The Matrix Resurrections Nailed The Main Goal of Its Characters

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Matrix Resurrections and the Matrix franchise.

Over the past week or so, I watched the entire Matrix franchise in preparation for watching The Matrix Resurrections. I wanted to see what this new adventure in The Matrix brought to the table, but I wanted to be familiar with what came before. After watching the entire franchise altogether, I have a different sort of view of The Matrix Resurrections than I keep seeing from people online. The Matrix Resurrections nailed a singular point of the franchise that people seem to have missed. It was never about Neo, it was always about Neo and Trinity.

You’re probably thinking “Neo is The One though, what mental gymnastics gave you this idea?” and to that, I point to the movies themselves. In the first movie, it is Trinity telling Neo as he is near death that the Oracle told her she would fall in love with The One, which gives him what he needs to accept it. That connection carries on in The Matrix Reloaded, where Neo’s entire motivation for rejecting The Architect’s goals is to save Trinity. This leads him to literally restart her heart himself, something that was nigh on impossible.

Then we have The Matrix Revelations, which finishes this through-line by making it very clear that had Trinity not been at Neo’s side, he would not have stopped the war with the machines. Sure, she dies in the process, and that has some interesting implications for Resurrections, but without her being unwilling to see Neo go alone, he never would have made it.

If you still aren’t convinced, The Matrix Resurrections practically states this outright partway into the movie. The Analyst reveals that the Machines put Neo and Trinity back together, but every time they woke and tried to get to one another their combined power fried things. So, The Analyst himself put them just far enough apart to be just out of reach yet maximize their power output.

There are hints of this throughout the film too, with Neo’s powers seemingly being less impressive until the end with Trinity at his side. Then, she manifests abilities that she never had before, but Neo did. The writing is on the wall here. Aside from the Trans allegory, the post-apocalyptic background, the philosophical ideas of real vs fake, and more, it was always a story about Neo and Trinity.

Don’t get me wrong, The Matrix Resurrections isn’t a perfect movie. This isn’t a review though, so I’m not going into that too far. Instead, I’ll point out that if anything was going to make The Matrix Resurrections worth watching, it would be honoring these main characters. I think this film does that in spades. As always Neo is the reluctant protagonist destined to save the world, yet this time we get to see Trinity come into place as his equal, even if it is only for a short time.