Director Lilly Wachowski explains how The Matrix is a trans allegory

It’s been nearly 20 years since The Matrix trilogy ended. Ahead of The Matrix 4, director Lilly Wachowski dives into the series’ allegorical aspects.

It’s been nearly 20 years since The Matrix Revolutions ended Neo’s journey as the One destined to save humanity from the robot overlords who had been grinding it underfoot for years, using humans as battery power and tricking them into believing a lifelike digital simulation of the world, called the Matrix, was the real thing.

Or at least, we thought that was the end. Lana Wachowski, who directed the original trilogy with her sister Lilly, is reuniting members of the original cast — including Keanu Reeves as Neo and Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity — for a fourth movie, due out on April 1, 2022. In the meantime, Lilly is opening up about the making of the original films with the Netflix Film Club, focusing on how they relate to the trans experience.

Lilly and Lana are both trans women, although they weren’t out at the time they made the movies. “I don’t know how present my trans-ness was in the background of my brain as we were writing it, but it all came from the same sort of fire that I’m talking about,” Lilly said. “For me and Lana, we were existing in this space where the words didn’t exist, so we were always living in a world of imagination. That’s why I gravitated towards science fiction and fantasy and played Dungeons & Dragons. It was all about creating worlds and so, I think it freed us up as filmmakers because we were able to imagine stuff, at that time, that you didn’t necessarily see on screen. Or even the idea of, ‘How can we exist in as many genres as possible?'”

"I think in our transness and our queerness, we were always trying to incorporate as many things as possible. It’s just like trying to visualize within a much larger infinite scope of the imagination."

Still, whatever their conscious intention, Lilly is glad so many trans fans see themselves in the movie. “I’m glad that it has gotten out that that was the original intention, but…the corporate world wasn’t ready for it,” she said. “The Matrix stuff was all about the desire for transformation, but it was all coming from a closeted point-of-view. And so, we had the character of Switch [Belinda McClory], who was a character who would be a man in the real world and then a woman in The Matrix. And that’s where our head spaces were.”

We’ll see whether any of the lessons of the past decade-plus come out in The Matrix 4, which in addition to Reeves and Moss includes folks like Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Neil Patrick Harris, Jessica Henwick, Priyanka Chopra, Jonathan Groff and Toby Onwumere.

Whoa.

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