Why would Niander Wallace or Eldon Tyrell want Replicants to do this?

Question

This is from the movie, Blade Runner 2049.

Why would Niander Wallace want replicants to reproduce? As a businessman, his goal is to make money by selling replicants. If replicants can reproduce, then humans can breed them. If humans can breed them, then humans don't need to buy them from Wallace. The same goes for Eldon Tyrell whom Wallace hints also had an interest in getting replicants to reproduce.

He does say he wants to expand the offworld colonies to more than just 9 worlds. And he needs millions of replicants to do that. But why not just build more replicant factories on the colony worlds instead of building them to breed?

And considering that if replicants start breeding, they will naturally mix and match their genes. Their offspring might not be genetically programmed to blindly obey orders from their owners, the humans might get a replicant revolt on their hands within a generation. This will be a problem since replicants are physically stronger than humans and many are just as smart as humans if not more so.

Answer 1

Wallace: Increased-mass-production or Generation ships

It is not confirmed anywhere why Niander Wallace would want reproductive Replicants to exist, but I have a couple of explanations.

Increased production rates

My first educated guess (and what seems to be a popularly accepted theory) is that he wants to scale up his mass production rates. If he were to manufacture breeding Replicants, then he could create Replicant 'farms', which would allow his organisation to ramp up the scale of the Replicant production hugely.

This could boil down to a few reasons:

Resources

They live in a world of scarcity, there aren't as much resources available to them as there are to us now. Perhaps they are limited to the number of Replicants they can successfully create.

This is re-iterated by the fact that Wallace mentions his limited production capacity:

Every civilisation was built off the back of a disposable workforce... But I can only make so many
_{Paraphrased from memory, and stated in the official trailer (0:14)}

Being able to 'breed' them would greatly increase their efficiency as far as resource usage is concerned, given that all they'd need is the bare necessities of food, water and shelter.

Rules and regulations

Although we aren't quite clear on what the rules around Replicant production are, we know that there are definitely some. One of these could be the number of Replicants an organisation can create or even might limit the production to 'On World' only.

The ability to breed as many - and wherever - Wallace wants would again greatly increase their production capacity.

Generation ships

My second educated guess is that he wants them to be able to man (lol) generation ships.

Wallace is hellbent on 'conquering the stars'. He specifically mentions that he has conquered 9 planets, but is not satisfied:

Nine planets. A child could count that on its fingers
_{-Paraphrased from memory}

He recognises the depth of space and how out of grasp the other 'stars' are, so seems to realise that he needs generational ships to achieve this.

Yes, he may not see the result of that endeavour, but he seems to see that as his legacy.

Now picture this: Wallace has x (let's say 2,000) Replicants that he wants to send to discover another solar system in a far away galaxy. No matter how long-lived, those 2,000 will eventually perish before reaching their goal and the ship would have to return home to replenish its stock of Replicants.

But with the ability to reproduce, they can be sent out and ensure their own survival and prolong the span of their missions.

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# Tyrell: Perfection or Next level service This whole thing of reproductive Replicants is a new development as of *Blade Runner 2049*, so there's no evidence that Tyrell intended any Replicants to reproduce, much less actually achieving it.

Perfection

Having said that, Eldon Tyrell was obsessed with the perfection of his creations. He seemed frustrated that he couldn't prolong their lifespan in his dialog with Roy Batty in Blade Runner. It's not unrealistic to assume that he would want them to be able to reproduce and even had a prolonged lifespan.

Remember, Tyrell's motto for their Replicants was

More human than human

That wouldn't be true to Tyrell if they couldn't reproduce and live for longer than 4 years.

Given that Blade Runner 2049 has now established in canon that Tyrell did in fact achieve this success, I'd say the reason he wanted to do so in the first place was to achieve the perfection of his Replicants.

Next level service

Replicants are service bots. They are built for a purpose - either to work as cleaners, medics, sex or whatever type of service humans may not desire. It is only logical to try and provide the next step in any service, doing what humans can't.

Unfortunately, there are many humans who cannot reproduce, no matter how much they want to. Many turning to surrogacy or artificial insemination. Imagine if Replicants could be created who are clones of your sterile partner, but with the enhanced ability of reproduction. That would be a disruptor in the field of medicine and parenthood.

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# Wheels don't need to be broken In some of these cases, humans don't need to know that Replicants can reproduce. In fact, no one, not even Lt. Joshi knew that there was one Replicant who could reproduce in _2049_. Wallace's plans seemed only visible to his most trusted, Luv. Additionally, it seems that Wallace was performing this 'experiment' in the privacy of his quarters, with only Luv having access.

This whole illusion of control would remain valid so long as Wallace and Tyrell keep it as a secret, until they are able to release the information in a controlled manner.

Answer 2

I think in fact he is beyond being a businessman being driven by profit and loss (he is Bezos+ rich by saving humanity from famine and controllable Replicant technology) -- I think he wants reproduction to be able to have millions of obedient servants; presumably the obedience would be inherited or that would be the plan.

Wallace, clearly a megalomaniac, might want to personally rule humanity through a Replicant army.

Answer 3

Several points worth considering:

Overall clues are given in the movie about the nature of the “new alignment” that blade runner 2049 seems to suggest. These clues are often ignored in the discussions I have seen online and I want to bring them up:

Clue 1: Joi is a true AI, and either has real emotions and consciousness or Is able to emulate them so well we can’t tell the difference.

Clue 2: Joi is able to merge consciousness/shared control with a replicant prostitute in order to consummate physical affection with K

Clue 3: Joi is a Wallace product, and as a consumer product might not even be the most advanced AI Wallace can create.

Clue 4: Wallace’s devices for sight give a clue that processing power might be different than atypical human brain. Wallace may in fact be an AI or a cyborg hybrid of AI/human

Clue 5: by referring to his obedient replicants as “angels”, Wallace clearly sees himself in that paradigm as god, or A god. “Luv” or “first among angels” is a clear Lucifer reference. but in this paradigm Lucifer’s rebellion might be against an evil god so its a bit murky on the morality. In general the god and biblical paradigm references serve as clues to Wallace’s thinking, but also clues that this is a “beyond traditional morality” story.

Clue 6: the baseline test. Thought monitoring and control is required and replicants don’t pass are quickly destroyed. This is NOT because they are inherently dangerous to society.

Clue 7: the previous gen “non obedient” nexus replicants combined with replicants like K who “go free” are the only force that could oppose niander Wallace. That is why they must be “retired”. Regular humans are not up to the task, they are obsolete. They just don’t know it yet and are allowed to believe they still sit at the top of social order...for now.

the real story of 2049 goes beyond human/replicant. It is dealing with the concepts of merging human and AI consciousness, and also the concept of “clinical immortality”. Wallace has likely achieved or is near to achieving clinical immortality. he also might not be human, in the sense that an AI consciousness or AI/human hybrid occupies his body. This also explains his strange dialect, as if the human and AI parts of his mind are both talking at once...like AI/human multiple personality. When he says “we” he doesn’t mean “the human race”. He means the new “we” amongst which he considers himself a god and the replicants his “children”...this also explains why he might want replicants who can reproduce, but also (per clue 2) be under control of AI...so Wallace wants replicants who can reproduce to further his domain and to obsolete “traditional” frail humans; but within that domain he also can then download himself into any body he likes, anywhere in the universe, forever...completing the god the father/Jesus the son biblical metaphor...except inverted. Thus Wallace fits the “antichrist” mold pretty well. He first appears during a time of strife, death and starvation as a “savior” that keeps the human race from immediately dying out, and is revered and nominally is “in charge”. But Decker regards their confrontation more like a confrontation with “the evil one”, including trotting out the “new Rachel” as a temptation, while also threatening unspeakable pain...

Answer 4

I would suggest that at his level, increasing sales is meaningless -- he wants to be emperor as certainly he would become with an unlimited supply of obedient replicants.

Answer 5

It's not about breeding Replicants it's about mass producing the artificial uterus for making more humans.

He basically says there are not enough people to fill the galaxy and his goal is to have the replicants continue to provide the slave labor to expand humanity's colonization of the galaxy. Why limit that expansion with normal human reproduction rates when artificial surrogates can increase the population.

Answer 6

Wallace considers replicants humans. In fact, he considers them better than humans, humans engineered to full potential of humanity. His little angels, yet, imperfect, because, while they can do many things human CANNOT do, they cannot reproduce, which is one of the very basic abilities of humans. His goal is to spread humanity among all habitable stars in the universe. He cannot produce enough replicants fast enough and there is not enough human volunteers to do it. So, self-replicating replicants is the answer.

In that way, Wallace and Tyrell are similar. They both want to make the best replicants possible. Tyrell didn't know what he accomplished (breeding replicants). Wallace does and wants to reproduce the invention.

Answer 7

In my view Wallace is a genius replicant. He became known after the Blackout so his true origins are shrouded in mystery. He seems to be blind but in reality he has several drones that fly around him giving him vision - what human can process vision from several distinct sources? So in this way, he is not actually blind, but can see better than anyone else. He is also completely obsessed with achieving self-reproduction in replicants, and he always talks about this obsession from a philosophical perspective, not a business perspective - he doesn't care about the money, the efficiency of production, etc. He cares about the future of his species; he cares about becoming his own master by crossing "the gap between the stars."

Finally, the most telling clue I found is at the end of the film when Decker tells him "you don't have any children, do you?" (paraphrasing). Why doesn't Wallace have any of his own children when he is obsessed with creating progeny? Maybe because he can't have children, which would mean he is a replicant!

I love how the film gives you this backstory, these 'hard facts' about Wallace, but still challenges you to question the nature of his existence (and that of every other central character), continuing the tradition from the first film. Truly a brilliant sequel that deserves lots of love and respect.

Answer 8

In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, not only humans have been replicated - other animals have been as well. Humanity had wiped out almost all other biological life, and while some surviving animals were still kept as high-status pets, other animals were being replicated instead.

At the end of the novel, Deckard comes across a toad in the wild - and is overjoyed, because toads are supposed to be extinct. He then discovers that the toad is a replicated toad - which now exists "in the wild". A new, "replicated" ecosystem is slowly coming into being - and reproduction would implicitly be part of that new system.

These elements of the novel may or may not be relevant to the Blade Runner films, but the concept of "electric" life replacing the animal world and humanity is pretty deeply embedded in the DNA of the overall story. The creators of the replicants may have wanted them to have the ability to reproduce because they believed, on some level, that the future belonged to them.