4: ‘You've Never Seen a Miracle’: Birth and Parenthood in Blade Runner 2049

This chapter will focus on birth and parenthood in Blade Runner 2049, which revolves around the events stemming from a synthetic replicant giving birth. The replicant mother, Rachael, is dead and absent for the majority of Blade Runner 2049, connecting to previous work done on the absent/missing mother trope (Hoffman, 2020; Åström, 2015). In the film universe, this birth is viewed as either monstrous abomination (‘She was a replicant. Pregnant. This breaks the world, K. Do you know what that means?’ (Blade Runner 2049, 2017)) by those involved with law and order in this future society, or miraculous (‘You newer models are happy scraping the shit... because you've never seen a miracle’ (Blade Runner 2049, 2017)) on the fringes of society, or who are subjugated by those in power.