The biggest mystery in the original Blade Runner was Rick Deckard himself. After spending his life hunting down replicants, was he one himself? The answer was played up in a scene added to the director’s cut of the film in which the character comes across an origami unicorn, but then director Ridley Scott definitively confirmed he was a replicant. So, there you have it. Cased closed, right? Well, Denis Villeneuve, who’s helming the sequel, hopes to keep the case open just a crack for Blade Runner 2049.

The director spoke with a French film site Allocine, which was then translated and paraphrased by The Playlist. Villeneuve said it was important to keep the tension of this replicant mystery, if we can still call it that, and to keep some of the riddles from the first film unsolved. He also said Harrison Ford’s presence in Blade Runner 2049 isn’t confirmation that Deckard isn’t a replicant — even though, again, Scott said he is. Referring to the Nexus 6 replicants, which have lifespans of four years, he said Deckard is “not necessarily” a human.

Just for shits and giggles, let’s look back at exactly what Scott said to see if there was any possible way his quotes could’ve been misconstrued…

Digital Spy asked Scott during a press junket for Exodus: Gods and Kings about the puzzler and whether he thought it’d be addressed in Blade Runner 2049. Scott said, “He is definitely a replicant.” He followed that up with, “He is!” and explained some of the hints that we all should’ve picked up on in the original movie. On top of that, leaked pages from earlier drafts of Blade Runner popped up online, detailing an alternate ending that, again, confirmed Deckard to be a replicant.

So, no, his quotes weren’t taken out of context. Perhaps the “mystery” is more for those who haven’t seen the original film (or for Ford, who famously disagreed with Scott’s view and asserted Deckard was a human), or perhaps there’s some other payoff for fans in the story. We’ll find out when Blade Runner 2049 — also starring Ryan Gosling, Jared Leto, Robin Wright, Dave Bautista, Barked Abdi, Mackenzie Davis, and Ana de Armas — will be released on October 6, 2017.