A Blade Runner sequel might have at one point sounded like a terrible idea — but as people you’d really want to see in or behind a Blade Runner sequel keep adding up, it’s getting mighty hard to be a killjoy about it. Before today, there’d already been news that Harrison Ford would be reprising his role as Rick Deckard (yes, another decades-later sequel starring Ford), that Ryan Gosling would be joining him, and that the movie would be directed by Sicario‘s Dennis Villeneuve. Now, Variety reports that Robin Wright is “in final negotiations” to be added to the cast.
Wright’s reserved, calculating character on House of Cards has been one of the best things about that show, and her inclusion in the Blade Runner sequel can only mean good things for the film that you may worry will not, itself, be so good. Claire Underwood has been an enigmatic presence and a far more nuanced force of corruption than Kevin Spacey’s character Frank — and the unpredictable vacillations between callousness and empathy that Wright brings to the role seem particularly fitting for the Blade Runner world.
The sequel takes place some decades after the original film, which was set in 2019 (presumably a similar amount of decades between that film’s 1982 release and January 12, 2018, when the sequel is set to open.) One thing it seems the movie will address (and potentially sustain in ambiguity) is the question of whether Ford’s Rick Deckhard — who in the first film was tasked with “retiring” bioengineered beings called “replicants” played by the likes of Daryl Hannah and Sean Young — is himself a real person or a replicant. As reported by Cinema Blend, Villeneuve cryptically said of that question:
The thing I must say is that I love mystery. I love shadows. I love doubts. I would just want to say to the fans that we will take care of that mystery. I will take care of it.
Though Robin Wright’s character itself is unknown, Variety‘s headline calls it a “key” role. Other than that, we can at least presume its all being… “take[n] care of.”