Blade Runner 2 tells Harrison Ford it needs the 71-year-old blade runner, his magic

In a move designed as an empathy test, provoking a capillary dilation of the so-called blush response, fluctuation of the pupil, involuntary dilation of the iris—we call it a PR stunt for short—Alcon Entertainment has issued a press release declaring that it’s formally seeking Harrison Ford to reprise the role of Deckard in its upcoming Blade Runner sequel. The company officially calling Ford out of retirement, beckoning him away from his 800-acre sushi bar in Wyoming, ends nearly three years of speculation over Ford’s involvement in the project—and specifically, how Deckard could be part of a story that takes place several decades after the events of the first film, when director Ridley Scott has made it abundantly clear he’s a Replicant (one with a presumably accelerated mortality). Nevertheless, all of that ambiguity will soon be lost, like tears in rain that were actually just a metaphor for how death erases memories, get it?, as original co-writer Hampton Fancher and Green Lantern’s Michael Green have apparently drafted a story that revolves around his septuagenarian skinjob.

Still, a light that burns twice as bright burns nearly two-and-half-times as long, and Scott has said of Deckard’s particular Nexus-6 model, “We don’t know how long he can live”—thus opening the door for the answer to be, “at least into his 70s.” And seeing as Ford said recently he was “curious and excited” about doing another Blade Runner, making this public courtship just a publicity-driving formality, it seems we’ll get that answer definitively, as the film that was all about the fleeting nature of life and the urgency created by death gets a sequel, one that confirms those Replicants probably shouldn’t have worried so much.