient artificial humans known as Replicants are created for slave labor on off-world colonies, and Blade Runners are police officers assigned to kill Replicants, should they step out of line. It’s a grim existence for Replicants, and more than a few of them agree with that sentiment. Rather than allowing themselves to exist as slaves, some Replicants decided to use the free will they were arguably cursed with to fight for their freedom. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out too well for the Replicants in the first Blade Runner movie, and it never really has since then, either. However, in the current state of Blade Runner canon, Replicants aren’t too worried about being hunted so much as they are focused on doing the hunting themselves, as Replicants have begun the process of replacing humans as Blade Runners.
Replicants are the Perfect Blade Runners (for More Reasons than 1)
In Blade Runner 2039 #2 by Mike Johnson, Mellow Brown, and Andres Guinaldo, a Replicant Blade Runner named Luv is searching for lost research into Replicant creation that was founded and recorded before 2022’s Black Out. Before the Black Out (which wiped practically all memory servers), the Tyrell Corporation was the manufacturer of Replicants. After Tyrell went out of business thanks to legislation making Replicants illegal, Wallace Corp became the new company responsible for making Replicants (after lobbying for their legalization, of course). As a show of good faith, Niander Wallace gave the LAPD their very own Replicant, and to prove how subservient these newer models are, Wallace made her a Blade Runner. In this issue, while Luv is searching for the aforementioned research on behalf of Wallace himself, she comes across a Tyrell-era Replicant. When Luv is asked how she knew it was a Replicant, she says she can spot them on-sight, before elaborating, “I am also a Replicant. I can… detect… a Replicant’s artificiality”.
Luv’s explanation implies that all Replicants can tell when someone else is a Replicant just by looking at them. While that may not be totally accurate, one could safely assume that at least all Replicants who are the same model as Luv would have this ability. Given Luv is Wallace’s right-hand Replicant, it is also a safe assumption that she is the gold standard for his Replicant ‘children’. This means that any Blade Runner Replicant after Luv should have the ability to sense another Replicant on-sight–which is perhaps the greatest advantage Replicant Blade Runners have over their human counterparts. Humans need to either look underneath the right eye of someone they suspect of being a Replicant in order to confirm it, or the human Blade Runner will conduct a Voight-Kampff test, which can sometimes take hours to complete. Meanwhile, a Replicant Blade Runner can tell who their target is in an instant. This makes them the obviously superior choice in terms of employment, which is something fans witness beyond the events of this comic with the Replicant Blade Runner, K (aka Joe), in Blade Runner 2049.
While this ability is the main reason Replicants are better Blade Runners than people–and why being Blade Runners has become their shocking true purpose–it isn’t the only one. Replicants are also usually stronger and faster than humans, with the added bonus of having perfect memory that they can never forget, even if they tried. Overall, Replicants are superior, especially when it comes to hunting their own kind–a shocking purpose the newer-model Replicants are literally created for in current Blade Runner continuity.
