The Blade Runner timeline runs from 2009, when the Los Angeles police formed the first blade runner unit, to 2099, when replicants hold the city. Ridley Scott's 1982 film places Rick Deckard's hunt in November 2019, and Blade Runner 2049 is set thirty years after that hunt. Three short films cover the 2022 blackout, a 2036 hearing on new replicants, and Sapper Morton in 2048. Titan's comics cover the years around both films, from Cal Moreaux and a Tokyo case to blade runner Ash and Cleo Selwyn. Black Lotus is set in 2032, and Prime Video's Blade Runner 2099 continues fifty years after the second film.
2009 - Blade Runner: Origins
Titan's Blade Runner: Origins comic book was set in 2009, when Los Angeles police detective Cal Moreaux was called to the Tyrell Corporation after scientist Lydia Kine died in her lab. The company listed the death as a suicide. Kine had been transferring human minds into replicant bodies, and a Nexus-5 prototype escaped the night she died. The escaped replicant was Nia, Cal's sister. She started breaking the control codes in Nexus-4 workers, and those units turned on the people who owned them. Tyrell executive Ilora Stahl, who answered for Eldon Tyrell, sent a security force into the Sector 6-B slums to kill Nia. That force burned the slums while it hunted her.
Cal sided with an experimental replicant named Asa, who carried Lydia Kine's mind, and with the replicants fighting the purge in Sector 6-B. Nia arranged to die during Ilora Stahl's live broadcast. Cal shot his sister through the heart so the audience would see a replicant's face. Two months later the Los Angeles police opened a blade runner unit, named Cal its first member, and had that unit report to Stahl.
2015 - Blade Runner: Tokyo Nexus
Titan's Blade Runner: Tokyo Nexus comic book was set in 2015, when former marine Mead and combat replicant Stix reached Tokyo as the only survivors of a squad betrayed on Calantha. She and Stix worked as private detectives while they searched for the officer who had left them to die. The search crossed a war between Yakuza families and a fight over who was allowed to build replicants.
Cheshire, a rival to the Tyrell Corporation, was making combat models from data stolen out of a Tyrell military lab. Those copies killed the way Stix killed, so Tyrell treated him as the suspect and sent blade runner Rumiko to destroy the Cheshire lab and anyone connected to it, Mead and Stix among them. Mead and Stix lived through the clan war, and they owed a debt to the family that won it.
November 2019 - Blade Runner
Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner was set in November 2019, when the Los Angeles police pulled retired blade runner Rick Deckard back to hunt four escaped Nexus-6 replicants after Leon Kowalski shot Holden during a Voigt-Kampff test, the empathy check used on suspected replicants. Roy Batty led Leon, Zhora, and Pris. The Tyrell Corporation had built that model with a four-year lifespan, and the group had come to Earth to force a longer life out of Eldon Tyrell. At the Tyrell pyramid, Deckard met Rachael, a Nexus-6 who believed she was Tyrell's niece. She later killed Leon after he cornered Deckard.
Deckard traced Zhora through a snake scale from her act at Taffey Lewis's club and retired her in the street. He then tracked Pris to J.F. Sebastian's apartment in the Bradbury Building. Sebastian, a genetic designer, had been sheltering Pris and Roy there, and he got Roy into the Tyrell pyramid. Roy killed Eldon Tyrell on that visit, and Sebastian was killed the same night, before Roy came back to the Bradbury for the fight with Deckard. On the roof Roy caught Deckard when Deckard fell, then died as the four-year lifespan ended. Deckard left Los Angeles with Rachael.
2019 - Blade Runner 2019
Titan's Blade Runner 2019 comic book, written by Michael Green and Mike Johnson, was set in that same Los Angeles. Blade runner Aahna "Ash" Ashina took a case from billionaire Alexander Selwyn, who wanted his daughter Cleo returned and treated the disappearance as a replicant kidnapping. The woman with the girl was Isobel, a replicant copy of Cleo's dead mother, and she had taken Cleo to keep her away from Selwyn.
Ash stopped hunting Cleo and Isobel, protected the girl, and gave up the case Alexander Selwyn had paid her to close. He still wanted his daughter back, so the chase left Los Angeles and carried Ash, Cleo, and Isobel off Earth. That break pulled Ash out of the Los Angeles police and put her on the road with a replicant and the child that replicant had taken, toward the replicant underground.
2022 - Black Out 2022
Shinichiro Watanabe's anime short film Blade Runner Black Out 2022 was set in 2022, three years after Deckard's hunt. The Tyrell Corporation had released the Nexus-8, a replicant line with no fixed lifespan, and humans had started killing those replicants where they found them. A combat replicant named Iggy Cygnus had deserted after he learned both sides of his war were replicants. He and a replicant named Trixie set out to destroy Tyrell's registry, the files used to hunt them. Ren, a Tyrell technician, redirected a test missile so it would detonate over Los Angeles and wipe electronic records with the pulse.
Trixie died in the fight with security at the server building. Iggy set off a stolen fuel truck there, got clear, and cut out his right eye, the eye that carried his serial number. The pulse from Ren's missile blacked out Los Angeles and wiped the electronic replicant records, and the fuel truck destroyed the server backups. Replicant manufacture was banned after the blackout, Tyrell went bankrupt, and the Wallace Corporation later bought what was left of the company.
2029 - Blade Runner 2029
Titan's Blade Runner 2029 comic book was set in 2029, after the blackout had knocked out Los Angeles, erased the networked files used to track replicants, and brought a ban on replicant manufacture. Ash had returned to the Los Angeles police as a blade runner. A tip about replicant labor sent her to the Sepulveda Sea Wall. A replicant there said "Yotun redeems" and jumped to his death. Yotun was a Nexus-6 Ash had failed to retire in 2017. He had lived past the four-year limit on that model and was gathering a replicant force while he looked for an object Eldon Tyrell had buried.
Yotun captured Ash, sealed her in a replicant tank, and took an eye from Freysa, a leader in the replicant underground, while he searched for the object Eldon Tyrell had buried. The object was a set of owl bones at Tyrell's childhood home in the mountains. Freysa shot Yotun in the head once they reached that house, and the replicant force he had been gathering lost its leader.
2032 - Blade Runner: Black Lotus
The anime series Blade Runner: Black Lotus, thirteen episodes from Adult Swim and Crunchyroll, was set in October 2032, ten years after the blackout. The replicant Elle woke in a transport outside Los Angeles with no memory, a lotus mark on her shoulder, and an encrypted device. She could use a sword she did not remember learning. In the city, Doc Badger and Joseph, a former blade runner, helped her with the device. It led her to the Doll Hunt, in which rich men had paid to chase female replicants. Elle killed men who had taken part, including Senator Bannister.
Niander Wallace Jr. had built Elle to kill his father, Niander Wallace Sr., because he could not do it himself, and the Doll Hunt put her in reach of that murder. Elle killed Wallace Sr. with his own gun. Wallace Jr. then sent Water Lily, a later model of the same line, to retire Elle. Elle could not kill Wallace Jr., because that limit was built into her, so she cut his eyes and blinded him. Joseph pushed Elle clear of the replicant plant and died in the blast when he stayed behind to set it off. Elle left Los Angeles on his motorcycle. Police officer Alani Davis survived a wound from Water Lily and later returned to the department in a wheelchair.
2032 - Black Lotus: Leaving L.A.
Titan's Blade Runner Black Lotus: Leaving L.A. comic book, written by Nancy Collins, was set in 2032 after Elle left Los Angeles. The police wanted her for murder, and so did people more powerful than the department. Bandits wrecked the bike she had ridden out of the city and stranded her in Fracktown, a desert town where Boss Barnes ran the fracking works. Miguel, a former blade runner, and his wife Nyoko, a medic, took Elle in at the Inland Empire clean-energy co-op while a mechanic named Junkett repaired the bike.
During the fight between Fracktown and the Inland Empire co-op, Barnes's people took Nyoko and the couple's daughter. Elle went to the fracking site, got them away from Barnes's men, and brought them back to Miguel. Koslov had followed her out of Los Angeles. He treated the co-op's wind farmers as eco-terrorists, and his men hunted Elle through the town while the co-op tried to hold what it had taken. Elle left Fracktown after that fight.
2032 - Black Lotus: Las Vegas
Titan's Blade Runner Black Lotus: Las Vegas comic book, written by Nancy Collins, was set after Elle left Fracktown. She reached Las Vegas, which a dirty bomb had emptied. Replicants who had worked the old casinos lived in the ruins as Egyptians and Romans. Cleopatra ran an Egyptian-themed casino as a refuge for replicants who had escaped their owners. Niander Wallace Jr., blind after Elle cut his eyes, sent a Doll Squad to bring her back. That squad included Alani Davis, and Wallace had offered to restore her ability to walk, and to send her and her wife off-world, if she delivered Elle. Brekker mercenaries were hunting the same bounty.
The peace between the Egyptian and Roman replicants broke when Nefertiti stabbed Julius, and the two casino factions fought in the streets and the arena. Elle and Alani Davis got out through the tunnels under the casinos while that fight was underway. Davis was working for the Wallace Corporation on that hunt. In the tunnels Elle found her bike with a group called the Semita, and they took her in.
2036 - Nexus Dawn
Luke Scott's short film 2036: Nexus Dawn was set in Los Angeles in 2036. Niander Wallace Jr., blind after Elle cut his eyes, came before lawmakers because he wanted to build replicants again. Replicant manufacture was banned, and he had come to ask them to lift that ban. Earth's ecosystems were failing, and replicant labor was the case he brought to that hearing.
The ban had followed the Nexus-8 blackout, and Wallace brought a new Nexus-9 as the difference: a replicant that could not turn on its owners. He ordered that replicant to cut itself and then choose between his life and its own. It cut its own throat in front of the lawmakers rather than harm him, and Wallace asked again for permission to build the line.
2039 - Blade Runner 2039
Titan's Blade Runner 2039 comic book was set in 2039, when Niander Wallace's new replicants were legal and blade runners hunted the older Tyrell models. Cleo Selwyn came back to Los Angeles as an adult to find Isobel, the replicant who had raised her. The person she asked for help was Ash, an ex-blade runner whose spine was failing. Wallace sent Luv after them. He offered Ash a cure for that spine if she handed Isobel over.
Ash refused Wallace's cure for her failing spine, because the price was handing Isobel over. She gave him Alexander Selwyn's research on replicant reproduction instead, and that trade was what let Cleo and Isobel leave. They left for the off-world colonies with Rash, a replicant copy of Ash, guarding them. Ash stayed with Freysa and did not tell her about the cure she had turned down, or about how little time Wallace had given her.
2048 - Nowhere to Run
Luke Scott's short film 2048: Nowhere to Run was set in Los Angeles in 2048, the year before Officer K found Sapper Morton. Sapper was a Nexus-8 who had passed as human since the blackout, living as a protein farmer outside the city. He came in to sell leeches from that farm, and he gave a girl named Ella a copy of The Power and the Glory.
Men who had shoved Sapper in the street later cornered Ella and her mother, and he killed several of them with a strength a human would not have. He left his identification papers on the ground when he got clear of the fight. A witness called the Los Angeles police, reported a rogue replicant, and that call put Sapper on the hunt K carried out the next year.
2049 - Blade Runner 2049
Denis Villeneuve's 2017 film Blade Runner 2049 was set in 2049, when Nexus-9 blade runner Officer K retired Sapper Morton, a Nexus-8, at a protein farm on the edge of Los Angeles and dug a box of bones out from under a dead tree. The dead woman was Rachael, and she had died giving birth, which later replicants were not built to do. Lieutenant Joshi ordered K to find the child and retire it before that birth could start a war between humans and replicants. Niander Wallace, blinded by Elle in 2032, had bought what remained of the Tyrell Corporation. He could grow obedient Nexus-9 replicants, and he sent his enforcer Luv after the child because those replicants could not reproduce.
A date cut into Sapper's tree matched a memory K had of hiding a wooden horse. Joi, a holographic companion in his apartment, treated the match as proof that K had been born, and for a while he believed he was the child. The girl who had lived was Ana Stelline, Deckard and Rachael's daughter, a memory designer sealed in a lab because her immune system was weak. K found Deckard in a ruined Las Vegas casino, where Deckard had hidden after Rachael died. Luv killed Joshi, smashed the emanator that let Joi leave the apartment, and took Deckard to Wallace. Freysa and the replicant underground pulled K out of the wreck. Freysa had been present when Rachael gave birth, and she knew the daughter was alive. Her plan required Deckard's death, so Wallace could not use him to find Ana. K refused her plan, got Deckard away from Wallace, brought him to Ana, and died on the steps outside her lab in the snow.
2099 - Blade Runner 2099
The television series Blade Runner 2099 is set fifty years after the second film, in a Los Angeles held by replicants. Hunter Schafer plays Cora, a human fugitive who takes a blade runner identity for a last case, and Michelle Yeoh plays Olwen, a replicant days from dying who works that case with her.
In the teaser, Cora narrates that humans fought a war and lost, and that replicants left them with nothing. That war is the reason the Los Angeles of the series is held by replicants, fifty years after Blade Runner 2049. Showrunner Silka Luisa made it as eight episodes with Ridley Scott as an executive producer, and Prime Video premieres every episode on 25 November 2026.
Alternate Timelines
Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a separate timeline from the films, short films, and comics above. It followed San Francisco bounty hunter Rick Deckard on 3 January 1992, after World War Terminus left Earth under radioactive dust. He retired escaped Nexus-6 androids for the police that day, and he came home with an electric toad. The 1982 film moved that hunt to Los Angeles in November 2019 and ended with Deckard leaving the city with Rachael.
K. W. Jeter's three authorized novels continue the 1982 film on a line of their own. Deckard hid Rachael after the 2019 hunt in Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human (1995), then left Earth with Sarah Tyrell in Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night (1996). Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon (2000) followed blade runner Iris Knaught as she hunted Eldon Tyrell's owl, Scrappy. Blade Runner 2049 does not use those novels.
Conclusion
The Blade Runner timeline runs from Cal Moreaux's unit in 2009 to a replicant-held Los Angeles in 2099. The two films carry Rick Deckard from the November 2019 hunt to Ana Stelline's lab, the short films cover the 2022 blackout, the 2036 hearing, and Sapper Morton in 2048, and Titan's comics follow Ash from Cleo's disappearance to her bargain with Niander Wallace. Black Lotus follows Elle from Wallace's blinding in Los Angeles to the replicant enclaves in ruined Las Vegas. Blade Runner 2099 premieres on 25 November 2026 as the latest point in that order.
Tag Categories: Blade Runner Lore | Sci Fi Movie Timelines
