Prime Video has released a new Blade Runner 2099 trailer at New York Comic Con, putting Hunter Schafer and Michelle Yeoh at the centre of a missing-Replicant investigation. The limited series arrives on 25 November 2026, with all eight episodes available on the same day. Amazon’s series announcement confirms the release format and the story’s setting, 50 years after Blade Runner 2049.
The new footage gives a clearer picture of the uneasy partnership driving the series. Schafer plays Cora, a human fugitive who assumes the identity of a Blade Runner, while Yeoh plays Olwen, a Replicant with only days left to live. Their hunt leads towards a runaway whose secret could destabilise an already fragile Los Angeles.
A detective story after humanity loses
IGN’s report on the trailer describes Olwen counting 10 female and 18 male Replicants who have disappeared over the past year. The footage also raises the possibility of a cure for Replicants, without explaining who might possess it or what it would involve. Those are clues to the mystery, rather than answers the trailer gives away.
At the NYCC panel, showrunner Silka Luisa added a more specific starting point. In The Hollywood Reporter’s account, Olwen is searching for Merrick, a fellow Blade Runner who has vanished. Schafer explained that Cora goes on the run after a raid at her workplace and needs to protect her younger brother before going undercover with the LAPD.
Luisa also described a major change in the balance of power: the Replicant uprising has happened, and humans have lost. That makes Cora’s disguise more than a way to join an investigation. She is passing as a member of the species now in control, while working alongside someone whose remaining lifespan is measured in days.
The series shifts the franchise’s mortality question beyond individual Replicants seeking more life. Humanity now faces the loss of its dominant position, while its creations still want experiences their existence doesn’t allow. The panel’s account positions that tension alongside the detective plot, not in place of it.
A different Los Angeles, with familiar roots
Luisa said the production needed a third visual identity rather than a copy of either film. She described sets with integrated lighting, working monitors, and mechanical elements, layered with everyday clutter and weathering to suggest a city people actually inhabit.
One detail draws directly on the original: Olwen’s discoloured nail beds signal her approaching death. Luisa explained that the idea came from Roy Batty’s deteriorating hands in Blade Runner. It gives Yeoh’s character a visible reminder of the deadline hanging over her investigation.
Ridley Scott serves as an executive producer, while Luisa, whose credits include Shining Girls, is the showrunner. Scott’s wider sci-fi slate also includes the Alien: Covenant sequel centred on David that he is developing. Separately, HBO has ordered a Crazy Rich Asians series, another film-to-television project on the way.
For Blade Runner 2099, the next milestone is the November premiere. The full-season release means viewers can follow Cora and Olwen’s investigation without a weekly wait, although the new trailer leaves the runaway’s secret unresolved.
