Halfway through Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017), Agent K’s spinner is brought down over the vast rubbish dump that San Diego has become, and a band of scavengers surrounds him. Far away, in a beauty salon, Luv is having her nails done. With a visor over her eyes, she gives orders to a drone without moving from her chair: “Fire again”, two hundred feet to the east, fire, go north. The missiles wipe out the attackers one by one, and the manicurist carries on with her work. Luv, played by Sylvia Hoeks, is a new-generation replicant manufactured by Niander Wallace, and his personal assistant and enforcer. She is elegant, efficient and possessed of a contained violence that bursts out suddenly. When Wallace discovers that the replicant Rachael had a child, he tasks Luv with finding it. She steals Rachael’s remains from the police station, killing a technician, follows the trail of K, a replicant blade runner, and protects or attacks him as suits her master: she has just saved his life so that he can carry on doing his job for Wallace. When Lieutenant Joshi, K’s superior, refuses to tell her where he is, Luv kills her. Several times she weeps as she carries out orders. In the end, in a fight with K in the sea, she drowns. A killer who measures everything against her master’s approval is the case Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development helps to read.
// The theoryThe stages of moral judgment
The psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg developed from the 1950s a theory of moral development based on Piaget’s work. From interviews about moral dilemmas, he described six stages. At the preconventional level, right is what avoids punishment (stage 1) or what brings benefits (stage 2). At the conventional level, right is what others approve of and makes you a “good person” in their eyes (stage 3) or what the law and authority command (stage 4). At the postconventional level, right rests on the social contract (stage 5) and on universal ethical principles (stage 6). Criminology has used his model to study offenders’ moral reasoning.
Being the best in the master’s eyes
Luv is stuck at Kohlberg’s stage 3, that of the “good girl”: right is what makes her good in the eyes of the one who matters. Her only moral criterion is Wallace’s approval, and she says so openly: she wants to be the best of his angels. She does not reason about harm or justice; she reasons about what will please her creator. That is why she can kill Joshi and cry at the same time: the tears show that something in her perceives the horror, but her moral judgment has no higher level from which to act on that perception. It is a conscience designed not to grow.
// The subjectThe perfect daughter
Luv is a tragic figure disguised as a relentless villain. She is Wallace’s most accomplished creation and his most subjugated. The film hints that her cruelty springs from a desperate need to be recognized by a father who treats her as a tool. Her tears, which she never explains, are the sign of an inner life she is not allowed. Opposite her, Agent K travels the opposite road: he discovers he can act on a principle of his own, beyond orders, and that is what lets him defeat her.
Joshi’s death shows the reasoning at work. Before stabbing her, Luv does not talk about justice or about the danger the child poses; she talks about what she will tell her master, that the lieutenant tried to shoot her first. Even the lie is addressed to Wallace. Her last fight confirms it. On the seawall where Deckard is being taken off-world, Luv beats K, kisses him and walks away from him with a single sentence:
It is the purest formula of stage 3. Luv does not say she is right, or that she has done her duty; she says she is better than the others in the eyes of the one who made them. It is also the sentence of someone who has never known any other way of being somebody. Minutes later, K drowns her in the water that is flooding the spinner.
Luv
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// The crackKohlberg and obedience
Kohlberg’s theory has received important criticisms. Carol Gilligan, in In a Different Voice (1982), argued that the model undervalued an ethics of care, centered on relationships, which Kohlberg placed at a lower stage. Applied to Luv, the criticism is pertinent: her loyalty to Wallace is a form of bond, however perverse, and not merely a reasoning deficit.
Moreover, the relationship between moral stage and behavior is weak: many people who reason at high stages act badly, and many who reason at low stages harm no one. Luv does not kill because she reasons at stage 3, but because she serves a man who orders her to kill. Reasoning explains her obedience, not the content of the orders.
Educating moral judgment
Moral re-education programs for young offenders inspired by Kohlberg, such as moral reasoning training or Aggression Replacement Training, use dilemmas to help participants reason from higher stages. Meta-analyses show modest but real effects on reoffending. Luv did not have that chance: Wallace had designed her so that she would not need it.
Three key ideas
- Kohlberg described six stages of moral development: from fear of punishment and self-interest, to others’ approval and the law, up to universal principles.
- Luv, Wallace’s replicant, kills and pursues relentlessly guided by a single rule: to be the best in her creator’s eyes, even if she cries doing it.
- The crack: Gilligan criticized Kohlberg for undervaluing the ethics of care, and moral stage explains little of actual behavior.
Sources · further reading
- Kohlberg, L. (1981). Essays on Moral Development, Vol. 1: The Philosophy of Moral Development. Harper & Row.
- Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Harvard University Press.
- Stams, G. J., Brugman, D., Deković, M. et al. (2006). “The Moral Judgment of Juvenile Delinquents: A Meta-Analysis”. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 34(5), 697-713.
- Goldstein, A. P., Glick, B. and Gibbs, J. C. (1998). Aggression Replacement Training (rev. ed.). Research Press.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Luv?
Luv is a villain from Blade Runner, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. While her nails were being painted, wearing virtual reality glasses, she ordered an air strike that killed everyone surrounding Agent K.
Why does Luv become a villain?
Kohlberg described a moral stage in which right is whatever makes you good in the eyes of the one who matters. Luv, Wallace’s replicant, kills from there and weeps as she does it.
Which criminological theory explains Luv?
Luv's case is analysed through Moral development. Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development describes six stages through which moral reasoning advances, grouped into three levels: preconventional, centered on punishment and reward; conventional, centered on others’ approval and respect for authority; and postconventional, centered on universal ethical principles. Luv, of Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017), is the replicant who serves as Niander Wallace’s right hand. She searches for Rachael’s child, kills Lieutenant Joshi, who refuses to reveal its whereabouts, and pursues Agent K. Her morality comes down to a single rule: obey Wallace and be his best creation.
