She was there for the birth, it's her in the photo.
Spoilers Blade Runner 2049 - Grading and Discussion
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She was there for the birth, or near enough, we don’t know if she was there for a long time afterwards, for the funeral for instance. We also don’t know that she is that reliable narrator (both the rebels and Wallace are rejected by K, he keeps Deckard alive after all.) and her words are needlessly vague. She doesn’t say there wasn’t a son, she just affirms there was a daughter. At no point does anyone one hundred percent say ‘that memory isn’t yours’ or ‘there was no son’. Freysa is a bit of a non-character, and she’s happy to kill Deckard, to protect information that leads to her...not to the child, but to her.
Don’t forget, Deckard tells K ‘sometimes to love someone you have to be a stranger’ and then K does that in ‘who am I to you?’ Scene. There’s a ton of stuff on screen, and even after the ‘reveal’ more stuff keeps coming. Don’t forget also, if Deckard was half the equation as Wallace suggests (if he’s designed...) then he’s important in his own right and also worth their protection...he’s a replicant who can create children (or he is unimportant because he doesn’t have a womb?) which is the proof they need, not a child...how do you prove a child is replicant born?
K does to Deckard and Ana what he did for Joi, treats them as real, treats them as family...the rebels and Wallace (and madam) are just interested in the child for what it represents and what it can do for them and their goals.
So we agree that she was in a position to know how many kids popped out of Rachael. Gotta start somewhere I guess.
So we agree that she was in a position to know how many kids popped out of Rachael. Gotta start somewhere I guess.
I don’t think she reliably was. We don’t know when Rachael died from the complications, we don’t know if Freysa dressed the child, posed for the photo (we don’t even know who took it, presumably Sapper, but that’s Deckards car in the shot, and we don’t know for certain he wasn’t there too, maybe before going on the run. Goodness knows there’s no way he would not be there when Rachael died...the whole plan is something that could only be cooked up after she’s died.) then immediately vanished off to hide that child.
We don’t know she didn’t decide to use one twin to cover the others existence (again, common in stories in general, and twins often arise out of fertility treatment...precisely the tech that’s a logical starting point for replicants and especially replicants that give birth.) and chose the female to survive because that’s the only way to ensure the line and prove the miracle (all of which is basically bull on the rebels side anyway...how do you prove anyone is the child of a replicant? Rachael is the miracle, and she’s dead. The child is only of use to Wallace possibly, and realistically he then ideally needs the set.) with K as the sacrificial lamb. ( I think it’s possible Sapper went soft and saved the boy and hid him from all concerned...that’s why he’s sympathetic to K, and fights knowing he is going to have to die to keep the secret going. He dies for the right cause, and it’s not Freysas. He doesn’t even need to still be by the grave, unless he owes Rachael and Deckard some loyalty. If he wasn’t hanging about, the bones would never even have been found.)
Even Deckard stops fighting once he sees K close up, and realises this may be his son, who he is not going to sacrifice after all. ( note the line from the Elvis song playing as they stop fighting...though people will read that as a hint to ‘designed’ Deckard also.) Again, suitably Old Testament.
Short thing is..there has to be clues to K being the son for the story to work. Because there is no actual refutation of this made (even by Freysa) those things continue to be true, with other clues still present in the narrative afterwards strengthening it. People tell K what they want him to believe, to make him do what they want, with few exceptions. Is Joi real? Ask her. Is K real? Ask him.
I think it’s deliberate on the part of the writers, Hampton probably, because he’s the one with the soft side on Rachael and a Human Deckard.
As I said, that’s the clear line...but this is a Blade Runner film, and one that dances around what is being told vs what really is, what is believed vs what is true. It’s gonna have alternative readings, and this one, I think, is intended and therefore as true as the surface reading.
No. Any evidence to suggest K might be the child (or A child, in your reading) has to ignore everything else we know about him and what he knows about himself. There's no reasonable way to have him end up as a known replicant in the LAPD if he was born and grew up and didn't have the expected programming, especially since it would almost inevitably lead to his death. They're not going to shrug off the fact that he doesn't have a serial number. You (as the audience) are supposed to want it to be him, just as he wants it to be true.
It has to be made believable for the first two thirds of the film to work though. It has to be plausible for him to believe it, and for Deckard to almost believe it to, as he seems to towards the end. Otherwise he, and the audience, isn’t going to ‘want’ to believe something so obviously untrue. Even the short films set up how this could be true, because that misdirection is part of the story. The interesting part is how the twist happens...as I say, no one ever outright refutes it. The closest we get is ‘you imagined it was you, we all did’ and we know that’s not true, because we know he has the horse because of the memory. Once you realise that not once does anything in the film actually contradict him being the son, then the other pieces hold a different meaning. The birthday party...I haven’t checked yet, but it may even be on the actually birthday. The two candles left on the cake bright at the end before one flickers and dies before the other...these are deliberate choices, especially as they are vfx shots.
There’s nothing in the films, in either films, that flatly contradicts it..there is stuff that supports it...and half the plot hinges on it being believable in the story. Like I said, yes, the basic story is ‘stelline is the child’ but then the other hints suggest something else...as with Joi, it’s intentionally ambiguous, and probably an intended secondary reading. Can you find an instance where anyone, Freysa included (who has her own motivations for pushing K to be a good dog..) actually says he is not the child? Is there evidence that suggests he is? Are their any hints about the possibility of twins?
There’s no point worrying about the likelihood within the universe as presented, because we don’t know these things for certain, they weren’t shown or referred to on screen. Otherwise we might as well worry why they hid Rachaels bones where they did, and made their discovery extra likely by sitting a wanted, known, Nexus 8 replicant on top of them. If it’s simple guard duty, why not a nice non-suspicious Nexus 9? Freysa has a few girls who could do that and never get investigated.
It’s also part of the meta narrative with pale fire too. Being misled by narrative is at the heart of this film.
Like I said, I don’t doubt the surface story as presented, but there’s sleight of hand there.
I would do it myself if I was writing it. That’s the story hiding within the story. Twins.
I get the coolness of finding a story beneath the story, but if you ignore everything the characters say and claim that it's a fabrication, and if you maintain that some vague symbolism takes precedence over all other available knowledge, we'll just have to agree to disagree.
I get the coolness of finding a story beneath the story, but if you ignore everything the characters say and claim that it's a fabrication, and if you maintain that some vague symbolism takes precedence over all other available knowledge, we'll just have to agree to disagree.
That’s what I am saying...look at everything the characters say. I haven’t mentioned vague symbolism (that would be things like the handedness of the two characters in the final scene for example)
The makers appear to have been clever, and lined up the pieces to tell two stories at once. They have to set up the ‘K as son’ story for the twist...but then, they never once have a character, even the one giving the revelation, actually ever discount that story, and continue reinforcing it in subtle ways.
I think it’s deliberate and clever. Seriously, if you have it on home media, watch it with the theory in mind. It’s impressive writing/filmmaking.
It’s smooth as heck, unlike say the ‘Deckard as antagonist’ reading in the first film.
Not once are we told ‘there was one child’ we see characters assume there is only one, a son. When K asserts it’s a boy, he’s told Rachael had a girl. He’s not told how many children there were, only Freysa talking about a girl child. Deckard never knows...but was able to carve a birth present?
Right. The implication I took was that Ana did, in fact, put her real memories in replicants. K even asks her if she ever uses real memories, and she doesn't actually deny it; she just says "that's illegal," which brushes the issue aside but doesn't answer the question.
As far as reading between the lines goes, that's a far simpler and more convincing interpretation than K and Ana somehow being siblings.
Wait...when?
The only time I recall Mariette involved with the horse was when she picked it up post-coital and says, "From a tree." Is there something else I'm forgetting?
She doesn’t remember the dream. She says the horse is from the tree. I.e the tree K is looking at in photos when she’s sent to find out what he knows.
And yet, that’s exactly the same trick they use in all the other dialogue. She doesn’t say she did, she gives an answer, but doesn’t actually answer the question. Freysa does the exact same thing.
That’s not what’s happened here though...a character is saying ‘I am the son, Rachael gave birth to a boy’ and someone answers ‘Rachael gave birth to a girl, I saw her.’ Which, by itself would be great, works, answered. Except, she never says ‘no, it was a girl, I saw it. She also says ‘you imagined it was you...we all did, we all wish it’ (paraphrasing here, but it ties into wanting to believe they are special.) which is just quasi-religious leader speak, she can’t include herself in the we, because she can’t witness the birth and be the child being born as it were, but anyway. We, the audience, know he’s not imagining...he’s remembering. Which is an important difference, literally the difference between a real memory and an implant in some ways. We know someone lived the memory, and the horse and therefore the memory are real. So we now know, especially with her giving K his next mission, that Freysa, like Madam (who she is very much an echo of) is telling K what he needs to hear to do what she wants him to.
Now...the child is a Gemini, there are complications at birth, (Tyrell designed a perfect woman but somehow gave her a too small birth canal, while designing her to Procreate.....) we later see a record of a boy and a girl that are identical, and are told they are fake because you can’t have DNA match like that (but we are also told replicants can’t have kids...) and that the girl dies of a genetic condition and the boy vanishes.
Anyway...check the dialogue....
The same as everyone else...to get him to go find someone and kill them. Deckard can lead Wallace to her (though why Wallace would even give a monkeys...unless she knows where the child is now, she can’t be any use, and if she does know, the plan was useless I terms of hiding ‘her’, and the child is now just about power and what it represents, not about being a person at all) so it’s self preservation and control. Deckard has a prior ‘claim’ to the child (he’s the father) and Freysa needs to be that power. So fear and control mean she needs Deckard dead. Why can’t she said one of her little army to do it?
She wants K out of the way too, in fact maybe that’s her real motivation, she expects him to die in the attempt. K knows the secrets too by this point, and if he is a twin in some way, (or because he is Male and therefore not as ultimately useful as a female child for her intent...her intent being vague tbh. Wallace has a clear cut reason at least...Freysa Just wants a symbol.) then him or his body being taken by Wallace keeps her safe and keeps the girl child she talks about safe, because Wallace has or thinks he has the answers. (Deckard by this point also is starting to think Joe is his son, so he’s only going to back this up.)
Every character that has a job for K has done this in the film, give him the narrative, point him at a target and tell him to go kill it.
The only exceptions have been Deckard, Joi and Stelline. His ‘family’ essentially.
And you can’t ignore the little bits and pieces, especially when so deliberate... ‘who am I to you?’ ‘Go see your daughter.’
One extra word ‘no-one’ ‘a friend’ isn’t going to change the pacing or anything else, so why is it left vague. ‘A stranger’ would be too on the nose, and Deckard can’t say ‘is it you?’ Or something, because again, too on the nose, and it would need K to say ‘no’.
They play that game all the way through, no one, when in a position to outright say he isn’t the son, actually says that, including Freysa. The closest is ‘she had a son’ ‘she had a daughter’ the second statement and the stuff about being a piece of the puzzle doesn’t actually discount the first statement, and in some ways backs it up.
They left it ambiguous, just like the originals two questions of the identity of its lead. And it all hinges on a memory of a horse again. Clever, I think.
How does he end up in the employ of the LAPD? With seemingly no history at all.
Why does he have all of the memories (and no memories other) that he should as a Replicant designed to be a Blade Runner? Memories that are specifically mentioned as existing basically to give the freshly minded Replicant mind a foundation to work from.
Why would his "baseline" be anything remotely similar to what is expected of such?
Your theory requires a lot more assumptions and blank-filling than the Deckard is a replicant "theory" from the first film. It necessitates that K had a childhood and young adulthood he does not remember (other than one memory that by all implications of the film didn't actually happen to him), that he was given cover by someone in either Wallace's company or within the LAPD (neither organization which would benefit from his placement there) and effectively wiped and given all new fake memories in order to appear as any other replicant, that the resistance leadership sees no use for a male natural-born Replicant and are willing to instead use him as a pawn rather than as a potentially powerful symbol, and probably half a dozen other leaps that I don't have the energy to conceive right now.
Why does he have all of the memories (and no memories other) that he should as a Replicant designed to be a Blade Runner? Memories that are specifically mentioned as existing basically to give the freshly minded Replicant mind a foundation to work from.
Why would his "baseline" be anything remotely similar to what is expected of such?
Your theory requires a lot more assumptions and blank-filling than the Deckard is a replicant "theory" from the first film. It necessitates that K had a childhood and young adulthood he does not remember (other than one memory that by all implications of the film didn't actually happen to him), that he was given cover by someone in either Wallace's company or within the LAPD (neither organization which would benefit from his placement there) and effectively wiped and given all new fake memories in order to appear as any other replicant, that the resistance leadership sees no use for a male natural-born Replicant and are willing to instead use him as a pawn rather than as a potentially powerful symbol, and probably half a dozen other leaps that I don't have the energy to conceive right now.
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