NOTE: This essay contains spoilers for both Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049.

"It's OK to dream a little, isn't it?"

"Not if you're us."

How do dreams figure into the world of “Blade Runner”? Neither 1982’s Blade Runner nor 2017’s Blade Runner 2049 are explicitly about dreams, but like any strong works of science fiction, both deal with the question of what it means to be human. To many, dreams are a major part of that exact philosophical quandary. They are powerful images and enveloping experiences spurned forth from an every-intuiting, ever-feeling mind, and they operate under a strange, organic logic that most say would be difficult to replicate artificially. So, do the androids of “Blade Runner” dream? And how do dreams figure into their character arcs?

While Villeneuve’s 2017 film is almost devoid of dream or flashback sequences—save for the brief images of the child at the orphanage—its consistently breathtaking imagery, with its yawning, spartan expanses, its alien landscapes, and its striking uses of colour, certainly plunge one into what feels like a dream. Hans Zimmer’s score doesn’t quite strike the tone of sultry yearning that Vangelis achieved in his 1982 work, but it still defines itself with thick atmosphere and powerful walls of sound that remind one of his previous work in the dream-focused Inception. And then there’s the pacing, which is slowed to the point of being lethargic, almost as if propelled by a slow-lurching somnambulist. This is all to say that Blade Runner 2049 functions as an all-enveloping, powerfully ruminative, dream-like experience. But by not including overt dream logic in the narrative, these filmmaking choices are perhaps most effective when they are putting one in the headspace to consider the ontological questions raised by the script.

When we first see Ryan Gosling's Agent K in Blade Runner 2049, he is slumbering as his aircraft autopilots him over a futuristic L.A. Presumably, he is dreaming—but what does he dream of? As Philip K. Dick postures in his 1968 novel that inspired the “Blade Runner” franchise, do androids dream of electric sheep?

In Villeneuve's 2017 sequel to Ridley Scott's 1982 venerated sci-fi-cum-neo-noir classic, we are reminded that the bioengineered humanoids known as replicants are implanted with artificial memories in order to stabilize them mentally. Obviously, memories are different than dreams, but if a replicant's memories are artificial, then it is safe to assume that their dreams are as well—or, at least, elements of their dreams. For example, a key addition to the Director's Cut and Final Cut versions of Scott's original film is the symbol of the unicorn, which first appears in a dream experienced by Deckard, and is later replicated in origami form by Deckard's associate, Gaff. This has been interpreted as the Gaff character slyly taunting Deckard, reminding him that the images in his head are fabricated, and that he is actually a replicant.

In 2049, the mythical unicorn is swapped out for a simple toy horse carved out of wood. K, a replicant blade runner like Deckard, believes this to be a toy that does not exist; rather, a programmed piece of his fabricated memories. But when a date carved in the horse also appears to him on a real tree—the tree beneath which the bones of a replicant who once gave birth were buried—he starts to think himself a replicant that was actually born. Born and not made. K says to his lieutenant: "To be born is to have a soul, I guess." He posits this while expressing apprehension over his assignment to terminate the child born from the buried replicant, but he really means it with regards to himself. K's holographic A.I. girlfriend, Joi (Ana de Armas), supports his theory. K purchases upgrades for Joi throughout the film that help her feel more "real," more "of the world," and so she is right by his side, trying to help him see how he is "special;" "A child. Of woman born. Pushed into the world. Wanted. Loved."

What begins as a standard mission for K thus turns into a search for identity, for purpose, and for the ontological meaning behind life itself. A vital leg of this search leads K to Dr. Ana Stelline (Carla Juri), a replicant “memory designer.” Ana tells K that being isolated from the world throughout much of her childhood makes her adept at conjuring up fake memories. The facility she works in is a vacuum of a space as well, and she is separated from visitors by a wall of glass, which is all to suggest that she continues to operate in this isolation. And yet, she is one of the best at what she does. The memories/dreams she manufactures, such as a little girl's birthday party, are warmly authentic (“All the best memories are hers”). "We recall with our feelings," Ana informs K, suggesting that you only need to "feel" as an entity in order to find a genuine, human path through memories and life.

Holed up in an abandoned casino/hotel in a desolate Las Vegas, the aging Harrison Ford/Deckard of 2049 has purposefully ceased to feel. He has done this to protect the child he had with Rachael, who we learn was the replicant buried beneath the tree. It is also revealed that Deckard and Rachael’s child is none other than Dr. Ana. Because Ana is a replicant born of a replicant mother—something thought impossible, and something that would be destroyed if discovered—Deckard put himself in isolation and erased almost everything that could link his daughter to him. "Sometimes to love someone, you got to be a stranger," he explains to K. K, meanwhile, wrestles with the notion that he is not the "special" replicant that Joi thought him to be; that he is not deserving of love. A short while later, Joi will have her life tragically stomped out.

It is true that K is not of woman born, but that does not mean he is not capable of feeling like a human is, or finding that genuine, human path through memory. As Mazin Saleem and Eli Lee state in their article on the importance of dreams in Blade Runner 2049, “It’s a testament to the spirit, whether human or otherwise, to keep going even when your raison d’être has been proven false.” In other words, it is K’s persistence in the film that imbues him with “human” spirit—with a soul. Deckard, on the other hand, has ceased to feel and ceased to “keep going” in order to erase that human path that he once walked, because he feels that a human path is what evil forces will take advantage of and destroy. And so, K investigates that path on Deckard's behalf.

This draws the attentions of the villainous Niander Wallace (Jared Leto), CEO of the corporation that has taken over replicant production, as well as his enforcer, a ruthless replicant ironically named Luv (Sylvia Hoeks). Luv intercepts K when he has located Deckard, and brings Deckard to Wallace so that Wallace can try to goad Deckard into revealing Ana's location. Wallace does this by offering K a physical manifestation of his memories: a clone of Rachael. But Deckard immediately dismisses the clone, as he says it doesn't have Rachael's green eyes. (Interestingly: the Blade Runner fan wiki states that Wallace’s eyes were also green before he was blinded. Wallace’s blinding also echoes the fate of his predecessor, Eldon Tyrell, who had his eyes gouged out by Roy Batty in the first film.) The first image we see in 2049 is an extreme close-up of an eye with green colouration—Villeneuve’s version of the “all-seeing” eye that opens the 1982 film. But while the eye in Scott’s film reflects the harsh, industrial landscape in which the narrative is set, Villeneuve’s eye does not receive any super-imposed imagery; instead, we are forced to reckon with the eye as the powerful symbol of humanity that it is: the window into the soul.

While Deckard is lorded over by Wallace, K is confronted by the replicant freedom movement (headed by Freysa [Hiam Abbass]) and asked to eliminate Deckard in order to prevent war. But K is invested in Deckard by this point—he is finding his soul and his humanity. Freysa reiterates to K his replicant-ness and urges him to join the replicant rebel group, and while her cause is righteous, she, like the evil Wallace, has her vision impaired—she is missing an eye. This is Villeneuve emphasizing that her eyesight, and thus her soul, is corrupted (perhaps half-blinded by the desire for revenge). K has his vision intact, however, and through the use of technologies, his advanced replicant cognition, and a second set of loving eyes from Joi, he has peered beyond the veil to recognize that the human-replicant divide is not just a matter of black and white. And so, K conducts a dangerous rescue mission to save Deckard.

At this film's end, K unites Deckard with his daughter for the very first time. He demonstrates empathy, valour, and selflessness—very "human" characteristics—and he helps a family find itself. K bows out as the protagonist of 2049, in this sense, and removes himself from the narcissistic trappings of the traditional hero. In this way, he is more human than human. At the film’s end, he lies dying in the snow from the injuries he sustained during his fight with Luv, and so the final and perhaps most human thing that K does is sacrifice himself—sacrifice himself and become a “real” boy.

Like Roy Batty in the original film, K dies while precipitation showers down around him. But while Batty in the rain laments that his memories—and his dreams—will die with him and be lost "like tears in the rain," K is showered by snow—frozen, crystallized memories. Perhaps this suggests that K’s efforts will not be forgotten, or that K’s memories and his dreams have transcended his replicant biotechnology. After all, K learns to feel, to yearn—to love and to feel love. The capacity to dream is sometimes defined as the capacity to yearn, and so it would stand to reason that K’s dreams should be considered as “real” as any other. Inside Ana's facility, Deckard meets his daughter for the first time, and of all places, he meets her where dreams are made.