Blade Runner 2099 trailer arrives: More rain, more replicants, still no dry cleaning (video).
There are some science fiction worlds that simply refuse to retire. The Star Wars galaxy keeps discovering another forgotten Skywalker cousin. Doctor Who finds another excuse to break time. And somewhere, in a permanently rain-soaked future Los Angeles, somebody is inevitably asking uncomfortable questions about what it means to be human.
Amazon has finally released the first trailer for Blade Runner 2099, with the series set to premiere on Prime Video on 25th November 2026. Judging from these first glimpses, Ridley Scott’s gloriously melancholy future remains every bit as damp, neon-lit and existentially exhausting as fans would hope.
The trailer doesn’t give away much of the plot, which is probably wise. The Blade Runner universe has never been one for explaining itself with lengthy PowerPoint presentations. Instead we’re treated to towering cityscapes drowning beneath holographic advertising, suspicious-looking corporate laboratories, synthetic humans who may or may not know they’re synthetic, and enough moody lighting to bankrupt an electricity supplier.
Set fifty years after the events of Blade Runner 2049, the new series pushes the timeline further into the future than we’ve ever visited before. Humanity has continued its uneasy relationship with artificial life, while civilisation appears to have become even more dependent on colossal corporations whose ethics departments remain conspicuously understaffed.
The original Blade Runner, adapted loosely from Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, arrived in 1982 and somehow transformed a box office disappointment into one of the most influential science fiction films ever made. Its fingerprints are everywhere, from Ghost in the Shell and The Matrix through to Cyberpunk 2077. Every rainy cyberpunk city since has owed Ridley Scott at least a small royalty payment.
Denis Villeneuve’s magnificent Blade Runner 2049 somehow pulled off the impossible in 2017 by producing a sequel that not only respected the original but expanded its universe without turning it into a theme park attraction. It left plenty of questions deliberately unanswered, making a television series feel like the natural next step, provided it remembered that Blade Runner has always been about atmosphere first and explosions a very distant second.
The series comes with an impressive pedigree. Silka Luisa serves as showrunner after her acclaimed work on Shining Girls, while Ridley Scott remains involved as executive producer. Tom Burke leads the cast alongside Michelle Yeoh, Hunter Schafer, Lewis Gribben, Dimitri Abold, Daniel Rigby and several others, suggesting another ensemble of detectives, corporate schemers, replicants and people who probably shouldn’t trust any of the above.
One pleasant surprise is how restrained the trailer feels. In an age where every teaser seems obliged to end with a collapsing city, an army invasion or a portal opening over London for reasons nobody can quite explain, Blade Runner 2099 seems content to whisper rather than shout. Faces linger. Streets glisten. Machines watch. Humans lie. Replicants almost certainly lie better.
The central themes also appear intact. Identity, memory, mortality and corporate power remain firmly on the menu. After all, asking whether artificial intelligence deserves rights feels considerably less theoretical today than it did when Harrison Ford first wandered through those rain-slick streets over forty years ago. Reality, once again, appears determined to catch up with science fiction, although thankfully our advertising billboards remain marginally smaller.
Here at SFcrowsnest, we’re delighted Amazon seems to understand that the Blade Runner universe isn’t simply cyberpunk wallpaper. It’s a place where every beautiful skyline hides moral decay, every technological miracle comes with a receipt, and every detective eventually discovers that solving the case is the easy bit. Living with the answer is considerably harder.
If the finished series delivers on the promise of this first trailer, November 2026 could be bringing us one of the year’s most thoughtful science fiction dramas. Just remember to pack a waterproof coat. Everyone in the future appears to own one.
