The Matrix Resurrections spoilers follow.

The first act of The Matrix Resurrections, Lana Wachowski's return to her groundbreaking sci-fi franchise, is all about reckoning with the legacy that the original trilogy – co-directed with sister Lilly – has left behind. While Resurrections constantly challenges the idea of what a sequel can look like in 2021, one of the things that stays the same in Resurrections when compared to the original films, is the inherent queerness of the story.

Through a repeating loop of the daily routine that shows Neo creating a sequel to his bestselling video game (that retells the story of The Matrix) reveals, the original Matrix trilogy was always about "trans politics". But what's interesting about Resurrections is the way that it takes the inherent queerness of the franchise and explores it in new, interesting ways. In the original Matrix, the idea of being your true self once you've been "unplugged" (freed from the Matrix) is deeply queer.

The movies' approach to both mental liberation, and a kind of physical transformation (which reads like a transition), carries with it the idea of coming out. At the heart of this is the change in name that comes with being unplugged.

keanu reeves, the matrix resurrections
Warner Bros.

Neo's being a hacker captures the unique energy of queer experience that exists in digital spaces when people aren't quite able to bring that into the "real world". This echoes what's often seen as part of trans experience: changing your name after coming out, which is what makes the name Thomas Anderson – or, for Trinity in Resurrections, Tiffany – feel like a deadname.

This DNA of trans politics and the liberation associated with it also runs through Resurrections but, as a more contemporary film, it's able to approach these ideas from a new perspective, one that both builds on the history of the franchise, as well as challenges it. At its heart, Resurrections is of course a trans film – its politics remain the same, and by remixing its own legacy it magnifies a queerness that was always under the surface.

But more than that, Resurrections explicitly explores a non-binary kind of trans identity through its approach to language, the multiple worlds of the film and the way it approaches some of the franchise's most iconic characters.

One of the defining aspects of life outside of the Matrix in the original films is the stark binary between man and machine. With the two sides at war, there was no space for anything existing between.

keanu reeves, the matrix resurrections
Warner Bros.

Resurrections, however, takes place in a new world, one born from the uneasy peace won by Neo at the end of Revolutions. Because of this, the language surrounding machines and their relationship to humans has changed.

Some of the former machines who continue to work with humans refer to themselves as Synthients. This term captures not only the reality of how language changes in relation to identity, but also the legacy of Neo's actions in the original trilogy – the creation of a world that can move out of the shadow of war and, as a result, no longer needs to define itself specifically through binaries.

While there are no characters who explicitly describe themselves as non-binary in Resurrections, like the original film, this one draws heavily on aesthetics to create a queer coding that's nuanced, rather than one that depends on stereotypes.

The leather jackets and motorbikes that recur in the original trilogy are often used for queer coding and the short-lived Switch in the original Matrix has a typically 'butch' look.

keanu reeves, jessica henwick, the matrix resurrections
Warner Bros.

The queerness of the world is made more explicit through the new characters introduced to the franchise. Chief among these is Bugs (Jessica Henwick), whose name refers not only to the iconic instruction that Neo "follow the white rabbit" in the original Matrix but also to the idea put forward by Lilly Wachowski in the Netflix documentary Disclosure, that Bugs Bunny has always been an example of a trans character in fiction.

It isn't just new characters who shine a light on the trans politics of the Matrix series. Two of the most famous and important legacy characters in the franchise – Hugo Weaving's Smith, and Laurence Fishburne's Morpheus – don't appear in their original forms in Resurrections.

Instead, a new character is created – literally, he's coded by Neo – who occupies a space between these two characters who were so vital to Neo's understanding of the Matrix, and the world beyond it. This new character, played by Yaha Abdul-Mateen II, begins life as an Agent named Smith.

yahya abdul mateen ii, the matrix resurrections
Warner Bros.

Like his predecessor, this new Smith challenges the limits of his programming, but rather than becoming a nihilist like Agent Smith, he evolves into a new version of Morpheus who, through sly and self-aware callbacks to the original Matrix, helps to show Neo the way once again.

This new Morpheus, who is able to exist both in the Matrix and the real world without needing to unplug, shows another way in which Resurrections creates a world less defined by binaries than its predecessors.

But Resurrections has more than one Smith. Neo's game design partner, played by Jonathan Groff, takes on the role of Smith in an explosive early sequence before Neo realises that the Matrix is real. Later in the film, when Neo and Smith clash again, the latter acknowledges the binary way in which the world of the Matrix has been built, of course invoking the two of them as the ultimate, primal binary: "Anderson and Smith."

keanu reeves, neo, the matrix resurrections
Warner Bros.

With this version of the Matrix being explicitly built on such a binary framework, the idea of queer liberation that runs deep into the franchise becomes framed in a way that's uniquely non-binary.

Resurrections challenges and undermines this binary by rejecting the idea of either/or and replacing it with and. It is through this understanding that the world is able to be changed.

As the legacy of the original trilogy that echoes through Resurrections shows, these films have always been about changing the world, taking the politics of liberation and playing them out on a macro level. And that's where Trinity, the heart of Resurrections, comes in.

keanu reeves, neo, carrieanne moss, trinity, the matrix resurrections
Warner Bros.

In this version of the Matrix, she exists under the deadname "Tiffany" and is married to a man named Chad, but it's her continual draw and connection to Neo that is able to upend the Matrix itself.

So much of the tension between Neo and Trinity in Resurrections comes from their attempts to make physical contact with each other, with the camera often drawing focus to moments where their hands almost touch.

It's when they do that they're able to change the world around them. When they acknowledge each other's real names, and finally make physical contact with one another, the result is literally explosive – a shockwave reverberates through their touch, and they each become stronger as a result of coming together. This culminates in a final visual and narrative coup that totally upends both what it means to be The One; in an inversion of the ending of the original Matrix, Trinity takes flight.

In bringing together Neo and Trinity, showing how their touch turns separate binary parts into one, non-binary whole, Resurrections challenges what it means to live in a world ruled by binaries, offering a way out by acknowledging the space that exists between.

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