In honor of the momentous occasion, we’re looking back at the groundbreaking film trilogy and remembering just how trans it really is! Not only were the original movies created by trans filmmakers Lana and Lilly Wachowski, but they’ve confirmed that most of it was a trans allegory.
"That was the original intention,” Lilly Wachowski revealed in an interview when asked about The Matrix's trans allegory, saying she was “glad that it has gotten out. But the world wasn’t quite ready yet. The corporate level, the corporate world, wasn't quite ready for it yet.”
Since the world wasn't ready for an overtly trans movie, the Wachowskis had to fill the film with trans easter eggs, leaving them for queer and trans people to find and relate to.
Well, now the world is ready, and when The Matrix Resurrections comes out in theaters and on HBO Max December 22, we’ll all get to immerse ourselves in the trans world of The Matrix once more!
Until then, here are seven trans easter eggs from the original movie series you may have missed!
The very first scene that we see in The Matrix is a computer screen that reads "Call Trans Opt: received," making the word "trans" literally one of the first things we see in the movie.
When Neo first comes face to face with Trinity, he tells her, "I thought you were a guy." She cooly responds "most guys do." It's a situation most trans women have been in.
The infamous Red Pill (which has since been co-opted by men’s rights activists) actually represents trans hormone pills, which were red at the time. This symbolism was even confirmed by Lana Wachowski in 2020. So being redpilled means blocking testosterone and filling your body with estrogen so you can become the woman you’ve always known you were.
The blue pill, which would make Neo wake back up in his normal life as if nothing had happened, represents antidepressants, which many trans people were overprescribed at the time in order to try to prevent them from transitioning.
Many trans fans' favorite character in The Matrix is Switch, an androgynous character (played by Belinda McClory) who was originally designed to change gender from the Matrix to the real world. That idea was dropped, though, and in the end, the character became an androgynous woman. "The Matrix stuff was all about the desire for transformation, but it was all coming from a closeted point of view. We had the character of Switch, who was like a character who would be, y'know, a man in the real world and then a woman in the Matrix. That's both where our headspaces were," Lilly Wachowski said.
"What you know you can't explain, but you feel it," Morpheus says to Neo. "You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad."
When Morpheus said these words to Neo, every trans person immediately felt recognition. He’s describing dysphoria, an unnerving feeling of unease trans people often feel about the disconnect between their real gender and the gender they were assigned at birth.
When Neo goes back into the Matrix for the first time after being woken up, Morpheus tells him about his “residual self image,” or how his brain pictures himself. It’s why he has hair and his clothes are different. This is similar to how trans people have an image of themselves that doesn’t necessarily match with how our bodies look.
While Neo’s new friends — his chosen family — accept him, see him for who he is, and call him Neo, the evil Agent Smith (who represents cis people, transphobia, and oppressive systems) insists on calling him “Mister Anderson,” his dead name. It’s also significant that Smith emphasises the “mister” part, reminding Neo that he sees him as a man.
In the final scene of the first movie, the Matrix is tracking Neo’s phone call when the words SYSTEM FAILURE appear on the screen. As the film ends, we zoom in on the middle two letters M and F, symbolizing the journey from male to female and everything in between.
