Do you think that showing Deckard in the marketing for 2049 was a mistake and a spoiler?

It's hard to reconcile. For me, it didn't really spoil the narrative whatsoever because although it's not something that happens till way later into the movie, it doesn't inherently reveal the plot beats to get us there nor really anything about his character other than him being in hiding and being found. So I didn't feel like I knew too much. Not to mention, K finding Deckard and him being alive isn't really the lynchpin of the film nor is it the climax, merely a piece of the puzzle.

I do however think that the reveal of Deckard would have had an added punch, plus I also think that the marketing team were a little too reliant on both Harrison Ford's star power and also needing to draw in Blade Runner fans with the promise that Deckard would for sure be in it. Those factors might have gained the movie some extra money, but it still didn't make it's money back anyway so I think you might as well have just tried marketing the film as more of a standalone piece without any kind of call-backs.

The inclusion of Deckard in the marketing did feel like an attempt to treat any long awaited sequel as being the kind that would need to bring in people already familiar with the franchise, something that happened after Force Awakens. In reality, especially for a sequel like 2049, I think it would have been better to just sell the film as this mysterious cool sci fi movie rather than treating Blade Runner on the same level as Star Wars which was so integrated into pop culture that it's mere return helped it make billions.

The people who knew about Blade Runner will see it's return anyway, without the direct need to let us know that Deckard is back. And also, it wasn't crafted to make a billion dollars (so much so that there's not even a protagonist takeover with Deckard dying and K living, instead the opposite), so you might as well just commit to it.

In that sense, it's not a mistake, but I don't think much came out of it. What do you think?

P.S. At least we did get those hilarious Ford/Gosling interviews out of it though.