Prime Video unveiled a new Blade Runner 2099 trailer at New York Comic Con. The series, set 50 years after Blade Runner 2049, features Michelle Yeoh and Hunter Schafer. They play partners in a transformed Los Angeles where Replicants are dominant. Yeoh said, "She does not want to leave things unfinished."
The world of Blade Runner is returning with a fresh mystery, a transformed Los Angeles and two unlikely partners. Prime Video has unveiled a new trailer for Blade Runner 2099, starring Michelle Yeoh and Hunter Schafer, at New York Comic Con. Set 50 years after Blade Runner 2049, the eight-episode limited series imagines a future where Replicants have become the dominant species and humanity's place in society is increasingly uncertain. As a fugitive assumes the identity of a Blade Runner, she joins a dying Replicant investigator on a dangerous hunt that could change the city forever.
The trailer introduces viewers to a Los Angeles that has undergone a dramatic transformation. The series moves beyond the world established in the earlier films, exploring the consequences of a Replicant uprising and a society in which humans are no longer the dominant species.
Cora, played by Schafer, is a fugitive who is forced to go undercover as a Blade Runner to protect herself and her younger brother. Her mission brings her in contact with Olwen, played by Yeoh, a Replicant whose life is nearing its end. Together, they pursue a runaway whose secrets could destabilise the fragile city.
The investigation also leads to a mystery involving Merrick, a missing Blade Runner and Olwen's colleague. Showrunner Silka Luisa has teased that the question of why Merrick would abandon the power Replicants have fought to secure will be central to the story.
Yeoh's Olwen is a powerful investigator confronting her own mortality. During the New York Comic Con panel, the actor described her character as someone who does not want to leave things unfinished, even as she knows her time is running out.
The creative team has also given Olwen a distinctive visual detail: blue-toned nail beds that signal her deteriorating condition. Luisa explained that the detail was inspired by the original Blade Runner, which used changes in a Replicant's extremities to suggest the physical effects of approaching death.
Schafer, meanwhile, takes on a more physically demanding role as Cora. Known for Euphoria, the actor steps into action territory as a fugitive who must adopt a dangerous new identity. Her partnership with Yeoh forms the emotional centre of the series, bringing together two characters with different relationships to identity, survival and the future.
The original Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, arrived in 1982. Based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, it explored the boundaries between humans and artificial beings. Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049, released in 2017, continued that story, with Ford reprising his role alongside Ryan Gosling.
The new series introduces a third visual identity while retaining the franchise's philosophical concerns. Luisa has described the story as taking place at a turning point: one species is approaching its end while another rises to power. Rather than simply repeating the films' questions about what makes someone human, the series examines those questions on a broader societal scale.
Luisa serves as creator, showrunner and executive producer. Scott is among the executive producers, alongside the team from Alcon Entertainment and other producers associated with the franchise. Jonathan van Tulleken, who directed the first two episodes, is also an executive producer.