The Princess of Los Angeles

How an Immaculate Conception is Greater Than Creation Itself

Matt Peterson

ENWR 1510-018

Britta Rowe

April 13, 2018

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Although women have historically been a group of people which faced (and continue to

face) a tremendous amount of adversary and mild oppression, their role throughout centuries of

history has occasionally attracted a narrative of a strong woman leading a large group or being

the figurehead of a powerful design. Joan of Arc, Harriet Tubman, and Queen Elizabeth I are all

women who made a mark so deep into the world that their names ring on through the halls of

schools and through the pages of history books. This subtle archetype of the Female Figurehead

is sometimes employed in film and literature, especially in more modern times, resulting in

strong heroes (and villains) who serve as an influence on today’s living generations. Another

pattern that branches off from the stem of a strong female character is the presence of a father-

daughter relationship, in which the daughter symbolically “holds the key.” With a more specific

lens, this relationship has popped up a few times in films opaquely relating to the occult. In

Dennis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049, two different examples of a father-daughter pairing

shed light onto Villeneuve’s covert use of the Female Figurehead archetype in the advancement

of the film’s plot, as well as the implication of the film’s deeper, occult-entangled themes

relating to creation and the purpose of humanity as a whole. While these two daughters don’t

depict a complete goddess figure while analyzed separately, combined they achieve detailing

both the light and the dark side that comes with a goddess-worship paradigm.

Contextually, the goddess figure comes from The Girl from Roman Polanski’s The Ninth

Gate. While her role in Corso’s journey is obscured in the beginning, her physical being

eventually unfolds into that of a floating (Polanski 1:12:45), beast riding (Polanski 2:08:23)

demon, leading some to believe that she is supposed the Whore of Babylon, or perhaps the devil

herself. Her importance as definitely some kind of associate for the devil places the relationship
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between a male father figure and a younger female “daughter” on the same page as that of a

goddess-worshipping indicator of occult themes in film and literature.

While not the most obvious example of this familial interaction present in Blade Runner

2049, the relationship between Niander Wallace and his right-hand-replicant, Luv, somewhat

resembles that of a father and his daughter. In fact, Wallace’s relationship with all of his

replicants is a twisted sort of a father figure. He creates these humanoid beings to almost

perfection, yet slashes them open at the stomach when they cannot serve a specific purpose he

wants carried out (Villeneuve 00:41:30). To Wallace, his “children” are expendable, and

therefore he feels no remorse when they are harmed, especially at his own hand. This feature in

him is quite “ungodly,” or one that wouldn’t be associated with the God of the generic Judeo-

Christian faith. His formation of this entire race of replicants is a dark take on Genesis, a take

that involves intended enslavement and hostile expendabilities. The relationship between the

Blade Runner series and the book of Genesis is not just present in Blade Runner 2049. “The

Biblical story of the creation and fall, whether found in Genesis or elsewhere, is central to [the

original Blade Runner]” (Gravett). The creation is shown through Wallace bioengineering a race

of replicants, each mostly unique and each with their own purpose, however bleak that purpose

may be. The fall comes in a bit more subtly, through the revolution from the original Blade

Runner film and the blackout described in the opening of Blade Runner 2049 (Villeneuve

00:01:09). “In the film, the replicants represent the new Adams and Eves, manufactured by

"God," Eldin Tyrell, who god-like, dwells in Heaven--the penthouse of the 700-story pyramid

which houses the Tyrell Corporation (Gravett). This “Adam and Eve” narrative rings true in

Blade Runner 2049, as the newly bioengineered Adams and Eves of “God” Wallace’s
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cooperation are created with their own subservience to real humans, something Wallace will take

advantage of in order to try and find a way to make his creation able to reproduce.

Although Luv is not the physical offspring of Wallace, she is a product of his mind and

his ambition. The nature of the relationship that Wallace and Luv share is observed to be

significant, especially because she is given a real name, as opposed to a simple letter or a serial

number (Villeneuve 00:32:35). While she is not necessarily the Goddess figure who is worthy of

worship, her role as a synthetic daughter to the power-crazy Wallace establishes her as an

immensely influential character for the film’s plot and its biblically inspired themes. Her

significance as the main adversary to K allows Villeneuve to hint at the possibility of her

character being similar to that of a she-devil. However, the richness of her character, despite

being a replicant, does not allow her to be confined to a label so simple. Luv feels for her own

people, and feels emotions when she carries out a few of the murders she commits throughout

the film, particularly when she kills Lieutenant Joshi (Villeneuve 1:39:40). This murder happens

to be in the same manor that she witnessed Wallace execute the unnamed and barren replicant

earlier on; like father like daughter. This simple, yet strong display of emotion conveys two

messages to the audience: that the current replicants are extremely, and perhaps dangerously,

advanced, and that Luv herself is not devoid of a soul. Her eyes that shed tears are the windows

to a soul that is torn and broken, but is programmed to put the will of Wallace above any other,

even if his will isn’t carried out blindly. The fact that Luv feels remorse for her fatal deeds, yet

still carries them out, is quite chilling, rewarding her with the title of a goddess figure who is

feared, not a goddess figure who is worshipped out of admiration. She works in the dark (part of

the time) and strikes with an anger fueled by the sadness and pain of her fellow replicants.
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The other, more obvious father-daughter relationship in Blade Runner 2049 is the

biological anomaly that is Deckard and his replicant-born daughter, Dr. Ana Stelline. The duo of

Deckard and Stelline serves as an excellent foil to that of Wallace and Luv. Where Wallace has

biologically engineered Luv and her fellow new wave of replicants, Deckard is somehow able to

create life biologically with a female replicant. More specifically, Stelline serves as a great foil to

Luv. While love is worshipped in fear and in awe, Stelline is worshipped with hope and with

love. The replicants who plan on rebelling in the near future view Stelline as their savior, or their

knight in shining armor. They want her to lead them into the new age of replicants. Stelline’s

very own life can be connected to the biblical Virgin Mary, where she takes the role of Baby

Jesus. She was born from a body that shouldn’t have been able to conceive, and yet, the miracle

of her birth inspires many people like her to hold on and wait for her to be able to lead them into

the new day on the horizon.

Both Wallace’s and Deckard’s creation of life can be traced biblically. Wallace creates

the replicants as he sees fit, just like how God supposedly creates humans in his own likeness.

Deckard creates life through the immaculate conception, the creation of a baby who has no

reason being alive. The father-daughter relationship between Deckard and Stelline, although very

limited, since he abandoned her as a child, is one that showcases creation in a truer, more natural

light than what Wallace is doing with his operations in his organization. However, this natural

creation raises an issue that scares some of the people involved and intrigues others; if replicants

can reproduce, what does that leave for the real humans?

With an impending revolution rising towards the end of the film, some are led to believe

that the ability of replicants to give birth grant them the title of being “more human than

humans” (Villeneuve 02:06:00) because of how stellar their design is, in addition to the newly
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found possibility of sustaining a steady population over time. This kind of world, where

replicants can sustain their species on their own, is exactly what Wallace wants, so that the

replicants he created would view him as their deity. However, as the sentiment of replicants

being “more human than humans” begins to rise among the replicants, it is a little bit doubtful

that they will find the need to bend their knee to Wallace, who, despite creating them all in the

first place, has shown no remorse for his crimes against them and no empathy for their kind. He

views these people as alien, as inhuman, but their new philosophy upon putting their hope in the

presence of Stelline will prove to disallow that kind of thinking from the humans who have

thought themselves to be above the replicants for so long. If Wallace thinks that creating a race

of replicants who can reproduce amongst themselves would result in him being a God lifted high

and above his creation, then he truly does have a big storm coming.
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Works Cited

Gravett, Sharon L. “The Sacred and the Profane: Examining the Religious Subtext of Ridley

Scott's ‘Blade Runner.".” Literature Film Quarterly, 1 Jan. 1998, pp. 38–45.

Polanski, Roman, director. The Ninth Gate.

Villeneuve, Denis, director. Blade Runner 2049.