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blade runner series - Was Deckard a Replicant or not?


Does Blade Runner 2049 clarify about Deckard's status as a Replicant? The only mention of this that I remember was Wallace's statements implying



Deckard having been created specifically to believe having fallen in love with Rachel (whom herself apparently was made fertile on purpose and not by accident)




but which was immediately followed by



"...if you were made, that is." (to Deckard)



If Deckard were a Nexus 6, his lifespan would have been limited, but he could either be a better model or the radiation in Las Vegas was helping somehow.


So, did the producers just chicken out of the decision or are there any actual facts?



Answer



I wouldn't say they "chickened out", but they kept the Final Cut's ambiguity on purpose, yes.


In the interview referred to in this Movies & TV answer, director Denis Vileneuve has this to say:




So when Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Vileneuve met with reporters at San Diego Comic-Con, someone inevitably had to ask which version of Blade Runner is Blade Runner 2049 a sequel to. "The thing is that I was raised with the first one," Vileneuve said, referring to the original theatrical cut. "There was one Blade Runner at the time. I remember seeing the first movie and falling deeply in love with it."


But his love for the original doesn't mean that there isn't room for nuance, or that he can't acknowledge the intent of Scott's later versions of the film. "The key to making [Blade Runner 2049] was to be in between," Vileneuve said. "[The theatrical version] is the story of a human falling in love with an artificial being, and the story of [the director's cut] is a replicant who doesn’t know he’s a replicant and slowly discovers his own identity. Those are two different stories."


In order to tell his story without alienating fans who prefer one version of the story, the director went back to the source material, Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? for inspiration. "I felt that the key to deal with that was in the original novel," Villeneuve said. "In the novel the characters are doubting themselves and they aren’t sure if they are replicants or not. From time to time the detectives are running scans on themselves to make sure that they are human. I love that idea so I decided that in the movie Deckard is unsure, as we are, of what his identity is. I love mystery."


As for which version Harrison Ford and Scott consider to be the truth? "Harrison and Ridley are still arguing about that," Vileneuve says. "If you put them in the same room, they start to talk very loudly about it."



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