Who Ana is in Ride or Die will click instantly for Blade Runner fans
Prime Video dropped all eight episodes of Ride or Die at once on July 15, 2026, and somewhere around episode two most viewers had the same reaction to the woman circling Hannah Waddingham's Judith: I have definitely seen that face before.
You have. Nine years ago, in Los Angeles, 2049.
So who is she?
Ana is played by Sylvia Hoeks, the Dutch actress who played Luv in Blade Runner 2049 — Niander Wallace's replicant enforcer, the one who cries while she kills people. In Ride or Die she's Judith Burton's former colleague at a covert assassination agency, codename Redback, presumed dead for five years and very much not dead.
Who Ana is inside the show
The setup takes a few episodes to assemble, so here's the shape of it:
- Same origin as Judith — both were orphans recruited into the Agency as teenagers, trained at the same covert school.
- Codename Redback — Judith's is Whiptail. The pair were the Agency's most effective team.
- The falling out — Ana decided Debbie (Octavia Spencer) was a liability and needed to die. Judith shot Ana instead and reported her killed.
- The five missing years — Ana survived the fall, was captured and tortured by the Turkish mafia, and came back with a very specific list.
Rather than simply killing Judith, Ana dismantles her: she murders Billy (Ed Skrein), leaks recordings of Judith describing Debbie as a "civilian asset," and takes apart a twenty-year friendship from the inside.
Is she actually the villain?
Only for about seven episodes. The finale hands that title to Bill Nighy's Director, who ran the recruitment program that produced both women — arranging for orphans to be adopted and then returned, so they'd be desperate enough to accept his offer. Cornered by Ana and forced to choose between the Agency and Judith's life, he picks the Agency.
Nighy, for his part, has no notes on this:
"I don't mind if he's just an unredeemable villain," he told TV Insider in 2026.
Where else you know Hoeks from
Beyond Blade Runner 2049, she's been in Apple's See, The Girl in the Spider 's Web, and a long run of Dutch and German productions. She also won the first Sylvia Kristel Award back in 2014, which is the kind of credit that rarely makes it into a Prime Video press release.
For the record: Hoeks isn't the only casting joke in the show. The Director, a man who spent decades arranging fake adoptions for a living, is played by the guy from Love Actually.