Synopsis
In 2049,replicants (described as "bioengineered") are slaves. K, a replicant, works for the Los angeles Police department (LAPD) as a "blade runner", an officer who hunts and "retires" (kills) rogue replicants. At a protein farm, he retires Sapper Motion and finds a box buried under a tree. The box contains the remains of a female replicant who died during a ceaserean section, demonstrating that replicants can reproduce sexually, previously thought impossible. K's superior, Lt. Joshi, is fearful that this could lead to a war between humans and replicants. She orders K to find and retire the replicant child to hide the truth.
K visits the headquarters of the Wallace Corporation, the successor-in-interest in the manufacturing of replicants to the defunct Tyrell Corporation. Wallace staff identify the deceased female from DNA archives as Rachel an experimental replicant designed by Dr. Eldon Tyrell, K learns of Rachael's romantic ties with former blade runner Rick Deckard. Wallace CEO Niander Wallace wants to discover the secret to replicant reproduction to expand interstellar colonization. He sends his replicant enforcer Luv to steal Rachael's remains from LAPD headquarters and follow K to Rachael's child.
At Morton's farm, K sees the date 6-10-21 carved into the tree trunk and recognizes it from a childhood memory of a wooden toy horse. Because replicants' memories are artificial, K's holographic AI girlfriend JOI believes this is evidence that K was born, not created. He searches the LAPD records and discovers twins born on that date with identical DNA aside from the sex chromosone, but only the boy is listed as alive. K tracks the child to an orphanage in ruinedSan Diego, but discovers the records from that year to be missing. K recognizes the orphanage from his memories and finds the toy horse where he remembers hiding it.
Dr. Ana Stelline, a designer of replicant memories, confirms that the memory of the orphanage is real, leading K to conclude that he is Rachael's son. At LAPD headquarters, K fails a post-traumatic baseline test, marking him as a rogue replicant; he lies to Joshi by implying he killed the replicant child. Joshi gives K 48 hours to disappear. At Joi's request, K reluctantly transfers her to a mobile emitter, an emanator, so he cannot be traced through her console memory-files. He has the toy horse analyzed, revealing traces of radiation that lead him to the ruins of Las Vegas. He finds Deckard, who reveals that he is the father of Rachael's child and that he scrambled the birth records to protect the child's identity; Deckard left the child in the custody of the replicant freedom movement.
After killing Joshi, Luv tracks K's LAPD vehicle to Deckard's hiding place in Las Vegas. She kidnaps Deckard, destroys Joi and leaves K to die. The replicant freedom movement rescues K. When their leader, Fresya, informs him that she helped deliver Rachael's daughter, K understands he is not Rachael's child and deduces Stelline is her daughter and that the memory of the toy horse is hers. To prevent Deckard from leading Wallace to Stelline or the freedom movement, Freysa asks K to kill Deckard for the greater good of all replicants.
Luv brings Deckard to Wallace Co. headquarters to meet Niander Wallace. He offers Deckard a clone of Rachael for revealing what he knows. Deckard refuses and Luv kills the clone. As Luv is transporting Deckard to a ship to take him off-world to be interrogated, K intercepts and kills Luv but is severely wounded in the fight. He stages Deckard's death to protect him from Wallace and the replicant freedom movement before taking Deckard to Stelline's office and handing him her toy