In The Matrix Resurrections, Smith (Jonathan Groff), Neo’s arch-nemesis, tells us, “Stories never really end. The same old tale is repeated again and again with different names, different faces.” Hence, if one were to assume that in the Matrix universe, the machines are akin to God and humans are fodder for the creation of energy, then Neo and Trinity can be considered the Adam and Eve of the Resurrections story. But in this tale, they are not promised heaven. Instead, they are imprisoned inside the matrix, a simulation environment that they believe is their reality.
The events of The Matrix Resurrections take place 60 years after the incidents of The Matrix Revolutions. Neo sacrifices himself after a truce with the Machines, rebooting the Matrix and saving the lives of the red-pills in Zion. For many of us, Neo and Trinity were most definitely dead, but Warner Bros. found a way to resurrect and bring them to the screen for a perfect romantic reunion. The story of the fourth sequel/reboot follows the yearning desire of Neo and Trinity to meet again, who are separated in the new simulacrum created by a new architect named The Analyst (Neil Patrick Harris).
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‘The Matrix Resurrections’ Plot Summary
Sixty years ago, after the deaths of Neo and Trinity, the Analyst found their bodies and resurrected them with the help of the resurrection pods created by the sentient program, Rama Kandra. The Analyst confined Neo and Trinity’s bodies at the Anomaleum, while their consciousness was manipulated and captured inside a new iteration of the Matrix.
Inside the simulated reality, Neo or “Thomas Anderson” is an award-winning video game designer, who works at a company called Deus Machina, founded by his business partner, Smith (a brainwashed Agent Smith). Thomas has created three highly successful video games (The Matrix trilogy) inspired by the faded memories of his past. Neo certainly believes that these chunks of imagination are much more than fiction, but his therapist, the Analyst, convinces him otherwise. The Analyst prescribes blue pills to Thomas, so that he would not be able to remember his past life and thereby, imprisons him within the loop.
Meanwhile, the narrative follows Bugs, the captain of the Mnemosyne battleship and the girl with the “white rabbit tattoo” (a reference to Alice in Wonderland, and a nod to “follow the white rabbit” from 1999’s The Matrix). Bugs encounters a sentient Morpheus program in an old isolated modal of the Matrix. She informs Morpheus that she saw Neo or Thomas Anderson inside the new Matrix, but the machines keep changing his DSI (digital self-image) to hide him from the public eye. Bugs and Morpheus track down the inventor of the modal and finally find Neo living a fake life under a false identity. Morpheus gives Neo the red pill, and Bugs brings him to the real world. But during his rescue from the resurrection pod at the Anomaleum, Neo catches sight of Trinity in another pod and decides to save her from the Matrix, so that the lovers can be reunited in the end.
Spoilers Ahead
Why Did The Analyst Create A New Matrix?
The Matrix was designed to capture human consciousness inside a simulated reality that gave them the illusion of living in a real world. While in the real world, the machines extracted energy from these humans to power up their gears and enforce large-scale industrialization in the absence of the sun.
The previous iterations of the Matrix designed by The Architect and his predecessors were shaped by facts and equations, rarely taking the uniqueness of the human mind into account. These creations were highly volatile and unstable, hence bolstering resistance from the humans, leading to Matrix being rebooted several times.
However, the Analyst had a different point of view. He believed that feelings in a piece of fiction made it more real. Hence, he placed Neo and Trinity closer to each other, but still not too close. They resembled two people who wanted to be together, but an external force held them back. When they desired each other more, their bodies produced more energy. In scientific experiments, when two bodies are attracted to each other, they create a force. But this force vanishes if either of them are not drawn in the first place, or get hold of each other in the end, i.e., the body becomes stationary, and the desire to struggle dies.
The Analyst understood the secret of human “pursuit.” He wanted Neo and Trinity to be stuck in this loop, and share feelings of fear and desire. Inside the simulated reality, Neo was infatuated with Trinity. But he didn’t have enough courage to express his feelings to her. On the other hand, Trinity was attracted to Neo, but she was married with children and feared losing her family. Their characters symbolically resemble the guinea pig running on a spinning wheel, who yearns for a piece of cheese but isn’t bright enough to understand that he will never be able to achieve it.
At the end of The Matrix Resurrections, Trinity’s mind, which was still stuck in the Matrix, was subjected to a similar fear. When Neo asked Trinity (or Tiffany) to come with him, she feared a new beginning. Tiffany had a family, and it was too late for her to start again with a man she hardly knew. The second chance seemed impossible for her. Even the Analyst created a diversion and sent the bots (Tiffany’s husband and children) to convince her to stay inside the Matrix. They informed Tiffany about their sister, Callie’s accident. Tiffany or Trinity had a hard choice to make, but fortunately, she chose Neo in the end, which brought us to the finale of the film.
‘The Matrix Resurrections’ Ending Explained
After Neo’s escape, a fail-safe was triggered to reset the Matrix back to the Architect’s version. But the Analyst convinced the authorities that Neo would return and thus requested a halt to the reset. If Neo hadn’t come back to the Matrix, the Analyst would have killed Trinity. Hence, Neo was forced to return to the Matrix but convinced the Analyst to give Tiffany or Trinity the choice to decide her own fate.
In the real world, Sati uses Bugs’ mind to unplug Trinity’s body from the machine, while Trinity’s mind remains connected to the Matrix. Finally, Sati, Morpheus, and Bugs rescue Trinity’s body from the Anomaleum and bring her to the Mnemosyne.
Inside the Matrix, the Analyst tries his best to trap Trinity, but she finally undergoes an awakening. When Neo and Trinity try to escape, the Analyst retaliates and activates “swarm mode.” The entire population of the simulation targets Neo and his friends. He turns bots into bombs and tries to kill Neo and Trinity. A death inside the Matrix will be a death in the real world, and thus the humans try to escape the annihilation.
Finally, Neo and Trinity are cornered on a building’s roof, where Trinity watches the sunset and reflects on her life with Neo. The two jump off the building to leave the Matrix when suddenly, Trinity realizes that Neo’s power of flying in the air has been transferred to her. The two leave the simulated reality and embrace each other in the real world.
In the end, Neo and Trinity confront the Analyst. He tells them that without Neo and Trinity’s source codes, the fail-safe cannot be activated, and thus it was impossible to reset the Matrix until and unless they wanted to. The Analyst also finds a way to save himself from the purge, but he has lost his power to control the Matrix. The new rulers (of sorts), Neo and Trinity, decide to remake the simulated reality and paint the sky with rainbows. Because that’s what a free mind does (pun intended).
What Is The Future Of The Matrix?
After Neo’s death in The Matrix Revolutions, the machines spared the rebels living in Zion as per their deal with Neo. The chosen one, Neo, sacrificed himself to save the humans from the army of Sentinels. However, after the Matrix was rebooted, power plants failed to produce enough energy, which led to a war between the machines. Amidst the chaos, the city of Zion was destroyed.
One of the rebels of Zion, Niobe, escaped the city and founded a new city named IO. The new human sanctuary believed that humans and machines (synthients) could live in peace and harmony and work together towards a brighter future.
After Neo made contact with the Synthient City, some synthients, who didn’t desire control over humans, made an alliance with them. With the advancement of shared technology, humans invented the exomorphic-particle codex, which gave programs the ability to access the real world outside the Matrix. They also created a bio-sky, and with the help of a digital code from the Matrix, the humans started growing fruits in IO.
Although it was challenging to carry out the process of photosynthesis under the bio-sky, humans found a ray of light at the end of the tunnel. The age of invention will surely cure the age of extinction. Niobe and other humans’ cherished alliance with the synthients, and probably in the future world of the Matrix, humans, and machines will be able to strive together. With Neo and Trinity already taking control of the new Matrix, the future seems alright.
The Matrix Resurrections is a 2021 Science Fiction Action Thriller film starring Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss in the lead roles.
