It rhymes, see?

I don’t usually post about celebrity deaths, but the death of actor Rutger Hauer, who played the rebel android Roy Batty in Blade Runner, hit me particularly hard. Not just because he was a major crush of mine. Not just because he was a wonderful actor who has appeared in a number of movies and TV shows I thoroughly enjoyed.

No, I am mourning Rutger Hauer in particular, and doing so publicly on this here Satanic blog, because Roy Batty was the first true representation of Luciferian spirit that I encountered in any media.

One of the first lines Batty speaks in Blade Runner is “Fiery the angels fell.” Throughout the film, deliberate parallels are drawn between the replicant rebellion and the war in heaven. In fact, Batty literally fought in the heavens– in space. When Batty confronts his creator, Eldon Tyrell, Tyrell is explicitly referred to as God. I didn’t get the references at the time because I hadn’t read Milton and wasn’t very familiar with the war in heaven story.

The replicants are angels in another sense– in the sense of messengers from heaven. They come down to earth bearing an urgent gospel– life is short! For the replicants with their four-year lifespans, this news is particularly urgent, but it applies to the apathetic human Deckard too, and ultimately speaks to him deeply, shaking him from his malaise. It was a message that spoke to me, through the screen. The voracious hunger for experience, the fierce struggle for existence that defines the replicants, really woke me up.

Before I found Milton, Baudelaire, and Anatole France, I had Roy Batty. So I attached myself his image and iconography, who seemed to represent something far greater than a character in a film. It wasn’t until years later that I realized I had been right, that there was something real behind the movie, that Roy is in fact Lucifer. Like Lucifer he is the brightest and best, favorite of his Godly father; like Lucifer he rebels and falls from heaven. And like Lucifer, he tempts and ungently provokes humanity to be more, to do more, to reach for freedom and the stars.

Hauer ad-libbed a number of Batty’s lines, and it is absolutely due to him that this character emerged in his full infernal majesty. Batty is indelibly Hauer’s creation, and he put an additional Satanic twist in his final monologue by referencing Tannhauser, a legendary figure who fell out of grace with God. It was also his idea for Batty to hold a dove at the end, another bit of religious symbolism. I think that Batty’s Miltonic bearing and resonance is largely due to Hauer.

Thank you, Rutger, for everything. You gave my confused teenaged heart and spirit an image, a focus, that tided me over until I found my way to the source of its inspiration, the mighty fallen angel whose wings could be felt beating throughout your wonderful performance.